Capital & Class. - 1980. - Issue 11

Voting for Ford : Industrial Democracy and the Control of Labour Peter Cressey and John MacInnes `There has never been such complete democracy in the management of industrial establishments as exists in our shops .' F. W. Taylor [ 1 ] Industrial democracy is a confusing subject : not only at a theoretical level, but in practical terms too ; for both the orthodox analyst of industrial relations and marxists as well [2] . This reflects the contradictions inherent in the concept : it offers control of the dictates of capital on the one hand, and submission to its logic on the other . Industrial democracy, in the form of cosmetic work humanisation schemes, or the incorporation of worker representatives into certain areas of decision-making, appears as an important feature of the strategy of industrial capital in times of crisis to `regain control by sharing it' [3] . Conversely, in the sense of collective workers' control of production, it appears as the ultimate aim of class struggle [4] . Any analysis of industrial democracy must therefore ground itself in an adequate theory of the relation between labour and capital at the point of production : the workplace . Yet, despite the wealth of material produced by the labour process debate around Braverman, the debate on the labour aristocracy, and the debate on the theory of the firm in the States, we think marxists have failed to present a convincing analysis of the relationship between labour and capital at this level, or the relationship between class struggle at the level of the factory and class struggle at the level of society as a whole. The consequence of this failure has been an inability to theorise the relationship between the two, opposed, conceptions of `industrial democracy', and beyond this a failure to theorise or develop a revolutionary strategy for the working class at the point of production within capitalism, as opposed to a general recognition that ultimately, a global revolution in the social relations of production is needed . This paper tries to analyse the origins of this debilitating `bifurcation' [5] .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11

TWO APPROACHES TO INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

Industrial democracy finds the Left caught in a general mistrust of strategy it cannot adequately grasp . The response has tended to b a rejection at a general level of any `industrial democracy' scheme a incorporatist, whilst at the same time emphasising the need fog strong shopfloor unionism and aggressive (and therefore implicit ; more extensive) collective bargaining . A polarisation of views on the subject has tended to develop from this . The `incorporation app roach' sees industrial democracy as a strategy by capital to incorpor ate labour and its shopfloor organisation into a system of workplac : decision-making whose outcome is already decided by the domin ance of the relations of production at a social level, as t ransmitte . to each firm by competition and market forces [6] . Meanwhile the `advance of labour' approach sees it as a strategy of labou whereby capital's power in the workplace is to be eroded by the en croachment of more and more participative and bargaining arrange ments which push forward the `frontier of control' . We see this as a sterile contrast . The implication of the firs approach (that of incorporation) is the impossibility of substantia internal reform at workplace level given the absence of a revolutioi in the relations of production at the social level . The attribution o primacy to market forces and external relations of production mean that any offensive by labour in the workplace is predicated on th, very revolution in production relations that such a strategy shout create rather than result from . The workplace dominance of capita is seen as essentially non-contradictory rather than as a proces marked by struggle and crisis [7] . The `advance of labour' approach conveniently forgets the wide . capitalist context from which the `incorporation' approach starts Underpinning it is the classic individualist idea that `power' lies with the person `making' the decision . Capital's `power' exists in number of discreet areas, each of which can be taken hold of ant re-fashioned to the aims of labour. Then, by progressively encroach ing on areas of managerial prerogative, labour will eventually define and decide all important questions of production, in contrast tc their present subordination to capitalist logic [8] . In practice many advocates of such an approach do not see the social relation ; of production as a problem and defend `industrial democracy' it the name of efficiency and (implicitly) valorisation [9] . Neither of these approaches contains the strategic link we seek between material workplace struggles and struggle at the level of society itself . The `incorporation' approach simply sees the forms a determined by the latter, while the `advance' approach reverses the direction of causality . `Incorporation' defines out the `space' for any, material as opposed to ideological struggle in the workplace, while the `advance' argument collapses socialism into job control [10] . The sterility of the contrast between `incorporation' and 'advance' has echoes in the other debates cited above which suggests ai common theoretical ancestry for this bifurcation . We believe this can be found in the way Marx's theory of the formal and real subordination of labour to capital has been taken up by contemporary marxists [11] . We believe that this has encouraged, and been rein-



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forced by, an emphasis on the study of bourgeois ideology rather than practice, which has resulted in theorisations of the capitalist mode of production which are formalist and ahistorical . The fetish of capital has been mistaken for its reality . MARX'S THEORY OF THE FORMAL AND REAL SUBORDINATION OF LABOUR TO CAPITAL [12]

The concept of real subordination of labour (hereafter R .S .L .) describes the capitalist mode of production [131 when valorisation is fully in command [ 14 ] . It is only achieved at the point where capital obtains the necessary control and disciplining of labour from the production process itself. Whereas private ownership of the means of production, divorce of the workers from the means of subsistence, and the wage form give rise to a formal subordination of labour, it is only really materially subordinated when capital can control exactly what the worker does in the workplace, ensuring that the worker orders all his activities to one goal : valorisation. Thus in the R .S.L., capital employs labour, the means of production employ the worker in a material as well as formal sense : ` . . the conditions of work employ the worker . However, it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion first acquires a technical and palpable reality .'[15]

It is a question not only of the relations, but also of the forces of production in a technological sense . R.S .L . requires a `specifically capitalist mode of production', which arising `spontaneously' on the basis of formal subordination (hereafter F.S .L .), reduces the worker to a `living appendage' [16] of the production process (instead of being its subject and author) . It does this not only in a formal sense, but in a concrete material sense also . The workforce plays absolutely no part in direction or conception, indeed if it did play any such part the real subordination of labour would be seriously incomplete : capital must appropriate all subjective elements to keep valorisation as the sole object of the production process . By definition, for the R .S .L. to be complete capital must abolish any space in the production process for the worker to do anything but valorise capital, it must therefore appropriate to itself all conception, design and ordering of the process, leaving to the worker only the execution of a pre-set task in a ` . . .large scale collective labour process which exists prior to and independently of their being brought into it by its owner/ controller' .[ 171 As a result of this development in the production relations at the workplace, the type of labour required becomes simple and homogenous [18] : it requires no `skill' (if we use the term as a convenient shorthand for the accumulated experience, knowledge, creativity and dexterity in particular forms of labour developed by workers) because all such elements have been appropriated by capital in order to complete its control : ` . . .there appears in the automatic factory a tendency to equalise and reduce to an identical level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines' . [ 19 ]

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 The crux of the R .S .L. argument is that capital employs labour materially as well as formally : the production process is created by capital, the worker is slotted into it . From the formal aspect of value, capital has always employed labour, and this is implied in the formal subordination of ,labour to capital . In the R.S .L ., however, the breakthrough achieved by capital is to root this `inversion' in the material production process itself : capital employs labour in its use-value aspect too [20] . The most graphic example of such a state of affairs given by the modern theorists is the assembly line, organised along Taylorist principles, where the organisation of the machinery itself paces the worker and forces him to perform a preconceived task at a certain time . Capital employs labour here, not merely because it pays it wages and therefore `owns' its performance, but because it also actually materially controls what labour does . R.S .L . brings the progressively greater development of deskilled, materially undifferentiated mindless jobs in the workplace . It is also intimately related with two other developments which go together to produce Marx's `General Law' of capitalist accumulation . Firstly, the forces of competition, produced by the development of R .S.L . elsewhere, force the directors or managers of all units of capital, whether or not they `own' them, to `personify' capital in order to survive . Only by enforcing R.S .L., maximising surplus value, and promoting the further accumulation of capital does each individual unit survive at all . As the `personification' of capital, the controllers of the labour process become as enslaved as the workers they exploit [21] . Secondly, the size and potency of the `industrial reserve army' feeds off these developments in another vicious circle . The progressive simplification of labour makes members of the employed working population more directly replaceable by members of the reserve army, since no specific skills are required any more, while the accumulation of capital, with its rising organic composition, sloughs off sufficient labour to keep the army up to size . The economic power of labour to resist the dictates of capital thus becomes progressively weaker ; as a result, its real subordination by capital intensifies still further . The significance of R .S.L . for the whole of Marx's theory is illustrated in the way he summarises the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation [22] . Here the concept of the material realisation of the `inversion' at the heart of capitalist society is revealed as a central idea of the whole book [23] .

THE STRATEGIC The strategic conclusions to be drawn from R .S .L. theory are made IMPLICATIONS explicit in Marx and Engels's writings (especially earlier works) on OF R .S.L . trade unions. Since labour is totally subordinated economically in the workplace, both by the production process inside it and the reserve army waiting at the gates, any fight here for meaningful economic reform, while necessary as a confidence-building exercise, is purely utopian if it expects real gains [241 . On the other hand,

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however, the real dominance of capital economically, digs its grave politically : for the increasing homogenisation of jobs, and interchange between employment and the reserve army which are created by R .S.L., provide a material basis for the development of the workers into a class for itself . All redress of their existing problems depends on the overthrow of the relations of production as a whole, this becoming a realistic proposition as the workers become more undifferentiated and united against their common enemy . Thus the real task in strategic terms is_ for political ideological battle to turn the working class to revolutionary politics . We could summarise the strategy by saying that the struggle for a `fair day's wage' is utopian, wheras the struggle for the `abolition of the wages system' is realistic 125] . If R .S.L . theory is correct, and advanced capitalism has achieved the real subordination of labour in the workplace, then any meaningful strategy must look towards a change in the social relations of production, not merely as an ultimate aim, but as an immediate political objective which capital has itself brought onto the agenda by its creation of a homogenised class-in-itself [26] .

FORMAL TO REAL SUBORDINATION AND CONTEMP . ORARY THEORY AND STRATEGY

R .S .L. theory, and the transition from F .S .L. to R .S.L., theorised as 'deskilling', lies at the heart of much contemporary marxist theory of the workplace, through Braverman, B .L .P .G . and the studies of Taylorism and scientific management [27] . The restatement of R .S .L . in relation to modern developments is Braverman's aim . He takes 'deskilling' as the dominant tendency in capitalism historically, while analytically the problem of `control' for modern management is precisely transforming the labourpower it formally owns into value creating labour. This is done by management adopting Taylorist policies of divorcing conception from execution in the deskilled labour process (in contrast to their former unification in the craft worker) : `The subjective factor of the labour process is removed to a place among its inanimate objective factors . . .the process is henceforth carried out by management as the sole subjective element'[28] . Braverman conceives of the working class as an `aspect' of capital : its variable part. Its `modes of work' and `occupational structure' are determined solely by capital which `habituates' the worker to the various pre-designed production processes among which he or she is flung in the course of a life-time's work (and non work) [29] . B .L.P .G . explicitly take R .S.L . as their starting point, arguing that it exists even where capital appears to grant a measure of autonomy to the workforce : `It does not need to exercise its power via a system of direct face-to-face power relations . . .Autonomy is only possible on the basis of an increase in the material basis of capital's power . . .Capital determines the form its own personification takes' [30] .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 The work of Stone and Montgomery in the States can also be seen to follow the F.S .L .-R .S .L . theory . Stone does so in the context of an attack on the Neo-classical theory of the firm ` . . .which views all that takes place within the firm as an economically efficient adaption to market conditions'[31] and Montgomery in the course of analysing the link between craft consciousness and the movement for workers control . Stone describes the initially formal subordination of labour `skilled workers controlled the production process and made steel by using the employers' capital' and proceeds to argue that technological developments enabled the employers to smash the workers' organisation and then go on to create an essentially ` . . .artificial and unnecessary division of labour' which was devised especially to control the workforce, rather than for any economic efficiency as such (which is one in the eye for Neo-classicism) . Moreover this division of labour is one which ` . . no labour movement or reform group has yet developed successful means for overthrowing' [32] . Montgomery, too, argues from a conception of a formal subordination of labour in which craft workers directed the process of production while `The boss bought the machinery and sold the finished product, and set an aggregate price for the work of the craftsmen through negotiations with their representatives . That is all .' [33] The strategic conclusions drawn by recent work are a product of its roots in the F.S .L .-R .S.L . thesis, and, as such, echo those advanced by Marx and Engels : the material degradation of the workers in the factory will force them into a political revolt which, paradoxically their economic subordination has organised and prepared them for . Hence Braverman writes : `I have every confidence in the revolutionary potential of the working class of the so-called developed capitalist countries . Capitalism will not, over the long run, leave any choice to these classes, but will force upon them the fulfilment of the tasks which they alone can perform .' `It is only through consciousness that a class becomes an actor on the historical stage .' [34] B.L.P .G. argue that nothing has basically changed to call into question Marx's analyses, and so we might well infer that the same would go for the strategic conclusions to be drawn [ 35 ] . Contemporary theory has not stopped at this point, however : rather there has been a vigorous discussion about Taylorism, deskilling and R .S .L . which has focussed on the argument that capital is not as straightforwardly omnipotent at the point of production as R .S .L . suggests, but instead is subject to counter tendency and qualification [36] . Indeed, the work of Marx and Braverman already foreshadows much of this debate . Marx states that : `Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here .' [37]



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And Braverman warns that : the principle is itself restrained in its application by the `. nature of the various specific and determinate processes of production . . .in industry all forms of labour co-exist . . .The result is not the elimination of labour but its displacement to other occupations and industries .' [38] . It is precisely with the elaboration of such qualifications that the discussion around Braverman has concerned itself, with two main areas of qualification being developed . Firstly, it is argued that Taylorism and the realisation of R .S .L . is less widespread than it would otherwise have become because workers organised against it successfully, forcing capital to adopt other strategies, such as 'Responsible Autonomy' [39] . Elger added a further dimension to this argument in terms of the ability of capitals to finance a thoroughgoing Taylorist reorganisation of work [40] . Secondly, it has been suggested that capital faces a contradiction between the short run aim of maximum valorisation, and the long run aim of the maintenance of the relations of production as a whole which require it to divert some of its resources towards legitimating itself : `. . .the dilemma of capitalist control is to secure surplus value, while at the same time keeping it hidden .' [41] Stone's explanation of job hierarchies would fit into this category : they are an artificial device, put there to forestall the development of a united, anti-capitalist class by dividing it against itself [42] . Although such qualifications appear to take us beyond the notion of capital as omnipotent, they fail to lever us out of the sterile antinomies from which we started . Both in analysis and in the strategic conclusions drawn, they leap from one pole of the antinomy to the other because the tendency towards R.S .L. is still taken as basic, rather than as a process which is internally contradiction ridden . The first `qualification' to R .S.L ., that of worker resistance, begs the question of the material basis of that resistance . F .S .L.R.S .L . theor y resolves this in one of two ways : labour is able to struggle because in some areas it is still merely formally subordinated, so that craft-based resistance to deskilling is the progenitor of the movement for workers' control [431 . From this angle, the very existence of trade unions in capitalism is proof of the possibility of their further advance . The strategy follows from this : it is to generalise the `formality' of capitalist control, rolling back its `frontier' within the workplace : we are back with the advance of labour argument, and the corresponding pole of Elson's antinomy in which the transition to socialism becomes : ` . . .a simple extension of socialist forms considered as already co-existing with capitalist ones .' [44] The second way F .S .L.-R .S .L . theory can resolve this problem is to transfer the focus of struggle to the ideological rather than the material level : since labour cannot resist its real subordination

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CAPITAL & CLASS 1 1 materially, it must prepare for the `leap' to the socialist mode of production politically, by setting out to smash those artificial institutions which ' obscure' the appropriation of surplus value and protect capital by dividing the working class artificially : `The institutions of labour then, are the institutions of capitalist control .' [45] Once this is done, and real subordination becomes visible, the class is set to turn the relations of production on their head : the transition becomes ` . . .a leap between two fixed, pre-given structures .' [46] These qualifications to the R .S .L . analysis turn out to be no qualifications at all . They qualify the omnipotence of capital only by posing either the empirical fact of workplace struggle (and tend towards identifying socialism with job control) or labour's potential to appropriate the fruits of the development in the forces of production once it has overturned the relations of production (thus tending to rule out any connection between short-term material reform and the ultimate revolution) [47] . As we slip between poles of the antinomy we find an uncritical attitude towards craft consciousness (as the incarnation of the `formality' of capitalist control) metamorphosing into an ultra-leftist view of labour institutions : as `institutions of capitalist control' they are there to be smashed! [48] . As well as leading to inadequate theorisation of the capitallabour relation at the point of production, F.S .L .-R .S.L . theory also obscures the relation between the forces and relations of production . In the formal subordination of labour, the forces of production as such are taken as pre-capitalist : the dominance of capital does not exist at the level of the workplace (it is simply `formal' there) but elsewhere : we therefore have literally no material connection between the forces and relations of production specified at all, except at the level of `market forces' . [49] By contrast, with real subordination, the forces of production become the relations of production : they are collapsed into each other, so that depending on one's starting point, the forces of production or revolutionary consciousness become the motor of history [50] . We wish to argue that the concept of the development from a formal to a real subordination is inadequate to analyse the development of the capitalist mode of production : that instead the contradictoriness of capital's strategy in the workplace lies in the character of its material relation with labour . In pursuit of valorisation it faces the need to organise the forces and relations of production in a way which develops the social productivity of labour as much as it alienates it .

R .S .L . AND THE DUAL CHARACTER OF LABOUR

` . . .if the commodity has a double character-use value and exchange value-then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a two-fold character, while the mere anlysis of labour as such, as in Smith, Ricardo, e tc . i s bound to come up

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everywhere against inexplicable problems . This is, in fact, the whole secret of the critical conception .' ` . . .The best points of my book are : 1 . the two-fold character of labour according to whether it is expressed in use-value or exchange value (All understanding of the facts depend upon this .'[51] Marx has suffered enough from clumsy and ignorant `refutations' of his work, and we would stress from the outset that it is not our intention either to `debunk' him or search for a `pure' reading . But we do suspect that in the concept of R .S .L., as presented in the Grundrisse and Capital, Marx's own terminology got the better of him, so that at a crucial point in the analysis he did not take account of his own `best point' : the two-fold character of labour . The analysis collapses into an ahistorical formalism because it loses sight of the concrete, use-value aspects of the capital-labour relation at the point of production . `The means of production employ the workers' : it is a striking metaphor, a spare and lucid summary of the essence of a developed capitalist system, and the exact reversal of the definition of a socialist mode of production (52) . Literally speaking, however, it is a nonsense : it grasps not the essence of the capitalist mode of production, but the fetish that it throws up . For the logic of the `inversion` becoming real, and of production being totally geared to valorisation is that concrete society simply disappears into pure form : all real needs become nothing, the social form (valorisation) everything . Everyone, `capitalist' and worker, becomes a collective slave to the mere form which everywhere arises behind their backs . Conversely, the social form of production relationships becomes concrete (a `technical and palpable reality') : moreover, with capital as the dominant concrete entity, dead labour subordinating living . Hence we have the classic bourgeois fetish of conflating the means of production and their capitalist form : dead labour comes to life and becomes productive : it `designs', `controls' and `executes' [53] . And capital would need to be productive if it was to materially control labour for it would have to undertake the various tasks previously left to the initiative, creativity and dexterity of the worker . Only by doing that could capital abolish its dependence on the workers as a subjective force of production and reduce them to simple labour power : to a pair of `hands' . Such a reduction is nonsense : for in terms of Marx's own definition of labour-power and labour, to abolish dependence on the workers as a subjective force is to abolish any dependence on their labour as value-creating activity : it is to subordinate labour by eliminating it [ 54 ] . The key to the critique of R .S.L . theory lies in Marx's own comments about the dual nature of the labour process within capitalism . From the point of view of the social form of organisation of production it is quite correct to say that capital employs labour. However, even in the most highly developed capitalist society, from the point of view of material production, from the aspect of use-value, labour employs capital . Only by controlling the means

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 of production in the sense of subjecting them to its own physica and mental operations, its own will, does the workforce actuall , expend any labour and create use-value, and therefore exchange value as well . Marx himself defines labour power as : ` . . . the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilitie existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he prodl uces a use value of any kind.'[55] and in the celebrated `architects and bees' passage he makes huma, will a defining characteristic of all human use-value creating labour For even though capital owns (and therefore has the right to `con trol'), both means of production and the worker, in practice capita must surrender the means of production to the `control' of the workers for their actual use in the production process . All adequat: analysis of the contradictory relationship of labour to capital in the workplace depends on grasping this point. Although the `inversion' (capital employs labour) may becom . technical and palpable in the sense that the assembly line (rathe than the overlooker) may pace the worker, this does not represent any real or material control of labour beyond the formal rights & ownership already present in the wage relationship . Just as much a , before the workers themselves actually control the detail of the per formance of their tasks, and the importance of this, though it vane, with the production process, never disappears altogether . Even the smallest degree of subjectivity and detailed control of the directioi of the process by labour can be used as a weapon against capita in the workplace and is so used whether consciously or not [56] In the two-fold relationship of labour to capital in the work place lies the basis for the socialisation of production relation within capitalism pointed to by Luxemburg and others at the turf of the century . It is precisely because capital must surrender the use of its means of production to labour that capita must to some degree seek a cooperative relationship with it, unit labour with the means of production and maximise its social prod' uctivity and powers of cooperation. Here is the central point of ou critique of R .S .L . The two-fold nature of the relationship of capita to labour in the workplace implies directly contradictory strategie for both labour and capital which in turn represent the working ou ; of the contradictions between the forces and relations of productior at the level of the workplace itself . For capital, the tendencies outlined in R.S .L . theory grasp only, the exchange-value aspect of the relationship . Here indeed capital' seeks to reduce the workers as far as possible to the status of comm odities, enforcing the wage form and divorcing them from the meanof production in order to maximise the alienation of surplus valuc and abolish all dependence on the workers' own skill and initiative lest that frustrate the requirements of valorisation . However, the use value aspects of the relation of capital to labour are directly contra dictory to this . Valorisation has to be embodied in use-value : the capitalist must therefore always seek to maximise relative surplu-

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value by revolutionising the forces of production . He can do this only by seeking to abolish the constraints imposed on the forces of production by the capitalist form of the relations of production : he must actively seek to abolish the commodity form itself . Thus contrary to the implications of the R.S .L . argument capital has an active interest in suppressing its own dominance in the workplace to the extent that dominance flows purely from the social form of the relations of production and not from the requirements of production itself. To develop the forces of production capital must seek to develop labour as a subjective force to unleash labour's powers of social productivity rather than abolish these powers . Thus in the use-value aspect of its relation with labour capital will seek a purely cooperative relationship in order to abolish the antagonism between the worker and the means of production that its capitalist form throws up [ 57 ] . For labour there is a correspondingly contradictory relationship to capital . From the exchange-value aspect there is again a direct antagonism between capital and labour : the latter seeking to resist its subordination to the goal of valorisation through the reduction of labour to a pure commodity . From the use-value aspect, however, since labour can only gain access to the means of production through selling its labour-power to capital it has an interest in the maintenance of that relationship and therefore the viability of the unit of capital which employs it . Moreover, the degree of this interest will increase with the skill and scope for self-expression (distorted as it is within the capitalist form) that the job provides . Hence labour too will have a direct interest in developing the forces of production within the factory, but again in contradictory fashion, since it will not wish such development to be used solely to benefit valorisation, but also to increase wages or provide more pleasant jobs [58] . Consideration of this two-fold relationship of capital and labour in the workplace allows us to answer some of the problems thrown up by R .S .L. theory . F.S .L . and R.S .L . both tend to collapse the relations of production into the forces of production : the `skill' of the craft worker in its use-value aspect is taken as constituting control of the means of production, which annihilates `workers' control' . In contrast, in R.S .L . with deskilling and the displacement of all subjective factors onto capital, the means of production run both themselves and the workforce . The forces of production in a narrow, technological sense become the motor of history and capitalism appears as industrialism, albeit one which can ultimately be rescued by the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat [59] . An analysis based on the dual nature of labour and control thus suggests that the forces and relations of production are not mutually exclusive categories (with the forces as determinant) and that it is not sufficient (as e .g. Gordon does) [60] to present capital's dilemma in terms of what is technically efficient for production and socially efficient for control . Any production process will be a complex unity of the two, determined by the outcome of the various struggles between labour and capital about the form of both

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 technology and the production relations surrounding it : it will be . joint creation . Insofar as the nature of the production process is a joint creat ion, the progress of the trio of developments which constitute the `General Law' will no longer operate in the manner Vol . I implies The greater the extent to which valorisation is not in command it each unit of capital, then the less will be the progressive intensificat ion of the process of each unit through market forces . The effective ness of the reserve army will also be much reduced : since there ias much reason for capital to develop the producitivty and subject ivity of labour as to abolish it, then there is no necessary overall' tendency to simplify and homogenise labour . It therefore become less replaceable and less subject to `disciplining' by the reserve army, [61] . The imminent logic of capital becomes a less uniformly vicious circle .

MARXIST THEORY AND CAPITAL FETISHISM

It has been one of our themes that there has been a tendency it marxist analysis of the labour process to analyse the fetish of capital rather than capital in its concrete historical development, to treat if in an ahistorical fashion, and then reintroduce class struggle as 'deus ex machina', which effects the `leap' from one mode o' production to another. In part this can be traced to the reliance of most marxisl theorists on an analysis of the bourgeois theorists of capitalis' organisation, rather than any direct study of its practitioners . Management by its very nature works behind closed doors, and in a sense what is seen is by definition atypical . But to claim, as Braver= man does, that Taylorism represents : ` . . . nothing less than they explicit rationalisation of the capitalist mode of production' .[62] isi to invest capital's apologists with the ability to theorise capitalismi scientifically, an approach which leaves little room for theories ot, ideology or commodity fetishism . It also involves a careful choice ot, theorists . Why choose Taylor as fundamental, and the theorists ot, the `habituation' of the worker as qualifications to a basic theme?[63] It is not an exercise without precedent in Marx's work itself . He , took the self-acting mule as one of the clearest examples of capital's' ability to materially subordinate labour, yet Lazonick (1979)I suggests that Marx took his evidence for this from Ure, who in turns was quoting the inflated claims of the machine's maker . The mule spinners, rather than being homogenised into general labourers„ retained a superior position within the job hierarchy : `Marx committed an error that is far too common in the social) sciences. He derived his conclusion of the omnipotence of technology in the subjection of labour to capital from an uncritical acceptance of capitalist ideology . . .'[ Less forgiveable has been the emphasis laid on the work of Taylor, given the major inconsistencies in his work itself . As a wouldbe practitioner of real subordination, Taylor was adamant' that for his approach to work no improvement on the labour process



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by the workers themselves must be possible : it indeed represents the appropriation by capital of all the workers' subjectivity and skill, to prevent the exercise of their own initiative frustrating the valorisation process . It was to be left to capital itself to conceive design and control the production process . Could it do it? Sohn Rethel (whose own work has argued for the significance of Taylorism as capital's strategy) describes how Taylor's project at the Midvale Steel Company, with the aim of `obtaining a knowledge (i .e . powers of conception, PC and JM) at least equal to that of the combined machinists who were under him', took him not six months as he originally planned, but 26 years, resulting in the monster `Art of Cutting Metals'[65] . The failure of Taylorism, rather than its `success' is proof of the inability of capital to follow an R .S .I . strategy : as he failed to `control' the workforce fully, Taylor retreated into a reliance on economically induced motivation . Important as Taylorism may have been in developing management's awareness of systematic organisation of work, the emphasis on it in contemporary theory is unjustified . It fits in nicely with R .S .L . theory : but both belong to the realm of fetishism rather than material production . This raises the question of whether the tendency to theorise the fetish of capital is not a basic aspect of Marx's project in Capital, as a critique, not of capitalism but capitalist political economy, and whether it ends up, to use Thompson's phrase, as an 'anti-structure' . While Elger has argued that : `Marx's own treatment is ambiguous enough to be susceptible to varied interpretations'[ 661 and that Marx should not be read as a theorist of craft degradation and deskilling, it seems to us that ahistorical and determinist formulations inevitably creep into any F .S .L .-R .S .L . theory, and that the bifurcation of strategy is an inevitable legacy of such formulations . Once `labour' is formally subordinated, then its real subsumption has to follow-it occurs as the realisation of capital's `essence' : the `inversion' at the heart of capitalist society imposed by the logic of competition . Yet such market forces are produced by . . . the immanent tendencies of capital! [671 We get exactly the ahistorical conception of capital for which Burawoy takes Braverman to task : 'Braverman presents capitalism as a process of becoming, of realising its inner essence, of moving according to its immanent tendencies, of encompassing the totality, of subordinating all to itself, and of destroying all resistance' .[68] What is problematic is the adequacy of F .S .L. as a concept in the first place . There appears to be a lop-sidedness in `Capital' in that the recognition of the determinate role of force, of class struggle, at the level of the mode of production as a whole in terms of the expropriation of the producers and their divorce from the means of production, is never paralleled by an adequate conception of the determinacy of class struggle within production and the ability of capital to enforce the unity of the worker and the means of production within the workplace . The concept of F .S .L . cannot be a historical category, rather it flows from Marx's critique of classical

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 economics and his analysis of labour and labour power, and in this sense it appears as a 'Neo-Smithian' category parallel to Smith's conception of a `previous accumulation of capital' .[69] In his critique of Smith's notion of `previous accumulation' (the analytical trick which enables Smith to escape from the circularity of surplus value and accumulation pre-supposing each other) Marx argues that primitive accumulation was a process irreducible to the categories of political economy and explicable only in terms of class struggle and ultimately force . At first sight it appears that such a historical analysis of primitive accumulation explains the initial `formal' subordination of labour, in that in the workplace capital simply appropriates (formally) a production process bequeathed by pre-capitalist society . Such a conception, although it appears attractive, is theoretically absurd . To argue that the production process remains unchanged is to imply that no divorce of the worker from the means of production took place (since capital's control was purely `formal') . Yet the explanation of the arrival of capital (in the sense of an ensemble of social relations) through primitive accumulation starts out from the establishment of this very same `divorce' at a social level .[70] Are we seriously to argue that the production process, and the social relations of those within it, remained unchanged while capital subordinated it? The concept of the formal subordination of labour, like Smith's concept of the previous accumulation, is not derived from history but from political economy : they both serve to displace the theorisation of class struggle onto a Smithian circularity : the laws of competition enforce the drive for valorisation within each unit of capital, yet these laws themselves are only the expression of the development of capitalist relations at the point of production itself . Thus the development of a specifically capitalist mode of production in the workplace presupposes itself . Ultimately, Marx replaces Smith's ahistorical circle with another : the formal subordination of labour and primitive accumulation presuppose each other . We swap the free individual and free competition for the self-developing logic of capital, and neither appear `as a historic result, but as history's point of departure'. [ 71 ] We can see the critique of political economy developing its own `anti-structure' if we look back at Stone's work on the Neo-classical theory of the firm, which saw the hierarchy within the firm as a matter of neutral `economic efficiency' . Stone sees the job structure as created artificially by victorious employers, after the defeat of the craft steel workers . But Palmer (taking R .S .L. to its logical conclusions) points out that : `As much as the steel magnates desired to break the backs of the craft unions, this end would have been accomplished even without their active encouragement, the inner logic of mechanised steel making was itself capable of destroying craft distinctions within the industry' [72] . And so after leaving behind the idea of `economically efficient adaptations to market forces' we return to the `inner logic of mech-



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anised steel making' . Class struggle becomes tacked on as afterword : in the unilateral creation of `artificial' production relationships by the employer . For: `Once capital has emerged on the page, its self development is determined by the innate logic inherent within the category, and the relations so entailed, in much the same way as `the market' operates within bourgeois Political Economy . . .The postulates ceased to be the self interest of men and became the logic and forms of capital to which men were subordinated ; . . . But what we have at the end is not the overthrow of `Political Economy', but another `Political Economy' [73] . The lesson to be drawn is surely that we cannot take as a direct basis for producing a concrete class strategy a text (Vol I) which explicitly states in its preface : ` . . .individuals are dealt with here only insofar as they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers of particular class relations and interests . My standpoint, from which the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them' [74] . It is to argue that the `bifurcation' of strategy, underpinned by the theory of workplace struggle advanced by the debates around the labour process, has its roots in the failure of contemporary theorists to go beyond political economy to a historical materialism of workplace struggle, and examine the : ` . . dialectic of the concepts productive force and relation of production, a dialectic whose boundaries are to be determined'[75] . If we remain with `political economy', history resolves itself into the vicious circle of the logic of capital, and the virtuous circle of the logic of socialism, with the `leap' from one to the other effected by consciousness on the one hand and the `smashing' of state power on the other [76] .

CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE DUAL NATURE OF LABOUR AND CONTROL

The dual nature of labour within capitalism implies the dual character of `control' itself. From one aspect, the phrase `control of labour' implies capital's ability to enforce valorisation and the production of commodities, from another it implies the control labour has of the production process bequeathed by capital's continued reliance on its cooperation in order to get the work performed at all . It implies a rather different analysis of the relationship between class struggle and the production process : job hierarchies and authority relations can be seen as having their roots in the production process itself. In turn the precise form of that process is a joint creation [771, the outcome of class struggle rather than the `logic' of

20

CAPITAL & CLASS 11

capitalist development, and as such capable both of further development within a capitalist social relation of production, and subversion of it, not only ideologically, but materially too . The object of class struggle can be seen as the form of the relationship between conception and execution, and the form of the overall `plan' to which it is subordinated . The unity of conception and execution has never been the exclusive property of the craft worker, never entirely disappears in any 'deskilled' labour-process and cannot of itself be an adequate definition of socialism . As Engels makes clear, authority will change its form not disappear altogether [78] . The material `space' for struggle at the point of production also cuts both ways, however. If we escape from the notion of a working class which prior to the historical break is merely an `aspect of capital' but exists politically as a universal force opposed to it, and open up the possibility for a `practical and prefigurative socialist politics' [79], then it must also be remembered that such a struggle roots itself initially in the workplace rather than in the class as a whole . Just as such struggles are not artificial and `incorporated', neither are they necessarily `spontaneously' socialist . They may take either form, and the task before us is surely thus to develop yardsticks for differentiating the two, and promoting the latter [80] . To do so must involve jettisoning a lot of categories and antinomies which we tend to work with at present . If there is no abstract measure of use value, and the `real' abstractions apparently imposed by the market are always mediated by workplace struggle, then what constitutes `skill' becomes itself an increasingly fluid category, capable of being defined and argued over in a variety of ways [81] . This raises the possibility of posing the question of what consists of `useful work' within the labour movement, and of the evaluation of the contribution of different groups of workers in a manner which prefigures `from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs', rather than the needs of capital reproduction . Similarly, in the analysis of trade unions, F.S .L .-R .S .L . analysi s portrays them from one aspect as the agent of capitalist control, the `reflection' of capitalist society as an institution committed to the sale rather than the abolition of labour power, and from another aspect as the forerunner of workers' control, either as a craft organisation able to `control' work, or as the `ever widening union of the workers' which in defeat becomes a school of revolution . This antinomy tends to get uncritically translated into theories of `betrayal' of the implicitly control seeking `rank and file' by the incorporated `bureaucracy' [82] . What has to be developed here is an adequate analysis of the terms of the sale of labour-power and compromise with capitalism which, coexistent with it in the short run, undermine it in the longer run, rather than simply tail-ending militancy for its own sake . We have to develop the categories of analysis which can illuminate how capital's contradictory aims in the workplace can be exploited to prefigure socialism, not by rolling back a `frontier of control' [83] but by subverting and changing the form of hierarchy and production relations within the workplace as well as without, to



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transform the `rebellious impulses produced by the situation capitalism has imposed on the working class into consciousness and revolutionary creativity' [84] both in a material and ideological sense . INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY AND WORKERS CONTROL

After what has been a tortuous but we hope fruitful detour through the theorisation of the relation between capital and labour at the point of production, we can return to our original question of the dangers and opportunities of `industrial democracy' and 'participation' as a concrete management strategy . The attempt to `regain control by sharing it' can be seen as the attempt by capital to solve its problems by offloading some of the contradictions it faces onto labour itself . Since attempts to educate labour in the need to exploit itself tend to be dismal failures, capital attempts to give labour a practical lesson : it is handed `control' over small areas of the production process formerly controlled in detail by capital, in the hope that labour's direction will be more efficient than the division of labour and authority previously in existence . Capital thus attempts to exploit labour's non-homogeneity, bringing to the fore contradictions of labour organisation and forcing it into an accomodative coexistence with capital. In giving labour a practical lesson in the need for cost efficiency, it also exploits labour's superior knowledge of the details of the production process itself . Examples of such a strategy would be job evaluation committees, where management often grants majority representation to the workforce itself, autonomous work group arrangements, and also higher level `consultation' schemes about new investment, organisation of work, etc . Following the `incorporation' approach, Marxist analysis has traditionally seen the correct response to such managerial overtures as a complete refusal to get involved : the implication is that such schemes are a question of capital `determining the form its own personification takes' [85], and that the only possible result is not `workers control of production' but workers control of production for production's sake, a pseudo-control that only serves to smash what autonomy the workers' movement has . Our analysis suggests that other approaches could and should be tried. `The Strategy of the Refusal' [86], the ultimate conclusion of any incorporatist analysis has nothing implicitly socialist or revolutionary about it : it can take such forms, but in practice it tends to the opposite-an acceptance that it is management's legitimate right to manage and discipline, since that is their job, while trade unions and shop-floor organisation is an equally legitimate `permanent opposition' to bargain and defend within the system . We arrive at the arguments of H. A . Clegg [871 : hardly a revolutionary figure! The same goes for 'anti-work' strategies which go beyond refusal to `sabotage' of the production process itself. While it is all very well to demonstrate the `rationality' of such acts, it should be recognised that they are an index of the weakness of labour's organisation rather than its strength, and can be quite conservative and reactionary in their effects ; directed as much against other sections of the workforce as against capital, and fostering the call for more 'dis-

22

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 cipline' from the only potential source if the workforce is unorganised : management. [88] In a sense, such `refusal' or anti-work attitudes should surely be what has to be tackled by socialists . For as long as : `The only thing that gives meaning to work for these men is the non-work of unemployment' [ 89] , then the only visible aim of struggle at the point of production becomes conservative and defensive and fails to raise the possibility that work could be different : `The notion of "workers' control" is one that is vaguely articulated . It has a sound ideological ring about it and it can also be located in their day-to-day plant activity . Even here, however, there has been no symmetrically developed policy of encroachment upon managerial prerogatives within the car plants . . . Although they control the line they do it because they have to : they have no real desire to control the car plant . . ."The car plants for the car workers" makes no sense to the lads who work on the line . They hate the car plant in a way the miners never hated the pit. . .' [ 90] . In contrast, our analysis suggests that, so long as : `We've always got the last card because we're running the jobs' [91] then there remains the possibility and `space' for organised struggles at the point of production to change the form of work and raise the question of its nature and purpose : the issue is not between autonomy and incorporation but the form of bargain that labour makes with capital. The fact that it is the employers' side which often makes the running on `industrial democracy' suggests at once the weakness and the strength of capital . It fears that the workers are less responsive to management discipline than before, it also knows that to be effective it must cultivate their cooperation . It is able to pose the solution in terms of `participation', `involvement', and so on, precisely because here it has gained the upper hand in the struggle over the form such cooperation could take, by working out its strategy, by searching out ways of displacing the contradictions it faces in the workplace onto labour in such a way that labour has to resolve them in a fashion favourable to capital . And in such a context, which has been prepared by the lack of attention given to the nature of work within capitalism by socialists, the `strategy of the refusal' is not only correct, but in practice usually followed by workforces who do not usually take delight in exploiting themselves when the fruits of `participation' fail to materialise for them : hence the short life or degeneration of most management schemes : `I never feel enriched-I just feel knackered' . [92] Such'a state of affairs is an indication of labour's weakness not its strength . Any adequate strategy must go beyond simple `refusal' and blanket support for militancy or the more exotic forms of resistance to work that workers practice . It must be capable of raising the nature of work and its purpose, with the aim of developing political prefigurative forms within capitalism that point beyond it rather than patch it up . The categories to develop such a strategy have yet to be produced, and this paper does nothing but point vaguely in the direction we should look . The growth of trade union



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organisation among `white collar' scientific and technical occupations poses even more starkly the alternative between sectional militancy and the strategy of the refusal, and the potential for strategies of alternative production rooted in alliances between heterogenous sections of workers around the demand for work of a more useful nature . Capitalism cannot be relied upon to dig its own grave [93] .

FOOTNOTES

The authors are research assistants, Centre for Research in Industrial Democracy, University of Glasgow . Earlier versions of this paper appeared at G . U . Sociology Department Postgraduate Seminar and C .S .E . Conference, 1979 . We would like to thank the editorial board and readers, and in particular Tony Elger, for many helpful comments and advice . 1 2 3

4

5

6

7

8

Sociological Review : Vol . 7, 1914, p . 268 As the quote from Taylor shows, anyone can claim to be an `industrial democrat' . The phrase is that of Alan Flanders . See Ramsay (1977) for a historical analysis of industrial democracy as an anti-union employer tactic . It would of course be absurd to reduce socialism to this alone . There is the problem of just how universal the categories of labour and production are . Our arguments in this article therefore leave out such vital considerations as the sexual and national dimensions of oppression, and the question of the state and armed forces . However, workers control would be a necessary, if insufficient condition . See also Note 80 (below) . Elson 1979a and 1979b, uses this term to describe the existence of a break between the `analysis of what capitalist exploitation is, and analysis of the politics of ending it' (Elson 1979b, p . 173) . See also p . 5 (above) . e) . Thus Tom Clarke writes ` . . .industrial democracy proposals are likely to have the opposite of their supposed effect . That is, most schemes for industrial democracy will involve an absorption of workers' representatives into capitalist forms of control, not a transcending of these : they will bring about the more effective integration of workers into the existing economic and social relations rather than producing any basic alteration in the capitalist system .' (Clarke 1977, p . 375). A recent example of this is Nichols, 1980 . After emphasising that capitalist relations of production are both intra and inter enterprise relations, market forces are held responsible for the inability of cooperatives to subvert capitalist principles of organisation : `This is obvious enough perhaps in the case of the sole cooperative that seeks to stay afloat on the capitalist sea . But the same tendencies will assert themselves even if we consider the notional case of a society in which workers have appropriated all enterprises and seek to run them democratically, and on the basis of equality-unless, that is, they have had the foresight to abolish the commodity relations which formerly entangled these enterprises .' (p . 25) . See also Note 49 below . Anyone familiar with the TUC's teaching materials for shop stewards will have noticed the analogy they use of a brick wall . Collective bargaining proceeds by loosening management's hold on a brick called `discipline', `information' etc ., which is trans-

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 ferred to the growing workers' wall, showing the gradual accumulation of control . 9 Thus the Labour Party report states : `We would argue strongly the contribution to industrial efficiency that can come from an extension of workers' participation . . .' (1969, p . 21) . 10 Job control refers to control of a pre-defined job, as opposed to collective workers' control of production as a whole . 11 We will remain deliberately ambiguous about whether the major problem is Marx's political economy itself, or its interpretation by contemporary theorists . There are obviously other possible readings of Marx . See especially Elger, 1979 . 12 Different writers have used `subjection', 'subsumption' and `Subordination' . While subsumption probably describes the `real' relationship more adequately, and `subordination' the `formal' one, for the sake of clarity we use `subordination' throughout . 13 We use the term in both its senses . See Banaji, 1977 pp . 4-5 . 14 The phrase is BLPG's (1977, p . 9) . They use the term `non correspondence' to describe a situation where vestiges of workers' control of the production process prevent it being geared solely to valorisation . 15 Marx, 1976, p . 548 16 Marx, 1976, pp . 645, 548 17 BLPG, 1977, p . 11 18 We use the word `simple' here as a specific Marxist category rather than a straight forward adjective . The concept of simple labour is one of Marx's knottier hostages to fortune and lies at the base of the whole edifice of the theory of value and the current debate on its status . Here we take the term to mean labour that is undifferentiated, unskilled and average . The problem with Marx's approach is that it is never clear to what extent `simple' is a category existing at a formal level : 'A commodity may be the outcome of the most complicated labour, but through its value it is posited as equal to the product of simple labour . . .The various proportions in which different kinds of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measurement are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers .' (Marx 1976, p . 135) Or whether `simple labour' describes a variety of concrete labour that is typical of capitalist society : `The greater part of the labour performed in bourgeois society is simple labour as statisitical data shows .' (Marx 1970, pp . 30-31) Unfortunately Marx does not footnote his reference to statistical data . We argue below (p . 7) that R .S .L . requires simple labour to have both these senses . See Elson 1976b, pp . 7, 56ff and 144ff for the argument that they must be kept separate . 19 Marx 1976, p . 545 . 20 The basis of the distinction between F .S .L . and R .S .L . lies in the peculiar status of labour-power as a commodity which, unlike others, is not physically alienable . Exchange normally involves the physical transfer of use-values, things, along with the formal right to appropriate ('control') them, i .e . 'ownership' ; over which the will of the individual `owner' is sovereign . (Marx 1976, Ch . 2) . But labour power is an altogether peculiar `thing', comprising as it does :



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. .the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities, existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being .' (Marx 1976, p . 271) Its use, appropriation and control cannot be physically alienated to the buyer, for the worker must always set his own capabilities in motion, and : `The totality of the free workers' labour capacity appears to him as his property, as one of his moments, over which he as subject exercises domination' . (Marx 1973, p . 465) In a state of formal subordination then, the capitalist is able to appropriate the worker's product, but not control how it is produced . In real subordination the capitalist prevents the worker being the author of the capabilities he or she sets in motion, instead the worker must work as defined by the 'specifically capitalist mode of production' . Some writers have expressed this in terms of a contrast between market and production relations : `The formal subjection of labour to capital takes place through the market exchange of labour-power for a wage, as a result of which capital secures the right to make use of this labour power for a stipulated length of time (the working day) . The real subjection of labour to capital, on the other hand, takes place in the labour process itself . . . What the real subjection of labour to capital actually requires is that as much as possible the subjective will of the labourer conforms to the objective requirements of profit making . Hence there is inherent in the logic of capital accumulation a tendency to reduce labour to the status of a mere object, both formally as a commodity in exchange and in reality as a means of production in the labour process .' Lazonick, 1978, p . 3 . See Note 49 (below) and pp . This theme recurs in Marx from the Manifesto to Capital, in numerous passages . Marx 1976, pp . 798-9 The `inversion' being the control of the worker by the means of production, the domination of dead labour over living . Hence we have the whole tenor of Marx and Engels writings on the trade unions, from the Manifesto to Value Price and Profit . Engels in The Condition of the English Working Class describes trade union history as `a long series of defeats of the working men, interrupted by a few single victories' (1969, p . 243) . Unions were simply powerless against the law of capital . Marx in Value Price and Profit states : `I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities . By cowardly giving way in their every-day conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement . At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles . They ought not to forget that

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects ; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction ; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady .' (Marx 1899, pp . 92-93) 25 Hence Marx and Engels' optimism about trade unions (Hyman, 1971, p. 4) and their view of them as potential `schools of revolution' : their inability to reform would strengthen the case for the urgency of revolution . Therefore the struggle against CMP, both before and during any revolutionary situation, is loaded heavily onto development of consciousness given the impossibility of any material advance : `If the competition of the workers among themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end .' (Engels .243) 1969,P 26 Marx 1976, p . 929 describes how capitalist development `trains', `unites' and `organises' the working class for its revolt . 27 See the comprehensive bibliography in Elger 1979 . There have been many divergences of interpretation of course . Some American writers work in a problematic more rooted in Proudhon than Marx (e .g. Marglin, 1974, Hunnius et al 1973) . The work of Beynon and his colleagues is more complex . Although it uses many of Braverman's categories (see Beynon and Nichols 1977, pp . 17-18 and 108-9) we think their arguments go well beyond Braverman and contain many points we try to develop . 28 Braverman 1974, pp . 171-2 29 ibid p . 378 30 BLPG 1977, pp . 18-19 31 Stone 1974, p . 113 32 ibid pp . 114, 115 33 Montgomery `Trade Union Practice', quoted in Monds 1976, p . 86 . This formulation is of course interesting given the connection made between formal subordination and market forces (see e .g. reference to Lazonick, Note 20 above) . See also Note 49 below . 34 Braverman 1976, p . 124 . Braverman 1974, p . 35 . Compare this with Marx and Engels formulations in Note 24 above . 35 BLPG 1977, p . 24 : `There has been no change in the immanent tendencies of the capitalist labour process, beyond those analysed by Marx' . 36 See Elger 1979, for both the best summary of the debate, and a further development of it . 37 Marx, 1976 p . 798, discussing the `General Law' which has at its heart, the `inversion' become material in the real subordination of labour . 38 1974, p . 172 . See Note 54 below . 39 See Friedman 1977, and Palmer 1975 . 40 1979, p . 71 41 Burawoy, 1978 p . 261 . This is a central feature of the arguments by Gordon, Gintis and other writers . See also Note 46 below . 42 1974, especially Section III, pp . 117-141 . 43 Montgomery, 1974, is one of the more explicit examples of this . 44 Elson 1979b, p . 173 45 Stone, 1974 p . 168 46 Thus many qualifications of Braverman's approach end up



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48

49

50

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locating the contradictions within capitalism at the level of consciousness and see the problem of the reproduction of capitalist social relations as situated there . Yet as Braverman's comments show (quoted above, p . 12) this is something he would accept . Indeed the emphasis on consciousness is but the other side of the coin of a determinist conception of the development of the forces of production : consciousness arrives to effect the leap from one frozen structure to another (via its organisation into a material force, the party, capable of smashing the last barrier to the leap to the socialist future : the state .) This determinate role of consciousness in the transition from an omnipotent but rotten capitalism echoes Marx's and Engels's views on trade unionism cited above (Note 24) . From one material aspect reform appears as impossible and irrelevant (incorporated), from the other it is everything (the logic of advance) . See also Note 84 below for the corresponding concept of party organisation . This is not to deny the important contributions made by Stone and Montgomery : it is the theoretical model on which they hang that we wish to question . Hence Monds, 1976, bases his attack on Montgomery's 'workerism' by arguing that market forces were `everything' (compared to Montgomery's description of the bosses' commercial role as `that is all' .) It appears that where revolutionary consciousness is not the `dens ex machina' used to escape the poles of the antinomy, then market forces pop up to play much the same role, though if revolutionary consciousness is the fairy godmother of socialism, then market forces are the wicked uncle . As we saw above, Lazonick roots the weakness of formal subordination in its reliance on market forces, rather than control of the production process, and Montgomery is clearly following this line of thought . Monds points to the significance of market forces in rendering workers' control of production fairly limited and incorporated : it represents job control not socialism . Yet this is precisely the argument we have come across (see Notes 7 and 8 above) in the context of the `incorporation' argument, which roots itself, not in the formal but real subordination of labour! (See also pp . 12 above) . The problem is therefore one of the origins of market forces . Depending on the angle from which we view formal and real subordination, they are each, in turn explained in terms of inter and intra enterprise relationships . E .g. real subordination while analysed in terms of a workplace `specifically capitalist mode of production', is in turn explained by market forces! See Elson, 1979b, pp . 171-2 on the fragmentation between a `politics of circulation and production' . See Note 46 above and Note 59 below . This duality is posed sharply in the `Preface' . Marx uses the phrases, the `material productive forces', the `productive forces' and the `social forces of production' without specifying their content . We are left to guess whether he characterises these as technologies--steam, electrical, nuclear processes : or as different forms of work organisation--assembly lines, continuous flow processes or even levels of knowledge, skill and forms of labour potential . The form of labour, its skill, activity and potential seems able to be characterised as either a force or a relation of production, thus leading towards a bifurcated analysis ; as a relation of production

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 it is its `ideological form' that premises conflict, whereas as a force of production its material pre-ideological aspect is stressed, then it is precisely the development of the productive forces `within' the old relations of production that bursts the fetters of the old ideological form . 51 Marx to Engels 8 .1 .68, 24 .8 .67 . 52 Within the limitations noted above (Note 4) we mean workers collectively controlling the means of production, following goals set by use-value criteria ('real or imagined') . 53 In this light Capital appears as finally `scientifically' proving what classical political economy failed to do : that capital was itself productive of surplus value . 54 It is in this light that Braverman's strange comments about `elimination' and `displacement' of labour must be seen (p . above) . He squares the circle by providing more and more `previously untransformed sectors of production' to be swallowed up by the `black hole' of R .S .L . 55 Marx 1976, p . 271, see also Note 20 above . 56 `Skill is not essential to control . It is possible for unskilled workers, sub-divided into routine repetitive jobs, to use their collective strength to oppose capital' Beynon and Nichols, 1977, p . 108 . In this context Baldamus' treatment of the `effort bargain' is superior to Marx's, and should be noted by those who see Taylorism as a major feature of modern capitalism : ` . . .who can define ability, restricted output, capacity ('fullest' or otherwise)? If the intensity of effort expected from the worker is left undefined, then, surely, everything else that is stated about wages, hours, and method of payment is equally indeterminate .the formal contract between employer and employee is incomplete in a very fundamental sense' (Baldamus, 1961, pp . 90-1) . 57 Beynon and Nichols, 1977, p . 176, talking of management in a chemical plant : `Their predicament is that in order to serve the ends of private appropriation they want to socialise production : to have it recognised, by workers, that production is collective, social, labour . But this development is itself held back by the end of private appropriation' . 58 This contradictory relationship extends to technology and the labour process itself, not just authority relations . Reid (1980) and McGoldrick (1979) have both shown that one important response of the British shipbuilding industry to crisis has been to drive down the organic composition of capital, and rely on the relatively higher skills of the workforce : ` . . . industrialists preferred the short term flexibility implied by the employment of a large and varied skilled workforce to the rigidities of heavy investment in plant, with the implied expensive overheads in periods of low output the most fundamental general point to emerge from this study is the emphasis on the complexity and diversity of the formation of the working class long after the transition to a mature industrial economy .' (1980, pp . 199, 198) . 59 See pp . 15 above and Note 50 above . This parallels the conclusions on strategy referred to in Note 46 above, in which economic determinism transforms itself into voluntarism . 60 Gordon, 1976 . 61 Hence the significance of the work that has been done on labour

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markets, both internal (job hierarchies) and external. 62 1974, p . 86 . 63 Significant here is Cadbury's article in Sociological Review . As an employer, he uses similar arguments against introducing Taylorism at all to those that modern theorists have advanced for its limited application : that trade unions would oppose it because it would relatively depress wages in the long run, if universally implemented, and because it confronted head-on , an increasing knowledge on the part of the workman of his lack of control over the conditions of his own life .' (1914, p . 105) . A crude Taylorist assault on joint-regulation was simply not on, in Cadbury's eyes, and instead he stressed the advantages of areas of cooperation : `We have always believed that business efficiency and the welfare of our employees are but different sides of the same coin .' (p . 107) . A preliminary extension of joint control by employers, he believed, could forestall more radical demands later on . 64 Lazonick, 1979 p . 258-9 . 65 Sohn Rethel, 1978 p . 151 . 66 1979, p . 66 . 67 Marx, 1976 p . 433 . 68 Burawoy, 1978 p . 249 . 69 For the term Neo Smithian Marxism see Brenner, 1977 . Burawoy also refers to Brenner's approach (1978, pp . 282 and 257) . It should be stressed that Brenner sees Neo Smithianism as a product of the misinterpretation of Marx rather than a critique of Marx himself . See Marx, 1976 p . 873-6 . See also Note 20 70 In this lies the role of market forces as `wicked uncle', above Note 49 . 71 Marx, 1973, p . 83 . 72 Palmer, 1975 p. 31 . 73 Thompson, 1978 pp . 252-3 . 74 1976, p . 92 . 75 Banaji, 1977 p . 2, quoting Marx, 1973 p . 109 . See also Thompson, 1978 sections IX and X . 76 There is a sense in which Vol . I leads on to `What Is To Be Done' and `State and Revolution' . Given this, it is perhaps worth examining how far Rowbotham's criticisms of Leninism apply to Marxism itself in its aspect as `scientific socialism' . 77 On this, compare Elbaum and Wilkinson's account of the struggles in the steel industry with that of Stone : (1979, pp . 288-293) . 78 Feuer, 1969 p . 520 . Engels could be accused of overemphasising the role of the forces of production in the dialectic : `If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, insofar as he employs them, to a veritable despotism' (1969, p . 521) . 79 The phrase is Elson's (1979a and 1979b) . 80 This means recognising that different sections of the working class have different, even antagonistic interests, whose resolution will be a political question irreducible to the `science' of political economy . Beyond this, it means a recognition that the factory and the `state' are not the only focus of struggle and that the demand for workers' control must encompass areas of `work' which under capitalism occur in the family and the home . On the recognition of divergent interests in the struggle see Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright, 1979 . C.C.- 1 1-0

30

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 81

See Elger, 1979, p . 64 n . 10, and Reid 1980, Ch . 7 : 'It seems then, that the commonly used dichotomy between the skilled) and the unskilled, and the other closely related pairs of opposites `Labour aristocracy' : `proletariat', `craft union' : 'industriall union' and `bureaucracy' : `rank and file', derive more from long, traditions of ideological conflict within the labour movement' than from accurate and critical investigations of the composition of the alliances which periodically confronted each other behind those banners' (pp . 201-2) . Rowbotham points to the lessons of the women's movement for how `skill' is theorised, so that `although the labour movement' has carried an implicit opposition to reproducing hierarchy . . these have coexisted with less democratic values . . .a vitals source of male working class dignity has been bound up withi having a skill . . .the destruction of skills, an important area ot, creativity allowed to some workers, has been countered by a passionate assertion of manhood .' Beechey, 1979, pp . 7-111 makes very similar criticisms about Braverman's treatment ot, the family to those we have advanced about skill : `the transformation of aspects of the family role under the impact of thei development of the capitalist mode of production does not' entail their obliteration . . . we need a concept of class as a historically instituted social relationship, and a conceptual' framework which enables us to explore concretely the forma which the relationship between labour in its various forms (wage labour, domestic labour) and capital assume in different historical conditions .' (p . 7, p . 25) . 82 See Hyman, 1979 . 83 The concept of a `frontier' of control is also obviously firmly) rooted in R .S .L.-F .S .L . analysis. It s first dimension is a zero sum one : a special case of the constant haggling between buyeri and seller in which the issue is how much labour is to be supp lied from a given amount of the labour-power commodity .. The 'effort-bargain' (see our reference to Baldamus in Note 56 above) then becomes a question of how `real' capital can make its `formal' subordination of labour . The second dimension of the frontier is of the struggle over the nature and purpose of work : its form and content rather than its amount (Goodrich, 1973, Ch . 1) . This is the dimension Gramsci attempts to capture when he contrasts the trade union which organises the workers as wage slaves, as commodities, and' which therefore in its `essential nature is competitive, not communist', with the factory council which organising the workers as a force of production constitutes `a denial of industrial legality' . Our analysis suggests that recognising the second dimension or the `frontier' casts doubt on the validity of considering either dimension as a `frontier' or of being able to separate the two . The dual nature of control means that conflict about work and' control is not zero sum . To equate unions with wage struggles,, job control and incorporation, and the factory committee (oi `rank and file') with political struggle, workers' control and the' struggle for socialism does not fit reality, and slips back into the bifurcated antinomy we set out to attack in the first place . This is not to deny that there are crucial differences between shop stewards' committees and trade unions, but too often arg uments derived from the notion of the frontier of control end'



VOTING FOR FORD

31

up with conclusions about the betrayal and incorporation of the bureaucracy, which as `struggle' fails to materialise, extends to the `rank and file' as well . 84 Hyman, 1971 p . 52, quoting Gramsci on the role of the revolutionary party . One implication of our argument is that the revolutionary left has one-sidedly emphasises the assault on state power, rather than the possibility of prefigurative material struggle, while the reformist left has remained caught within the logic of `advance' secured by reforms carried out by the state . This is exactly the point Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright make in their book . See especially pp . 132-144, 'Prefigurative Political Forms' . They argue that `we can not assume that we will one day in the future suddenly come to control how we produce, distribute and divide goods and services and that this will rapidly and simply make us new human beings . They (i .e . pre-figurative forms) see the struggle for survival as part of here and now .' (p . 140) . 85 To paraphrase BLPG . 86 See, e .g . Tronti, 1979 . 87 Clegg is one of the foremost of the orthodox analysts of the industrial relations `system' in Britain, now head of the pay comparability commission . See Clegg, 1960 . 88 Thus the treatment of sabotage by Nichols and Beynon (1977, p . 141) and Beynon (1973, pp . 140-1) are to be preferred to that of Taylor and Walton (1971, pp . 219-245) . 89 Nichols and Beynon, 1977, p. 18 . 90 Beynon, 1973, pp . 318-9 . 91 Nichols and Beynon, 1977, p. 143 . 92 Ibid p . 16 . 93 To an extent this paper remains a prisoner of the formalism it has set out to criticise . No adequate analysis can be based on arguments (such as ours above) which deal in terms of `capital' and `labour' as fairly homogenous entitities . However, we would argue strongly that notions of formal and real subordination, and the theorisation of the labour process they inform are an obstacle rather than an aid to analysis .

:IBLIOGRAPHY

Baldamus, G ., 1961, Efficiency and Effort : An Analysis of Industrial Administration . Tavistock. Banaji, J., 1977, `Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of Administration . Tavistock . Banaji, J ., 1977, `Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History', Capital and Class 3 (Autumn) . Beechey, V ., 1979, Labour and Monopoly Capital- Notes Towards a Marxist Critique, Sociology Dept ., University of Warwick . Beynon, H ., 1975 . Working for Ford, E . P . Publishing . Beynon, H . and Nichols, T ., 1977, Living with Capitalism, RKP . Brenner, R ., 1977, ' The Origins of Capitalist Development : A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism', New Left Review No . 104 . Braverman, H., 1974, Labour and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review . BLPG (Brighton Labour Process Group), 1977, `The Capitalist Labour Process', Capital and Class 1 (Spring) . Burawoy, M ., 1978, `Towards a Marxist Theory of the Labour Process : Braverman and Beyond', Politics and Society Vol . 8 No . 3-4 .

32

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 Cadbury, M ., 1914, `Industrial Organisation', Sociological Revieu No . 7 . Clarke, T ., 1977, `Industrial Democracy : The Institutionalised Supp ression of Industrial Conflict?', Clarke and Clements (Ed .) Tradh Unions Under Capitalism, Fontana . Clegg, H ., A New Approach to Industrial Democracy, Blackwell . Elger, T ., 1979, `Valorisation and Deskilling : A Critique of Braver man', Capital and Class 7 (Spring) . Elbaum, B . and Wilkinson, F ., 1979, `Industrial Relations and Un even Development : A Comparative Study of the American anc British Steel Industries', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol . 3 . Elson, D ., (Ed .), 1979b, Value, C .S .E . Books . Engels, F ., 1969a, `On Authority' in L .S .Feuer (Ed .) Marx anc Engels : Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, Fontana . Engels, F ., 1969b, The Condition of the English Working Class Panther. Flanders, A ., 1965, Industrial Relations, What is Wrong With the System?, Faber and Faber. Friedman, A ., 1977, Industry and Labour, MacMillan . Gintis, H ., 1976, `The Nature of Labour Exchange and the Theory of Capitalist Production' Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 8, No . 2 . Goodrich, C ., 1973, The Frontier of Control, Pluto . Gordon, D . M ., 1976, `Capitalist Efficiency and Socialist Efficiency', Monthly Review, Vol . 28 No . 3 . Gramsci, A ., 1977, Political Writings 1910-1920, Lawrence anc Wishart . Hinton, J ., 1976, `Reply to Monds', New Left Review No . 97 . Hunnius, G ., et al 1973, Workers Control, Random House . Hyman, R ., 1971 Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism Pluto . Hyman, R ., 1979, `The Politics of Workplace Trade Unionism' Capital and Class 8 . Labour Party, 1969 Industrial Democracy . Lazonick, W ., 1978, `The Subjection of Labour to Capital : The Rise of the Capitalist System', Review of Radical Political Econ . omics, Vol . 10 No . 1 . Lazonick, W ., 1979, `Industrial Relations and Technical Change : The Case of the Self-Acting Mule', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol . 3 No . 3 . McGoldrick, J ., 1979, unpublished, The Labour Process in British Shipbuilding : Working Paper No . 2, Dept . of Sociology, Univer . sity of Glasgow . Marglin, S ., 1974, `What Do Bosses Do?', Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol . 6 No . 2 . Marx, K ., 1899, Value Price and Profit, George Allen and Unwin . Marx, K ., 1970, Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence and Wishart . Marx, K ., 1973, Grundrisse, Penguin . Marx, K ., 1976, Capital Vol. I, Penguin . Monds, J ., 1976, `Workers Control and the Historians : A New Econ . omism', New Left Review No . 97 . Montgomery, D ., 1974, `The New Unionism and the Transformation of Workers' Consciousness in America, 1909-22', Journal of Social History (Summer) . Negri, T ., 1979, `The Strategy of the Refusal', in Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis, Red Notes : CSE Books .



33

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Nichols, T ., 1975, `The Socialism of Managament', Sociological Review (May). Nichols, T ., 1980 (Ed.), Capital and Labour, Fontana . Palmer, B ., 1975, `Class Conception and Conflict : The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labour and the Working Class Rebellion 1903-22', Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 7 No . 2 . Ramsay, H ., 1977, " " Cycles of Control" : Worker Participation in Sociological and Historical Perspective', Sociology, (September) . Reid, A ., 1980, The Division of Labour in the British Shipbuilding Industry, 1880-1920 . With Special Reference to Clydeside, (Ph .D . Thesis, University of Cambridge) . Rowbotham, S ., Segal, L ., and Wainwright, H ., 1979, Beyond the Fragments, Merlin . Sohn Rethel, A ., 1978, Intellectual and Manual Labour . Stone, K ., 1974, `The Origin of Job Structures in the Steel Industry', Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 6 No 2 . Taylor, F .W ., 1914, `Scientific Management : Reply from Mr F .W. Taylor', Sociological Review. Taylor, P .S ., 1979, `Labour Time, Work Measurement and the Commensuration of Labour', Capital and Class 9 . Thompson, E .P., 1978 The Poverty of Theory, Merlin . Taylor, L . and Walton, P., 1971, `Industrial Sabotage, Motives and Meanings', in S . Cohen (Ed .) Images of Deviance, Pelican .

PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM Edited by David M . Rasmussen William C . Gay, Associate Editor

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The Restructuring of the Assembly Line : A New Economy of Time and Control"' Benjamin Coriot

INTRODUCTION

This article proposes to evaluate the present attempts being made to i restructure the assembly line on a new basis . The assembly line-in i its first (Fordist) form, as in the `restructured' form which it is to ~ take-must be examined in both of its aspects : As a technology of'f control of living labour, and as a structure for the realisation of value . The new assembly line is the beginning of a new `economy' of time and control, which allows for the reproduction of the essential l mechanisms of production in the mass-production of standardised I commodities (a structure necessary for modern mass-production), while adapting these to present-day conditions in the labour market,, and to working class resistance . These experiments aim to replace the traditional assembly line with an alternative model based on `autonomous' production groups . In order fully to appreciate their significance, we must first outline the basic characteristics of Fordism . Fordism derives essentially from the techniques of time and motion study inaugurated by Taylorism-but it contains at least two new essential characteristics : [2] i . the introduction of an interlinking system of conveyor lines and tracks (the `line') . This ensures, by mechanical means, the ordered transfer of the components to be worked on, and thereby establishes the principle of 'continuous-flow production" [See Emery (b)], at the same time, the establishment of the `line' makes it possible, in very many jobs, for the skilled worker to be replaced by unskilled labour, which is more flexible and has less capacity for resistance . ii . standardisation and the new techniques of assembly now allow commodities to be produced on a mass scale ; the resulting economies of scale, as well as the advance in the extraction of surplus labour, allow substantial reductions in the unit value of commodities produced in this way .

ASSEMBLY LINE

35

In short, we can say that Fordism laid the long-term basis for mass production of standardised commodities at a reduced unit cost . This we will term the new norms of production . [3] [See Aglietta and Coriat (b)] During the 1960s-partly under the pressure of working class struggles-this type of labour process had become `unstable', and new solutions were sought . [See Davis ; Durand and Emery] We shall now outline some important examples, and then give an appraisal of these experiments in operation, discussing the innovations and specificities of the `new assembly line' (compared to the old), both from the point of view of their function as techniques of labour control and from that of their efficiency as a basis for the extraction of surplus labour.

ASE A. RETRUCTURING F THE ASSMBLY LINE T THE REGIE ATIONALE ES USINES ENAULT LNUR)

The motor industry provides the best example of the widespread growth of this type of fragmented and repetitive work, together with the most overt and manifest forms of workers' resistance . This is a good starting point, since it seems to us that what has been applied there can also be applied in other mass-production industries . Also, we should stress that we have deliberately concentrated on the `French' experience, and that our data comes almost exclusively from management sources. [4] A

The three principles of the new assembly line

Judging by the present `state of the art', we can say that experiments thus far have produced--at least from the technical point of viewan alternative to the classical assembly line for the production or assembly of standardised commodities . Basically it involves a new way of profiting from the twin principles underlying the classical assembly line . Namely : a. `continuous flow' production ; b . fragmentation of the labour process . Both these are extended but are implemented on another basis and in different modes . There are three constant characteristics of the new assembly line : 1 The principle of a continuous flow of production along an assembly line is maintained, but the assembly line is now segmented into distinct work-spaces, each supplied with its own stock of components and tools . 2 Instead of each work-station being constructed on the principle of one man/one job/one position, each of the newly constituted work-spaces is occupied by a small group of workers (generally numbering three to six), working on one part of the total assembly or production . An important point is that the number of parts to be put together in the course of the working day (or week) is still fixed by the management, so that one has the following result : --on the one hand, the `rhythm' of work still remains outside the workers' control ; -on the other hand, each work-group is able to `manage' `freely' the assembly time which it is assigned-within the constraints which continue to be imposed upon it . These constraints are

36

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 henceforth no longer calculated on the basis of fractional ele ments of movement and time, but more broadly (in terms o numbers of pieces per day, and indeed per week) ; this sets ul a `game' in which the work-group is put into a state of `auto nomy'-but controlled autonomy. 3 The work-groups thus constituted-each in its own work spacestill work in relation to a central conveyor belt which transfers the product in question, and parallel conveoyor belts which ensure that each group is kept provided with components and tools : The prin . ciple of `continuous flow' production is thus reproduced and recomposed on a new basis . The more obvious disadvantages deriving from over-fragmented and repetitive work are thus eliminated, but the continued effectiveness of the assembly line as a basis of mass-production of standardised commodities is not put into question . Better still, if one considers it from the point of view of the realisation of value, one might say that these innovations may provide yet further increases in the productivity of labour . Management reports on this subject are very illuminating. B

Management assessments of the new assembly line

1 . The assembly of front suspensions at RNUR, Le Mans factory [5]

Here is the `assessment' comparing the efficiency of the different types of assembly experimented with in this plant :

THE THREE MODES OF ASSEMBLY AT THE RENAULT-LE MANS FACTORY

1 . The standard assembly line 13 semi-skilled workers `on the line', plus three loaders at the beginning and end of the line, and a relief-man, assemble R5 front suspensions within the following classic assembly-line pattern :

N 0 0

Fixed stocksupply point d-

workers assembly line ~--Fig. 1

Here, as is noted in a report by the CFDT (in CFDT Aujourd'hui No . 5), `the worker moves about very little . He supplies himself and assembles his item from the basic units which pass successively in front of him .' (p . 23) The constraints of the assembly line here are very high, and the cycle-time is about 50/100 minute .



ASSEMBLY LINE

37

2. The `continuous assembly line' (job-enlargement). January 1972 .

line

-r~

journey made by each worker

I\

tfixed stocksupply points

I I

F I

-

1

4-

--

--------------------

Fig. 2 . Here, each worker follows' . . .the line while assembling a number of components in succession, which he takes from the fixed stocksupply points . Coming to the end of the line, he returns to the starting point and begins the same cycle of work again . The work cycle in this case has increased from about one to fifteen minutes . (CFDT Report ibid, p . 13) 3. Bench assembly . February 1973 . This experiment is the one most closely related to the `Scandinavian' experiments, since it entails Emery's two conditions : The elimination of the assembly line, and the introduction of small-group working. The assembly of suspensions is here done on a work bench, where the workers `work in fixed positions in groups of four' . Each group shares out the jobs as it thinks fit. Each worker is able to assemble complete suspension units, or, on the other hand, the same suspension unit may be assembled by several workers. The number of suspensions to be assembled per person per day (the `schedule') is fixed by management . What is more, the bench-assembly workers also do rectification work, and are `in large part responsible for the quality of the units assembled .' (RNUR Report, p . 1) Fragmented assembly line work (Renault 6 front suspensions)

Expanded assembly work (self-rectification) (Renault 6 front suspensions)

(R6 front Module suspenworking sions)

v Number of workers

in assembly rectification loaders

in assembly loaders

2 x 4

Production

450/per team

450/per team

268

26 .5

30

33 .5

No. o f suspensions per person per day

13 1 3

13 2

38

CAPITAL & CLASS 11

The figures speak for themselves . However, leaving aside these figures which demonstrate the real gains to be made in the productivity of labour, we must now explain the origins of these gains, and analyse the mechanisms which make them possible . For if they can be generalised, then they do indeed provide new principles and structures of the mode of extraction of surplus labour . [6] On this point again, management's assessments are quite explicit when they comment : `The development of production is carried out : -by the regrouping of jobs : Elimination of the losses associated with the assembly line ; -by the reduction of rest periods: 4% instead of 5 .6% which had been assigned to replacing workers on the assembly line ; -by better organisation of work stations in the conventional sense : A considerable reduction of movements, the simplification of body-movements, and shorter handling-cycles .' (RNUR Report, p . 3 . Our emphases) To these savings in direct labour (i .e. assembly work) we should add those made in indirect labour-i.e . quality control and rectification . Thus : `by self-regulation, the workers are encouraged to reduce the need for rectification work, and this means the abolition of the function of `repair man', which is a saving of 6 to 7% of total time .' (ibid, p . 3) [7] Nevertheless, these points do not exhaust the possibilities . An analysis of the Choisy le Roi experiment will give us the remaining important points.

CASE B. MODIn this experiment, two points are immediately evident from manULAR ENGINE agement's assessment of the advances achieved : ASSEMBLY, 1 `Moving from the assembly line to job-enlarged assembly offers RNUR, CHOISY a potential production increase of 33% .' LE ROI 2 `There is a considerable margin between the productivity achieved on the assembly line and production in the module mode (production almost doubles) .' (November memo) More precisely, the output per person and per day is virtually doubled : From 10.5 engines per person per day on the classic assembly line, it moves to 20 engines per person per day on module assembly . Such a result had only been obtained because, once again, the various `advantages' of the new assembly line have a cumulative effect . There are four main reasons for this increased productivity : Firstly, a considerably higher level of rationalisation (in the most classical sense of time and motion study) : - `the components arrive in `sets' [8] ; a reduction of componentsupply times ; also reduction of movements involved in getting supplies' (Appendix 3, November memo) .



ASSEMBLY LINE

39

-'the fact that engines are worked on in groups of four allows a regrouping of screwing operations, and an arrangement of easier 'sets of movements' (ibid.) Secondly, a reduction of down time and the conversion of time thus saved into productive labour time : This essentially means that a) the considerable losses associated with assembly line production (25%) are done away with in 'job-enlarged' production ; thus the time gained becomes effective production time ; b) more important still, perhaps, in `modular' organisation, `since the workers are able to accumulate their gains in time . . .they regularly beat the target time for the job.' (ibid. ) Thirdly, the elimination of jobs and the reduction of indirect labour : Two kinds of cut are effected : -the abolition of relief men (1 for every 15 workers) ; -also of `quality control' and rectification work . On this point the July memo is explicit : `Already we have achieved a reduction in rectification work required on the 2,500 engines assembled .' (ibid. P . 2) Fourthly, product model changes and seasonal adjustment factors : In the particular instance examined here, time is saved for a fourth reason . The savings are due to the particular nature of the `product' treated : The workshop assembles a very wide range of engines for a number of models . The Renault management memo specifies the point: `Because the assembly of engines is mainly seasonal, with the old lines we had to ensure that during an average of six months of the year the schedule was cut to keep up with variations in demand, making in effect : One day the R4, one day the R8, one day the R12, one day the R16 . . .There had been a daily rescheduling and variations in scheduling for each person .' (ibid. p . 3) As a result, a `situation of permanent tension' arose (ibid.) in the arrangement, where the regular reschedulings of production on the line led to harsh and often arbitrary changes in the workers' workloads ; these in turn provoked resistance on the part of the workers . The new assembly line enabled management to overcome both the technical (necessity of rescheduling to allow for fluctuations in demand) and the social ('permanent tension') `difficulties' . In the following manner : Each group of three persons is entrusted with the assembly of the same type of engine . `There will be the R4 group, the R5 group, the R12 group, etc .' In addition, the `sets' [8] will be prepared by type of engine and by series . Each group is able to assemble an engine whichever series goes with it . It is no longer necessary to recompose the line in units of time and unitary movements according to the engine or the series. PART II- A NEW We will say briefly that the assembly line thus reconstituted allows 'ECONOMY' OF the establishment of a new economy of time and control . This no longer consists of an exact set of movements-a necessary procedure TIME AND for that very particularised form of `knowledge' which has as its CONTROL

40

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 object individuals observed and supervised at their place of workbut of a `social' technology which borrows from psychosociology, and endeavours to extract profit from the change it brings about in its object, from the moment that time economy and supervision are no longer concerned with the individual worker, but with the group, the group of workers who are put in a controlled situation . We can trace the outline of this `new economy', to locate its essential structures and incentives : 1 A first set of specific characteristics can be analysed in the same terms as `rationalisation', in the conventional sense of that term . Thus, a reduction of the transfer-times and the losses associated with the assembly line model ; the conversion of all or part of this time into effectively productive labour-time ; the new possibility for the worker to accumulate small time-gains in relation to `theoretical' production times. All this is based on the intensification of labour, by the increase of the number of productive actions in the course of a working day . Also the acrobatic problems of rescheduling were mitigated . Rescheduling continues to take place, but over larger units of regrouped tasks, rather than movement by movement. In general work study departments can then be scaled down, with reductions here affecting mainly the employees who plan the work. An interesting point is that all this has been obtained while the central principle of the classical assembly line is maintained and reproduced : The `rhythm' of work is still determined in an authoritarian way by management . The only difference is this : Instead' of this rhythm being determined movement by movement, it is from now on determined for a group of tasks, for longer homogeneous productive sequences . In these circumstances, `autonomous' groups of workers can freely and without worry be given the `freedom' to organise the distribution of jobs within those groups of workers . More importantly, it is the movement from the individual to the `group' which is central to the new economy of control . 2 The second set of specific characteristics of the new assembly line lies, effectively, in the `game' now brought into being by the constitution of the worker-group as the new basic unit and the new subject of production . On the question of control, a change has been assured . Since' the total time is no longer assigned to an individual but to a group, it is now the responsibility of that group-by selfregulation-to exercise a regulation of the differences of speed in the execution of work and, more generally, the differences of performance of each of the workers who make up the group . 'Autonomy' thus becomes a tool of self-discipline . So much for `control' of the production process . As regards control of the product (as we know, this is a difficult area, because carelessness, the growth of rectification and `repair' work etc ., are at the centre of new forms of working class struggle), this is from now on directly accomplished by the market . Each work-group has a hallmark for its products : All defects are thus traceable to their source- a thing almost impossible with the standard assembly line . This structure is then completed by a system of wage-penalties, which come into play at a given quota of `defects' .



ASSEMBLY LINE

41

In the same way, the vulnerability of the standard assembly line to technical breakdowns (when these happened at one point, they could soon bring the whole line to a halt) is from now on overcome Furthermore, as is pointed out in an OECD management report [See OECD], another central advantage of this system is that it is less vulnerable to strikes than the conventional system . A strike of even a considerable section of the workforce, which on the standard assembly line would have led to the stopping of the whole line, here only manages to halt particular `blocks' ; the others are able to continue to function . For analogous reasons, the disruptive effects of absenteeism and of labour turnover are practically eliminated [See Delamotte] . And finally, particular `refinements' of this `social' technology of control mean that in a number of cases the physical presence of a foreman . during production, or of the quality control inspector at the end of the line, can be done away with, and in this way a new opportunity has been created for the abolition of jobs . The third set of specific characteristics of the new organisation 3 of work is that it is more suited to the present-day composition of the labour force, and to certain new constraints imposed on the realisation of capital . a . Adaptation to the new composition of the labour force . The job-enlarged assembly line is able to put to good use the `vocational' aptitudes which the growth of primary education since the War has helped to increase . In certain cases, even very complicated jobs may be offered to particular groups . This has led to hopes that it will prove capable of incorporating and stabilising `young' strata of the Western working class-which the standard assembly line was very unlikely to do . Above all, and the point is worth noting, the productive usage of these new characteristics of the labour force is able to develop on the basis of labour which is `restructured', but which does not correspond in any way to a craft/trade . It is a restructuration of a totality of movements which had first been fragmented ; the worker who is assigned to these new jobs cannot hope, in general, to acquire a socially recognised qualification . The `restructuring' of the jobs carried out takes care not to reconstitute the trades socially recognised and validated by and in the social structure . We can say that the new production model involves a productive re-utilisation of the aptitudes acquired either in the course of an apprenticeship or during school training, without at the same time providing the possibility for these aptitudes to be socially recognised. b. Adaptation to the new constraints on the realisation of value . The model analysis has been developed in relation to Olivetti [See Novara] . But a better adaptation of production to the market and to its variations could be seen in a mass-production plant . At the Choisy le Roi engine plant, organisation into `groups' allowed it to cope, with all the flexibility which could be hoped for, with seasonal variations, and with those related to the nature of the product . (We recall that it was necessary to deal with 60 different categories of different engines .) In industries which are based on the continual launching of new

42

CAPITAL & CLASS 11 products (even if the variations are minimal), where competition is based more on the product than on the costs, it is this concern-to obtain a flexible arrangement, able to adapt itself rapidly to variations in the market- which is most frequently at the root of reconstructions of the assembly line . In conclusion, whether we look at things from the point of view of techniques of labour control, or from that of the economy of production time, the new assembly line displays a number of new characteristics which---all things being equal-will favour its more widespread application in the coming years . Translator: Eileen Cadman (with the assistance of Marjo Xeridat and Ed Emery) .

FOOTNOTES .

1

2 3

4

5 6

7

This article is a shortened version of a paper to the World Congress of Sociology in Uppsala, 14-15th August 1978 . Published in the review Sociologie du Travail, No . 1, Jan-Mar 1979, SEUIL Editions, Paris . For a more complete analysis concerning the whole of this paragraph, see Coriat (a) and Coriat (b) in the Bibliography . The expression `production norm' is here defined as a resultant of the use of characteristically Fordian techniques of production . More generally, this outline of Fordism refines and develops that presented in Coriat (a), and in a working paper of January 1975 entitled 'Un Developpement, createur du taylorisme, le fordisme', which was used in anticipation of its publication by C . Palloix in 'Le Proces de Travail du Fordisme au neofordisme', in La Pensee, February 1976 . Our sources here are the following : a) for the Le Mans experiment : a Renault (RNUR) working paper of 3rd December 1973, entitled 'Restructuration du travail et evolution de la fonction maitrise' . This report discusses two innovations : On the one hand `job enlargement', and on the other `modular working' or `bench assembly' . b) for the Choisy le Roi experiment : Two restricted-circulation RNUR memoranda, entitled 'Moteurs echange standard-tache enrichie' of 20th July 1973, and 'Choisy le Roi-atelier des moteurs echange standard' of 7th November 1973 . These two experiments are also referred to by others, as for example A .Lucas (manager of the Department of Work Conditions at RNUR), in 'L'amelioration des conditions de travail-justification, definition, illustration', a paper presented to the Royaumont Conference, 1973) . We will not go into these experiments and their applications in detail : For a more detailed analysis the reader is referred to Coriat (b) in the bibliography . C .f. Figure 1 : 'Les 3 modes de montage dans l'usine du Mans (RNUR)' . We should specify here that the line of argument that follows is conducted in terms of savings in production time, and not in production costs in monetary terms . In the same way, the expression productivity of labour refers to improvements in economies of production time which result from the addingtogether of improvements in productivity and intensity of work . A final `remark' formulated in the management report makes



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the point precisely : `Remark : It has been difficult to impose on a `module' workgroup a rate of production too much greater than that of the assembly-line method . We have been kept to a schedule of 33 .5 suspensions per person per day day, although the new method would allow a much greater efficiency of work (ibid, p . 3 . Our emphasis) . 8 The 'sets' are the ensemble of parts necessary for the assembly of a given type of engine . There are as many types of 'set' as there are different categories of engines : That is to say, different versions of the same basic engine (e .g . that of the R4, the R6, etc .) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aglietta, M ., 1976, Regulation et crise du capitalisme, Calman-Levy, Paris . Beynon, H., 1973, Working for Ford, Penguin Education, London . Braverman, H ., 1974, Labour and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review Press, New York . Coriat, B., a) 1976, Science, Technique et Capital, Seuil, Paris . b) 1979, L'Atelier et le Chronometre . Essai sur la production de Masse, Editions Bourgeois, Paris . Davis, L .E., 1972,Design of Jobs, Penguin Books, London . Delamotte, Y ., 1972, Experiences en vue d'une organisation plus humaine du travail industriel, Documentation Francaise . Detape, Y ., and Davault, G ., 1975, 'Travail en equipes, travail a la chaine', Economie et Statistique No. 73, December . Durand, C ., 1978, Le Travail Enchaine, Seuil, Paris . Emery, F .E ., 1969 . System Thinking, Penguin Books, London ; 1974, Le travail a la chaine, sa logique et notre avenir', ANACT document. Lucas, A ., 1973, 'L'amelioration des conditions de travail', paper at the Royaumont Conference . Marx, K ., 1966, Pleiades edition, 2 volumes . Novara, F ., 1973, 'Le cas Olivetti', Bulletin International du Travail, November. OECD, 1973, 'Nouvelles tendances en organisation du travail', paper for Paris Conference . Thomopoulos, 1968, 'Some analytic approaches to the problem of assembly/production', The Production Engineer Vol . VII. Weil, R ., 1976, 'Formes nouvelles d'organisation du travail dans l'industrie europeenne', Sociologie du Travail No . 1 .



Behind the News This article on Zimbabwe is the first of a new section of C&C, which is intended to provide background information and analysis on current affairs . Our aim is that these articles should be short (no more than 3,500 words), as snappy as C&C contributors can make them, and free from constraints of detailed research and lengthy footnotes that characterise our usual offerings . They can address any matter of topical concern, whether it be the headline variety (like Afghanistan or the Leyland strike), or those issues normally expunged from the newspapers (like the effect of Tory cuts on women's employment or the development of Britain's nuclear arsenal) . We are hoping in this way to build a further link between our regular in-depth theoretical and empirical articles, and immediate political and economic issues . These contributions will not go through the normal C&C refereeing procedures ; but for the sake of speed and currency will be considered by the EC alone (at the last minute before publication, if necessary) . It would be useful if short bibliographical guides could be appended to the text . We should very much welcome contributions and comments on this new venture .

NATIONALISM AND CLASS STRUGGLE IN ZIMBABWE Bob Fine INTRODUCTION

ZANU's victory in the recent elections in Zimbabwe has proved to be something of an enigma. On the one hand, as the most radical of the nationalist movements, ZANU faced the opposition of the Rhodesian, South African and British regimes in the period leading up to the election . ZANU won overwhelmingly, to the consternation of these forces ; their strategy-based on defending their interests through the establishment of a neo-colonial state under Muzorewa or Nkomo-fell flat on its face . On the other hand, since this success, Mugabe has displayed a thoroughly conciliatory aspect, which has led to a metamorphosis of his image . In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, he has changed wondrously from a `Marxist terrorist' to the `meek and mild' apostle of reconciliation . I want to dig a little beneath these shifting images, to examine the underlying forces behond Mugabe's victory and to assess its significance for the struggle for socialism in Zimbabwe . The crucial question concerns the relations between the national movement and class struggle, national liberation and the fight for socialism . The classic contradiction characteristic of movements for national liberation in Africa has been that they represent the



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aspirations of an oppressed nation against imperialist forces : And at the same time a class alliance under the leadership of an indigenous petit-bourgeoisie that imposes severe limitations on the extent of its anti-imperialism . The political structures of colonialism are attacked, while leaving the economic dominance of imperialism over the workers intact . However, even within this contradictory framework, there have existed great differences in their unfolding in distinct national situations . Between the regimes in Zambia and Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique, Angola and Zaire, there are major variations, depending on the class relations that emerged out of colonialism, the nature of the liberation process, and the political character of the liberation movement . For these reasons, I wish to offer in this note some brief observations on the class nature of the national struggle in Zimbabwe, as a background to the current situation .

From its very early days as a British colony, Rhodesia was charME HISTORCAL BASIS OF acterised by the coalition of international monopoly capital with a FHE NATIONAL strong settler bourgeoisie ; who together formed a binding alliance with the white petit-bourgeoisie and skilled white labour against QUESTION African peasants and workers . International capital in the shape of Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company colonised the area in the 1890's in search of gold and against fierce resistance from Mdebele and Mashona tribespeople . When the gold mines proved sparser and less lucrative than expected, the BSAC recouped their costs (including the establishment of a railroad) by selling mining rights and land for speculation or farming by white settlers . The indigenous Africans were expelled from the choice land, which they themselves had earlier mined and farmed, and ejected into reserves . This served a double purpose : On the one hand, reserving the best land for white exploitation ; on the other, forcing Africans, expropriated in this manner from ownership of sufficient means of production or subsistence, to sell at least some of their labour power to the white mineowners and farmers . To ensure the compulsion for capital of African labour, the newly formed state imposed such devices as `hut taxes' on the African peasants, while at the same time excluding them from the sale of cash crops on the market ; thus the only source for the payment of money rent by Africans was through the sale of their labour power . The same mechanisms by which settler farmers combatted African competition in the agricultural commodity market, also re-inforced the process of African proletarianisation . While Africans were pushed onto the least fertile land without capital or transportation white farmers were supported by discriminatory subsidies, pricing policies, credit facilities, infrastructural supports (especially transport) and so forth . There was even a policy of seemingly deliberate soil erosion imposed on African peasants ; the traditional method of using land successively for arable and grazing purposes was destroyed by the enforced separation of arable and grazing land . Once Africans were driven into wage labour, their discipline was



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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 maintained by a form of `contract' which cut Africans off in prisonlike conditions, by Pass Laws which penalised Africans found in `white' areas without work, by the Masters and Servants Act, which gave the `masters' almost unlimited powers of dismissal and punishment . White workers, lured by the BSAC and the settler bourgeoisie to enter Rhodesia for high wages, filled the skilled jobs and developed union and political organisations strong enough to secure their privileges as a labour aristocracy, excluding Africans from rights to acquire either skill or organisation. There never emerged a stratum of dispossessed `poor whites' as was the case in S.A . The racial character of production relations provided the foundation for the development of a racist state . The BSAC gave up its direct rule in 1923, and the power of the settlers was entrenched in so-called `Responsible Government' (in opposition to the BSAC's desire for union with South Africa) . The state not only reserved the greater part of its apparatus for whites ; it enacted legislation to re-inforce the racial division of labour (like the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 which reserved the most fertile half of the land for whites) ; and excluded Africans from political participation in the Rhodesian `nation', denying them democratic rights . Capitalism in Zimbabwe, despite its removal from direct colonial control, took a racist form, in which the political exclusion of Africans reflected and reinforced their special unfreedom and explicit inequality in production . The racist state in Rhodesia represented a form of domination based on the suppression of democratic rights-political and economic-for the African people, the restriction of bourgeois democracy to the white population, and the domination of Africans by means of a terroristic bureaucratic-military apparatus . Its class content lay in the suppression of all working-class organisation among Africans, and the mediation of antagonisms between capital and labour by an almost exclusively white petit-bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy . It was both the form and content of the Rhodesian state that provided the basis for the development of the national question. This should neither be isolated artificially from its class content as an `autonomous' issue ; nor reduced to the status of a mask or ideological fiction obscuring the fight against capital .

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT

It was the peculiar relation between international capital and a strong settler bourgeoisie that meant that the increase in demand for raw materials and food during and after the second war led not merely to inflation, but to a rapid process of capital accumulation, particularly in the fledgeling manufacturing sector . Enormous quantities of foreign investment entered the country (from £13 .5 million in 1947 to £50 .7 million in 1951), particularly from Britain and South Africa, to take advantage of cheap and relatively unorganised African labour . The African proletariat grew in numbers and strength (from 250,000 in 1936 to 600,000 in 1956) and the small African petit-bourgeoisie was restless at the restrictions that hemmed them in . In 1947 massive strikes spread through the mining and manufacturing areas ; the African working class was finding its feet .

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The response of the ruling class in the fifites was to put into practice a strategy of so-called `racial partnership' ; that is to build an accomodating African petit-bourgeoisie as had occurred in other colonies . They set aside land (African Purchase Areas) for the rich African peasantry to purchase as private property ; they established an African administrative stratum within the `Tribal Trust Lands' (reserves) ; they gave these `chiefs' the power to allocate the `communal' land, which allowed for increasing concentration of land within these zones among the wealthier peasantry ; they expanded education opportunities ; they gave limited franchise to African property owners ; and afforded certain very restrictive trade union rights to a small section of African workers, keeping them under tight control with the active intervention of the AFL-CIO and the ICFTU (including the TUC International Committee) . These `reforms' were introduced to put off the threat Africans posed to western capital as well as to meet the new conditions demanded by the growth of manufacturing capital . But two points are worthy of note : There was no economic or political benefit for the mass of Africans. (The poor peasantry were squeezed out of their subsistence base ; the workers heavily repressed even under Whitehead's `liberal' government ; unemployment high as capital intensive production techniques were introduced .) But this was not a peculiarity for Zimbabwe in relation to other colonial situations . What was pecualiar was the extremely limited character of concessions to the growing black petit-bourgeoisie . For instance, only 8% of the land was made available as African Purchase Areas and it was hopelessly undercapitalised ; a panoply of discriminatory measures worked against African farmers competing with whites ; bureaucracy remained overwhelmingly white and so forth . The reasons for this are clear : Unlike other colonial situations, the presence of a large white settler sector meant that any advance of the African petit-bourgeoisie or any incorporation of African workers into the skilled aristocracy was an immediate threat. So long as the boom lasted, this menace could be downplayed : The establishment by the British of the Central African Federation, designed to corner the markets in the then Nyasaland (Malawi) and N .Rhodesia (Zambia) for Rhodesian manufacture and to transfer the revenues of copper into manufacturing production in Rhodesia, was at best a short lived success that folded under nationalist opposition . The settlers were squeezed : On the one hand, by international capital that was consolidating its grip in all areas of production ; on the other hand, by the rising African masses . By the early sixties, the settlers had moved hard to the right ; the `liberals' (Todd and Field) were replaced by Smith in 1962 on an explicit programme of no concessions to the black petit-bourgeoisie . It is fairly clear that neither imperialism's political representatives nor the multinationals actively worked for UDI (1965) ; but once it had been effected by the settlers, international capital generally supported it, for the white settler bourgeoisie provided the only political base for sustained capitalist exploitation and for `stability' in the area. Settler reaction against the African people as a whole entailed the effective crushing of the African working class ; as their

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 wages declined, their alternative sources of subsistence eroded, their capacity to strike crushed (the last substantial African strike before the present were in 1965), accumulation once again took off (between 1967 and '74 an 8% p .a. growth rate), manufacture grew in that period 212%, and foreign investment (especially South African) poured in despite sanctions! This was the situation in which the bourgeoisie, politically reliant on settler reaction and (with some exceptions, like the tobacco industry) doing well out of it, proved totally incapable of instituting their own democratic revolution .

AFRICAN NATIONALISM

African nationalism grew out of this context. In 1957 Nkomo became first president of the new ANC, which was re-formed as the New Democratic Party in 1960 and ZAPU in 1961 . Its class basis lay in an alliance between the African petit-bourgeoisie-hemmed in on all sides by racist restrictions-the peasantry and the African proletariat . On the land, there was a small class of `rich' African peasants, who employed labour ; a somewhat larger class of `middle peasants' cultivating land themselves ; and a vast array of `poor peasants' who had in reality by this time become largely proletarianised, and were working for white capital or unemployed . In the towns, African merchants and students were equally constricted and the urban proletariat either denied rights to organise or in a few cases held in check by a corrupt and bureaucratic TU leadership . In both town and country, African civil servants were relegated to a strictly subordinate role . The common interest that was capable of uniting these forces was `national liberation' : That is to say, a programme aimed at the transformation of the state in order to secure full democratic rights for Africans ; and one aimed at the content of production relations, in order to release the African petit-bourgeoisie, the peasant and the proletariat from their immediate racist chains . The dominance of the African petit-bourgeoisie within this alliance was expressed in the subsuming of specifically working class demands over wages, conditions and bargaining rights to issues of political democracy and land reform (which would mainly benefit the petit-bourgeois farmers) . It was also expressed in the illusory distinction Nkomo drew between the reactionary character of the settlers and the progressive nature of British imperialism . This led Nkomo to make constant appeals for British intervention ; the British responded with derogatory concessions, offering 15 seats to Africans and 50 to whites in the 1961 Constitutional Conference, or 23 out of 75 seats after the 1971 Pearce Commission . Nkomo showed himself willing to accept such deals ('we have moved the mountain', he said after signing the 1961 agreement), but was forced to back down by radical pressure from the movement . The original reason for ZANU's split are murky, combining personal and perhaps tribal, as well as political differences . Their first leader, Rev . Sithole, was entirely discredited by the party when he signed a sell-out deal at the Lusaka Conference . There were internal struggles, as when Muzorewa and Sithole attempted in 1975 to crush the radical elements within ZANU with the aid of



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Kaunda. Chitepo, ZANU's president, was killed and 1,200 ZANLA guerrillas arrested by Kaunda . But the attempt failed, and a radical leadership under Mugabe consolidated its hold . Their slogans were `We are our own liberators' and `Confrontation' . The former marked a break from timid appeals for British intervention to put the settlers in their place and a reliance on external forces . The latter marked a serious turn to guerrilla warfare, which gathered strength after 1975 with Frelimo's successes and the consolidation of a base in Mozambique . ZANU's guerrilla strategy proved successful ; building up their armed forces in rural areas, politicising the rural masses, and closing in on the cities . Their strategy of economic disruption succeeded in causing enormous problems for settler farmers (who now became heavily dependent on state subsidies, squeezed on the other side by the multinationals), put a virtual stop to mining exploration (e .g . by Lonrho and Anglo-American), caused a shortage of skilled labour (as the war and emigration took their toll), and produced a general diversion of resources to the war effort . From 1974, there was a distinct downturn in the Rhodesian economy, that pushed increasing sections of international capital more firmly behind a settlement . But it is important also to see the limits of this guerrillaism ; for all its radicalism in relation to protest politics, it never developed a working class or socialist orientation . Its demands focussed on the `ending of colonialism', the establishment of a `truly sovereign state in which the new nation is subservient to no-one', the dismantling of the racist state apparatus, and land reform . Specifically working-class demands were again subordinated ; and this was reflected in the mode of struggle, which drew working-class militants out of the struggle at the point of production and into the rural guerrilla movement . As a result, the working class itself was left extremely vulnerable under the heel of capital . When in 1978 the guerrilla campaign entered the urban areas, the question of the workers was taken up by ZANU, but only as an adjunct to the campaign of sabotage and disruption .

ZANU have offered a two-stage programme of revolution, the first comprising a struggle for national democratic goals, the second for socialism . But to reach the second stage, they declared, it is necessary to build `a working class movement with a proletarian ideology' in the first . As I see it, the specific character of national oppression in Zimbabwe gave validity to this two-stage approach . But where ZANU went wrong was in their failure in actual fact to mobilise the urban working class on their own terrain, or to agitate around working class issues as part of the larger struggle . The weakness of ZANU's populist guerrillaism lay in its failure from the beginning to combine, with the rural armed struggle, demands for improved wages, conditions of labour and trade union rights and for organisation in the cities and workplaces to fight for them . ZANU comrades have argued that suppression in the cities was such that no labour movement of this kind was possible . Their knowledge is more intimate, but I continue to wonder to what extent this was an objective necessity or a subjective absence of will . In either event, the legacy

50

CAPITAL & CLASS 11

of the historical subordination of the working class to the nationalist movement is one that now imposes great obstacles for the development of the revolution. The immediate task remains the development of `a working class movement with a proletarian ideology' . Immediately after the elections, workers began to flex their muscles in a series of spontaneous strikes over pay and conditions ; there is a strong demand for jobs among the unemployed and for land among the peasants ; socialist activists both inside and outside ZANU are calling for action on all these fronts . At present these forces do not have the power or organisation capable of securing the major upheaval in ZANU that such an orientation requires, or, if this proves impossible, a viable opposition on the left of ZANU . To the extent, however, that working class demands (ranging from trade union rights independent of state control to expropriation of capitalists under workers' control) can be linked with the demands of the peasantry for land ; to the extent that both can be tied to the preservation of democratic advances and the strengthening of democratic demands (e .g . for the abolition of the 20 seats reserved for whites only, for the disbanding of the standing Rhodesian army and police, and of the old regime's judicial and administrative apparatus, opposition to the disarming of the guerrillas) to this extent such a movement should be capable of winning popular support. There is no pre-determined law concerning whether the Zimbabwe revolution shall be blocked at the stage of limited national democratic gains (precarious in themselves) or whether this stage can be re-constituted as a take-off point for socialist transformation . The prospect of the latter might appear daunting in the face of international capital's grip over Zimbabwe . But this is a double-edged sword . The relatively high development of that country's democratic forces and of its proletariat offers a foundation for the struggle against South African and western capitalism, that was not present in Angola or Mozambique . In the context of Southern Africa as a whole-with a powerful nationalist movement in Namibia and workers' movements in South Africa maintaining their momentum-there remains real potential for mobilising revolutionary socialist forces in Zimbabwe : But they will have to confront the increasingly naked class divisions within the nationalist movement. NOTES

This article is based on a series of articles I wrote for Workers' Action . The most useful background publications I have found are : Zimbabwe Information Group Bulletins ; Andre Robinson 'Showdown in Zimbabwe, Revolutionary Communist Papers 5, Sept . 1977 (The Battle for Africa) ; Zimbabwe News, organ of ZANU ; Colin Stoneman, `Foreign Capital in Zimbabwe', Review of African Political Economy, 11, Jan . 1978 ; Giovanni Arrighi, `The Political Economy of Rhodesia', Arrighi and Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa ; John Sprack, Rhodesia, South Africa's Sixth Province', IDAF; Roger Riddell, The Land Question, in series From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, CIIR ; CIS, Sell-Out in Zimbabwe . My thanks in particular to Lawrence Walsh, Graham Burt, Lawrence Mashindire, Carole Brigden, Duncan Innes, Francine de Clerq, Bill Freund, Tony Elger and Sean Matgamana .



The `Family Wage'• Some Problems for Socialists and Feminists

Michelle Barrett and Mary McIntosh INTRODUCTION

The notion of a `family wage' has been in the past a divisive issue (Land 1980), though lately it has been less discussed . It is the idea that an adult man ought to earn enough to enable him to support a wife and children . It has often, though not always, had support in the labour movement and has often, though again not always, been opposed by feminists . In so far as the balance of the labour movement has historically been in favour of it and the tendency of the present women's movement is to oppose it, it is clearly a divisive and important political issue for both socialists and feminists today . In this paper we address some of the arguments about the history and desirability of a `family wage' system, and also question the usefulness of this notion as a description of the means by which the reproduction of the working class has in fact been accomplished . The idea of the `family wage' has tended to be identified with that of the `living wage' : a living wage is one on which a man can keep himself, his wife and his children at a decent level . Although at times some socialists have toyed with the idea of a wage that varied with the scale of a man's family responsibilities (the ILP in 1926, for instance, was in favour of a `family endowment' scheme of this sort and many such schemes existed on an industry-byindustry basis in continental Europe at that time (Vibart 1926)), on the whole the trade union movement in Britain -has seen this as a way of keeping the general level of wages down and has sought to achieve for all its members a wage adequate to support a family (see, for instance, Royal Commission on Equal Pay, 1946, para . 363) . Today the idea of a family wage is so much taken for granted that it is standard trade union practice to draw up pay claims for low-paid workers which refer to the need to maintain the level of living of a standard married man with two children . The newspapers routinely supply us with calculations of the effects of tax changes

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 or price changes for the same man married with two children . Even the Association of University Teachers has bewailed the fact that a man on the ninth point of the lecturer scale with three children (and presumably a dependent wife) was eligible for free school meals for his children. The principle is articulated most clearly in a social security system that differentiates radically between bread-winners and their dependants [1], providing insurance benefits for a man's dependants but not for a wife's and no supplementary benefit to a wife or a `cohabiting' woman at all . Marxists writing of the mystificatory wage form, as an apparent exchange for labour performed, tend to ignore the more ambiguous and shifting character of wage moralism . True, it is believed that no one should get a wage who does not work for it ; but we often forget that it is at the same time believed that the wage ought to be related to needs and that an adult man's wage ought to be adequate to support a family . Since equal pay legislation was introduced in 1970, the conventional wisdom on all sides has been to take for granted that discussions should be couched in terms of the wage form : `Equal pay for work of equal value' or at least for (in the words of the Act) `like work', `the rate for the job' and so forth . Yet it was not always so . Although the Trades Union Congress adopted the principle of equal pay in 1888 and much of the public discussion revolved round the question of whether women's work was in fact worth as much as men's, nevertheless such discussions always dealt also with the question of needs and family responsibilities . Thus it was in a minority report of the 1919 War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry (the Atkin Report) that Beatrice Webb first put forward proposals for child allowances as a way of enabling equal pay for men and women without endangering the maintenance of children . The 1946 Royal Commission on Equal Pay devoted much time to considering the dependants of employed women, and also to the argument that `Most women . . .unlike most men, do not expect either now or in the future, to support a married partner or a family of children out of the proceeds of their labour ; on the contrary most of them look forward to being themselves supported in the relatively near future'(para 362) . So earlier discussions of equal pay always recognised that it would cause immense problems for the principle of the male worker as family breadwinner . Recently, however, the trade union movement has tried to have its cake and eat it too. While day-to-day bargaining has routinely used the argument of family needs, the official pronouncements of the TUC in relation to equal pay have tended to play down this consideration and emphasise the wage as payment for work performed . Thus, as Bea Campbell and Val Charlton so lucidly put it (1979 :32) : `The Labour Movement has managed to combine a commitment to equal pay with a commitment to the family wage ; you can't have both .'



FAMILY WAGE

HISTORY OF THE IDEA

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Before we present our arguments against such a commitment to the family wage, it is worthwhile examining how the idea became so widely accepted and what were the various group interests involved . For the idea of the family wage is associated historically with the development of the modern relation between the family and social production and with the modern sex-structured labour market and the marginal position of women, especially in industrial production . The early period of factory production was marked by the employment of men, women and children from a very young age . During the course of the nineteenth century children became excluded almost totally from the factories and from all other full-time paid work . Women became marginalised in many fields of factory production, became located in specifically female occupations and sectors, and many women spent much or even the whole of their married lives outside of regular waged employment altogether (Gardiner 1974) . Children became more dependent and in need of greater and longer care ; women too became more dependent and more taken up with the tasks of caring for children and other family members . Marxist historians have tended to see the introduction of female and child labour into factories, mines and so on, in the context of the process of deskilling set in motion by the mechanisation of capitalist production . Indeed, this is the context in which Marx himself locates his discussion in Volume 1 of Capital . During this period surplus value was predominantly extracted in absolute form, through the extension of the working day, and many contemporary sources document the almost incredibly long hours worked by labourers in the first decades of machine production . By the 1830s, however, it was becoming apparent that these conditions were incompatible with the reproduction of a working class fit to carry out its task : The extraction of absolute surplus value founders on the physical condition of the working class . Hence it became imperative, both from the point of view of the capitalist class as a whole and from the point of view of the working class, to protect the life and health of the industrial proletariat . There has been dispute as to whether the measures subsequently taken to assure the adequate reproduction of the working class are to be understood as the fruit of successful class struggle on the part of the working class, or as successful collective control by capital of the instruments of production-the labourers themselves . Certainly it seems the case that there was a coincidence of interests, though not of course a formal alliance, between bourgeois philanthropists and the bourgeois state on the one hand and the emergent Chartist and trade union movement on the other . The Factory Acts of the 1840s, limiting the length of the working day, the protective legislation aimed at the reduction of female and child labour and, later in the century, the introduction of elementary education all formed part of this process . It is worth noting, in relation to the demand for a family wage, that the relegation of women to the home cannot be explained solely with reference to the `needs of capitalism' but was the object of

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 struggle, and therefore choice, of the working class . It was presumably open to the working class organisations of the 1830s and 1840s to struggle for better conditions of reproduction of the class through some other means . In textile districts, for instance, the high level of women's employment and aggregate family income meant that practices like eating shop-made pies and puddings, and having the day-care of infants, the washing and basic cleaning done by women who specialised in these jobs were common among the working class. Improved standards of home life do not necessarily involve more unpaid domestic labour . It appears, however, that the organisations of the working class colluded with pressure from the bourgeoisie to structure the working population along the lines of gender . What was most forcibly articulated in bourgeois philanthropy was the degeneration of the family caused by the conditions in which mothers undertook wage labour, the way in which working wives neglected the home and so drove their husbands to the alehouse, the moral impropriety of men and women and young people all working together in the same place, the moral danger of the influx of independent single girls to the factory towns (Hutchins and Harrison 1911, Pinchbeck 1930, Hewitt 1958, Davidoff et al. 1976 :167) . But a further and more important dimension to their arguments was the attempt to establish the idea of the hard-working man who was responsible for the support of his wife and children . It has been said that the Ten-Hours movement in a sense compromised with the philanthropists, seeing the restriction of women's and children's factory hours as the only way to achieve a reduction of hours for all . As Ray Strachey (1978 :53) put it, the men were `hiding behind the petticoats of women' in pushing for the 1847 Ten Hours Act on compassionate grounds for women and young persons, knowing that it would force their own hours down to ten as well . (See also Webb and Webb 1894 : 296 for a similar interpretation of 1873-74 .) But the factory legislation did play a part in further differentiating men's from women's work and in reinforcing patterns of job segregation in which women were found mainly in a narrow range of low-paid occupations, especially outside of the factories themselves . The working class was itself highly diversified, and became more so during the course of the nineteenth century. And gender divisions played an important part in the development of a segmented working class . Historians have debated whether there was a distinct and identifiable `labour aristocracy', what Hobsbawm (1964 : 272) described as the `distinctive upper strata of the working class, better paid, better treated and generally more "respectable" and politically moderate than the mass of the working class' (see also Foster 1974, Stedman Jones 1975, Gray 1976, Gray 1980) . Much of the discussion has been about the political outlook and role of these strata, but as Foreman (1977) points out, little attention has been paid to the conception of women and the family that was embodied in their notions of `respectability' . An exception is Robert Gray, who has pointed to the ways in which ideas about the `respectable



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artisan' involved a particular life-style which emphasised homeownership, domesticity, the woman's place in the home . He says : `Economic structure and ideology were mutually reinforcing in perpetuating the sexual division of labour in industry, the home and society . The exclusion of women and the demand for a breadwinner's wage for men was an industrial bargaining strategy, enabling men to make sectional gains while women provided employers with a . pool of casual labour at belowsubsistence wages. For women confronted by the limited opportunities of this labour market, marriage could afford better chances of survival ; moreover, the time devoted to household tasks could have an appreciable effect on the living standards of even the poorest families' (Gray, 1980). So Gray sees these as ideas which although found among the bourgeois reformers and philanthropists were also a response of the would-be `respectable' male workers to their own economic and social environment . In the trade union movement, at that stage a movement largely of the `skilled' male upper strata, an association between reducing competition in paid work and women as dependent homemakers was explicitly articulated . For instance, a speaker at the 1877 Trades Union Congress said that men `had the future of their country and their children to consider and it was their duty as men and as husbands to use their utmost efforts to bring about a condition of things, where their wives could be in their proper sphere at home, instead of being dragged into competition for livelihood against the great and strong men of the world' (Henry Broadhurst, quoted in Ramelson 1967 : 103) . Housework and childcare (with the large families and primitive domestic technology of the day) were indeed heavy and timeconsuming tasks and it was, in many ways, a fortunate woman whose husband earned enough to enable her to do this work in the day-time rather than after a day's paid work . It was for this reason that Hutchins and Harrison (1911), historians of the Factory Acts, castigated the `women's rights opposition' to protective legislation for `transferring their own grievance (against being excluded from the professions) to a class whose troubles are little known and less understood by them . . Not exclusion but exploitation, is the trouble here' (1911 : 184) . A position like this is consonant with Barbara Hutchins's later adherence to the `new feminism' of the 1930s which rejected the focus on equal rights with men and concentrated on improving women's condition in the family through support for family endowment and the retention of protective legislation . It is not, of course, consonant with the feminism of the women's liberation movement today (though the debates on protective legislation itself have taken a new twist which may well lead us to defend it, as Angela Coyle (1980) has argued) . Hutchins and Harrison were wrong to accept the `protective'



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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 rhetoric of the short-time movement (especially as they were well aware that it was a tactic designed to bring about a reduction of over-all factory hours), for the factory acts did not attempt to limit the exploitation of women in the whole range of employment, but only in specific kinds of jobs, which happened to be in the places where men also worked . As Sally Alexander has noted : `There was not much to choose-if our criteria are risk to life or health-between work in the mines and work in the London dress-making trades . But no one suggested that sweated needlework should be prohibited to women' (1916 : 63) . There does not seem to be much evidence about what working class women at the time themselves thought about the factory acts or about being excluded from the `skilled' male trades . Their voices were little heard in the debates, for they were unorganised and unrepresented, it was left to others to speak of their rights or of their sufferings-even when it was recognised that their exploitation at work was so great precisely because they were unorganised and disunited . It seems likely that some women would have welcomed the shortening of their hours, others feared that it might bring about either a reduction in their wages or their displacement from the better jobs and that the married and young single women would think of an improvement in men's wages as some sort of compensation for the weakening of their own position and be glad that men offered to shoulder family responisibilities which they were less and less able to carry . But whatever the reponse to their immediate situation may have been, the eventual outcome of this demand for a family wage and its persistence as an ideal, has placed the working class and the women of this class in a worse position than if it had continued to be assumed that husband and wife would both earn wages . Certainly it was a demand that found support mainly among bourgeois reformers and the upper strata of male workers . On the other hand, the bitter opposition of many employers to the factory legislation and, even more, to its implementation suggests that individual capitalists did not favour the exclusion of women from the factories . Yet it seems clear that the collective interests of capital as a whole, as eventually articulated in state policies, lay in establishing the principle, if not the practice, of the male breadwinner and that the state has played an important part in fostering this idea .

THE MYTH Attacking the family wage is a bit like an atheist attacking god the OF THE FAMILY father : She wants to say that its does not exist, that the false belief WAGE that it does has evil consequences and that even if it did exist it would not be a good thing . We shall look first at the evidence that there has never in fact been a family wage system for the support of the wives, children and other non-waged relatives of working men . Official statistics of women's labour-force participation are notoriously unrevealing of the real extent to which women engage



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in paid work. Revived interest in the `informal economy' may perhaps result in better information about the ways in which women today often have `little jobs' that are never reported to government departments, or do home work or occasional work like delivering leaflets, childminding, cleaning or typing on an informal basis . Oral history (for instance, Taylor 1977) is beginning to fill out the picture for the early decades of this century, when few married women were employed within the factories, but many seem to have made ends meet by out work, `charring', laundry or taking in boarders (see also Tilly and Scott, 1978 : 25 and Davidoxx 1979) . It seems likely that it has never been possible for the majority of working class families to manage on one income . Furthermore, the recurrent disputes over the obligation of men to support their children and deserted wives (Finer and McGregor 1974), the salience of the horror of the workhouse in working-class thinking throughout the nineteenth century and the fierceness with which the organisations of the working class opposed the provisions of the 1834 poor law and individuals sought to evade its clutches are all vivid testimony to a recognition of the inadequacy of the wage for the reproduction of the working class by the family network alone . The Liberal reforms of the first decade of the twentieth century reflected this recognition, and the arguments raised then (about pensions, insurance and so on) paved the way for the interwar years' debate on the question of family allowances . This period, during which Eleanor Rathbone campaigned tirelessly for the principle of family allowances, was crucially important for the formation of the modern `welfare state' as outlined in the Beveridge Report of 1942 . Rathbone was particularly insistent that the poverty documented by researchers such as Booth and Rowntree arose from the attempt to fit the support of families of varying sizes and stages of dependency to the `Procrustean bed' of the adult male wage . Recent historical work on social policy (notably that of Hilary Land and Pat Thane) demonstrates the force of Rathbone's arguments . In pointing to the essential contribution of working-class women to the family income, and to the dire poverty of the many women who were financially responsible for the support of their children or other people, such work has exploded, in Ililary Land's terms, `the myth of the male breadwinner' . For whatever arguments and political conclusions we may draw from the history of the demand for a male `family wage', there is one point that is certain : this notion does not serve as an accurate description of the means by which the working class has been supported and reproduced . The fact is that today, as in the past, many male wage-earners do not have dependants and many of the unwaged members of the working class do not have breadwinners . Taking the population as a whole, the household consisting of a man, woman and children is far from being the typical household : In 1976 it represented only 30% of all households, with one-woman-one-man households another 30% and one-person households 20% (Family Expenditure Survey for 1976) . Only 79% of men aged 20 to 65 are married and

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 only 42% of those have dependent children, so that the supposed justification for the family wage-the children-in reality exists only for a third of adult men of working age . An increasing proportion of married women work for wages : The official figure for their i economic activity rate (including the over-60s) is now 50% and for the age group 35-54 it rises to 68%, almost as high as for unmarried women (Department of Employment Gazette, June 1977) . It is not surprising, then, to find that, taking households as a whole, the wages or salaries of `heads of household' (some of whom are women anyway) contribute only 51% of household income, the rest coming from other sources such as state benefits, selfemployment and investments, and from the wages and salaries of wives (11 .4%) and other household members (10 .8%) (Family Expenditure Survey for 1976) . It is clear that many men supposedly earning a family wage do not have any dependants ; it is less easy to say how many unwaged people there are who are unsupported . Among the great advances in welfare during this century has been the fact that increasingly, category by category, starting with the old age pension in 1908, unwaged individuals have become eligible for social security support, though often means-tested and set at a mean and minimal level . Only for children and married women-and a few married men-are there substantial exceptions to this eligibility . Apart from the universal child benefit, children and married women are denied individual access to supplementary benefit support and are expected to rely on their parent or husband . Nevertheless, despite child and supplementary benefits, invalid care allowances and retirement pensions, there is ample evidence of extreme poverty among thosepredominantly women-who have sole care of children or of disabled people and also among old people-again often women-who are not subsidised by a wage-earner but rely entirely on their pension . For such people the family wage system provides no support or protection . However, perhaps even more important than the inadequacy of the household structure to sharing the wage around the working class is the inadequacy of the size of the wage to supporting an entire household . This is evidenced most starkly in that modern revival of the Speenhamland system of poor relief, the Family Income Supplement- a long-term benefit available to families with children where the `head' is in full-time low-paid work . There are almost a hundred thousand families that qualify because the `head's' wages are simply not enough to support the family even at the exiguous levels laid down . The research that foreshadowed the introduction of FIS found that twice as many families would fall to this level, or close to it, but for the earnings of the wife (DHSS 1971 : 12) . At higher levels, too, wives' earnings are an essential part of the household budget . Higher income couples more often have the wife in employment as well as the husband and a study in 1974 found that out of eleven million couples with the husband under 65 there were seven million wives in employment who contrib-



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uted an average of a quarter of the household's income . The same study found that there were in Britain over half a million couples where the wife was the sole or primary earner . The report concluded that `while economic role reversal is uncommon, role sharing is the norm' (DHSS Economic Advisor's Office 1976) . The importance of wives' earnings, together with the uncertainty of marriage (given the high divorce rate) and of the husband's employment, means that they cannot be expected to be dependants who work only for `extras' . The question we have to confront, then, is whether this idea of the THE CASE AGAINST THE family wage represents an ideal that we should aim to realise or a FAMILY WAGE myth that we should aim to destroy . The arguments in favour of a family wage structure and indeed of `the family' itself have recently been re-presented by a socialist feminist, Jane Humphries (1977a and b), who has set out very clearly the issues that we need to take up and the conclusions we wish to dispute . Jane Humphries has argued that the case against the workingclass family is `not proven' ; defence of the family was, she insists, based on a correct perception of the material advantages it carried for the working class. According to Humphries the family wage system brings the following material benefits :- (i) it provides a nondegrading form of support for non-labouring members of the working class ; (ii) it gives the working class a lever on the supply of labour and therefore enables it to resist a fall in the value of labour power ; and (iii) it has historically been crucial for the creation and transmission of a militant class consciousness, and has motivated political struggle . We, however, have arrived at the opposite conclusions and will be arguing that :- A family wage system would (i) enforce the dependency and oppression of women and subject unsupported women, especially mothers, to severe poverty ; (ii) have no necessary effect on the value of labour power ; (iii) divide and weaken the working class by reducing militancy, creating the conditions for conflict between individual women and men generally in the labour market and by perpetuating the view that the support of non-labourers should be met by the wage rather than via the state . (i) A family wage system would enforce the dependence and oppression of all women and subject single women, especially mothers, to severe poverty.

A number of feminist arguments can be raised against a wage structure predicated upon the dependence of a married woman on her husband . There is no shortage of evidence to support the suggestion that financial dependence carries in its train a significant degree of ideological subordination . Studies by Laura Oren (1974) and others have shown that women's levels of consumption within the family tend to be lower than those of men, and the degrading aspects of a struggle over the distribution of the wage within the family have been explored by Pauline Hunt (1978)-and there are stark examples

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 in Coal Is Our Life (Dennis et al . 1956) . Hilary Land has pointed out that women who return to wage labour after a period of childbearing have lost ground and go back to lower wage rates : ` . . .marriage and motherhood', she comments, ' . . effectively "deskill" women' (1978 : 282) . Indeed the assumption of a male family wage affects all women's wages adversely, since even single women suffer from the lower rates of pay, poorer working conditions and constraints on promotion generally applied to women wage workers . Marriage and motherhood are not, in any case, a secure livelihood : for many women the consequences of divorce are a much lower standard of living and a structurally disadvantaged place in the labour market. The numbers of married women who stay with their husbands through financial necessity alone cannot be gauged accurately, but the numbers of women taking up the opportunity to resort to refuges for battered wives may indicate that many women previously had literally nowhere to go . Even if married women were better off under a family wage system, those who were not married would be worse off . At the end of the 19th century only 85% of women married, and often later than now (today the figure is 95%, but many of these divorce) . The plight of the `surplus women' in the bourgeois class has been widely canvassed, but that of those in the working class has to be gleaned from papers relating to the poor law . Unmarried mothers, widows and deserted wives were in the direst straits . Even the most respectable, the widow, was subjected to the `workhouse test' before she could obtain relief, on the grounds that `A man in receipt of regular weekly wages may be fairly called upon to secure his widow . . .against dependence upon Poor Law relief' (3rd Annual Report of the Local Government Board 1873-4, p . 185, quoted in Finer (1974) Vol . 2, p . 123) . Deserting husbands and putative fathers were also expected to pay maintenance (for unmarried mothers from 1844 and for deserted wives from 1878), but it was unlikely that they often did so . Indeed, many thousands of these `liable relatives' were imprisoned for failing to reimburse the poor law authorities for the maintenance of their dependants . The Finer Report on One-Parent Families has documented the fact that maintenance is still rarely and irregularly paid today and that many men, and their dependants, suffer real hardship from the fact that men are expected to maintain two consecutive families simultaneously . When poor relief in the 19th century and supplementary benefit today are granted to a single woman, she is subject to a cohabitation rule, on the assumption that if she shares a household with a man he should be supporting her . The expectation of dependence on a man can thus have disastrous consequences for the woman who has no man to depend upon, yet provisions for state support show a remorseless determination to enforce that expectation wherever possible . Dispute rages about exactly what economic or sociological theory best explains women's position in the wage-labour market, their concentration in a limited range of sectors and occupations and their lower average pay (see, for instance, Beechey 1978 ; Breugel 1979) . This is not the place to enlarge on that discussion . It is suff-

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icient for our purposes to note that there is broad agreement that domestic resonsibilities and the supposed possibility of dependence upon a husband (and in the nineteenth century on a father) must figure largely in the explanation . Furthermore, the belief that women reduce men's wages by undercutting has served to justify trade union pressure to exclude them from work, or at least from the better-paid trades . `Nevertheless, as the Cadbury team found in their (1907) investigations, the argument for giving a woman only onethird or half the pay of a man "because her wage is an auxiliary one, because she is subsidised by the other members of a family", was "not borne out by the facts" . Most women lived off their earnings ; many had dependent parents or siblings, and those who had not still required more than one-third or half what a man required to feed, house and clothe themselves . Many of the women the Cadbury team interviewed were obliged to maintain the minimum standard of living or even less (Auchmuty, 1975 : 113-114) .' Part of the ideal model of the family wage and women's peripheral place in wage-work is the idea of women's domestic responsibilities . Jane Humphries argues that the family wage frees the woman to produce use-values in the home which actually raises the `family's' standard of living above what is necessary to reproduce the members . The need of a man for a clean cheerful home and a meal prepared on his return from work was one of the powerful arguments for restricting the hours and types of paid work that women should do . Low wages, dependence and housework for women are a trio of mutually reinforcing ideas, each justifying and producing the conditions for the others . The case of the female breadwinner illustrates the importance of the ideological aspects of the sexual division of labour . Because women's wages have tended to be lower than men's, women have often been used, particularly in periods of recession, to undercut and displace male workers . Ruth Milkman (1976) and others have commented that the ensuing `role reversal' does not necessarily bring the woman breadwinner the privileges accorded to the man occupying this role : On the contrary it may lead to a strengthening of the ideology of gender division, by being perceived as an `unnatural' state of affairs . Yet, as Engels pointed out in 1845, the division within the family which' underlies the demand for a family wage rests on the fact that the sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning : `If the wife can now base her supremacy upon the fact that she supplies the greater part, nay, the whole of the common possession, the necessary inference is that this community of possession is no true and rational one, since one member of the family boasts offensively of contributing the greater share' (1977 : 163) . Many feminists have argued that the enforcement of domestic res-

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 ponsibilities, especially childcare and doing the man's housework, lies at the root of women's oppression . Childcare has been thought, by non-feminists, to be an inalienable task of women and to both justify and explain most of the division of labour and the differences between women and men . Yet it is interesting that childhood as a period of prolonged dependence and childcare as a separate task are relatively recent and developed hand-in-hand with dependent motherhood . However, in this century, as women have lived longer and concentrated their childbearing into a few early years of life (the youngest child usually starts school before the mother is 35) the appeal to motherhood as a justification for dependence has become less plausible (even to those who think that privatised mothering is the only way to bring up children) . Yet the risk of marriage and motherhood is often mobilised as a justification for not training women and not giving them better-paid and supervisory jobs. Responsibility for caring for the old and the mentally and physically handicapped also falls most naturally to female relatives, (especially married women) who can expect support from their husbands if they have to give up paid work or reduce the number of hours they do. Even the responsibility for ordinary housework is seen as linked to dependence, at least in the world-view of the Department of Health and Social Security who expect a husband to support a disabled wife who can do `her' housework but will give her a pension if she is so disabled that she cannot perform `normal household duties' . In fact, however, housework seems to fall to women's lot whether or not they are dependent and whether or not they go out to work (Boulding 1976 : 112, Hunt, 1968 : 176) . Young and Wilmott (1973 : 113) found that while the men in their sample of couples aged 30 to 50 spent an average of 10 hours a week on household tasks, women in full-time jobs spent 23 hours, those in part-time jobs 35 hours and those not in paid work 45 hours . Other studies covering the more heavily burdened age groups have found the hours that women spend much longer than this, but all are agreed that even when in full-time jobs outside, women spend far more time than men on work at home .[2] This does not square with the argument put by Jane Humphries that it is women staying at home that makes available the extra use-values from domestic production. It seems that women are obliged to work a good deal at this form of production in any case . We have argued that the demand for the family wage, and the belief that it existis, enforces the dependence and oppression of all women . If the demand were actually realised and married women no longer went into paid employment, married couples might possibly be as well off in purely financial terms ; but the women would not necessarily get their share, and if they did, it would be under conditions of subordination to their husbands . And single women, especially mothers, would be at an acute economic disadvantage . Hence, if the men of the working class struggle for a family wage, they do so in opposition to one of the central demands of the women's liberation movement and against the interests of workingclass women .

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(ii) A family wage system would not necessarily raise the value of labour power and the acceptance of the family wage principle has historically tended to reduce the standard of living of the working class as a whole. In this section we engage directly with Jane Humphries's argument that the defence of the family and the demand for the family wage represented the material interests of the working class . She begins with Marx's argument that the value of labour power is determined not only by the labour time necessary to maintain the individual labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family (Capital, Vol . 1 : 395) . Marx argued that the employment of men and women spread the value of labour power over the whole working class family and so reduced the value of the labour power of any one member . Humphries states : `there is considerable evidence that the proletarianisation of the wives and children of male workers did lead to a cheapening of the value of labour power in certain trades (1977b : 34) .' and she claims that the working class recognised that the family was an obstacle to the lowering of the value of labour power and hence fought to preserve it . Thus her central thesis is that the working class had a material interest in the maintenance of family structures . `Since it seems at least possible that a retreat of certain family members from the labour force, in conjunction with an organised attempt to secure a "family wage" could raise their standard of living' (1977b : 34) . She adds that working class control over the supply of labour was limited and married women represented one of the few variable sources, and also presented one of the few opportunities for mobilisation of bourgeois ideology . Although it was a tragedy that this strategy systematically reinforced sex-based relations of domination and subordination, it was not in itself disadvantageous to working class women since they benefitted from the advances it brought to the working class as a whole . It is important to locate this argument by Jane Humphries as an explicit critique of many of the conclusions drawn by contributors to the `domestic labour debate' . Marxist feminist analysis of the political economy of housework, and of its relationship to wage labour, has tended to stress the benefits to capital of a household structure in which women's unpaid domestic work lowers the costs of reproduction of the working class as a whole and hence tends to lower the value of labour power . In the British context this view has been put most succinctly by Veronica Beechey, who argues that one of the advantages to capital of the employment of married women is that this can lower the value of labour power overall (1977 : 5154) . These arguments have been subjected to a number of criticisms, of which the most pertinent for our purposes is the one suggesting that since the male wage upon which the dependent domestic labourer in this model relies must itself be met by collective capital this system represents a redistribution rather than a reduction of the costs to capital of the reproduction of the working class .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 Jane Humphries, however, has raised a set of arguments which fundamentally shift the site of this debate . Instead of considering domestic labour and wage labour from the point of view of the interests of capital, she considers the relationship of the household to wage labour from the point of view of the working class . So her own argument rests not only on a discussion of the relationship between costs of reproduction and the price of labour power (the value of labour power and wages) but on the attempt of the working class to control its standard of living through manipulation of the supply of labour. Her work therefore raises for discussion a question begged in much of the literature : whether what is beneficial for capital is necessarily disadvantageous for the working class . Although this shift of emphasis is welcome, we want to take issue with the argument Humphries presents . In particular we want to challenge the theoretical link she establishes between the value of labour power, control over the labour supply and domestic labour . Her discussion of working-class struggle for the principle of a family wage is concerned with the nineteenth century but poses the questions as theoretical ones and not, as we would insist, as historical ones . This problem is raised in Marx's own discussion of the constitution of the value of labour power . Marx himself, at a general level, stressed that the value of labour power is determined not only by the stage of class struggle but by `moral and historical' elements in the definition of costs of reproduction of the working class . Yet in the remark of his quoted by Humphries, that the employment of women and children spread the value of labour power over the whole family and thus reduced the value of any one member, Marx implies that the level of the male wage did previously reflect the costs of subsistence of the labourer's wife and her substitutes . This, however, seems open to doubt. The existence of wage differentials dating from the earliest period of the transition to capitalism and apparently relating to minimum subsistence needs of men and women, suggests that the wage has never, historically, been determined as a family wage . And if it never had been a `family wage', reflecting a family-based calculation of costs of reproduction, it is inappropriate to argue that the employment of women and children would necessarily lower the value of labour power . The fact that Marx himself provided an unsatisfactory account of specific determinations of the value of labour power does not invalidate the general point that this determination itself is an historical one . Furthermore, the relationship of domestic labour to the value of labour power cannot be posed in the terms Humphries uses when she suggests that the products of housework are a bonus brought by a family wage system where the single male wage is equal to the combined wage all the family members would have got and where in addition the wife is freed for domestic labour . Leaving aside the contentious question of whether the male wage would, historically, be equal to the family's combined wages (discussed in Humphries 1977a : 251-252), the evidence we have already considered suggests that wives do a good deal of housework even when they do earn a



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wage, so their domestic contribution is available under systems other than that of a `family wage'. The point at issue here is whether we can specify theoretically a general relationship between domestic labour and the value of labour power . An insistence on the historical determination of the value of labour power suggests that this relationship too will be an historically rather than theoretically given one . Maxine Molyneux, in arguing for an historical approach to this question, puts forward the possibility that the input of domestic labour to the household may rise when the value of labour power is high and fall when it is low, and that a high level of domestic labour may be contingent upon a high value of labour power (1979 : 11) . The amount of domestic labour performed in the household is clearly related to wages in complex ways : High wages make commodities more expensive and may force housewives to substitute their labour for ready-made goods or for services ; a high wage may raise the housekeeping allowance and give the housewife more tools and raw materials to work with, or it may buy a larger house with more possibilities for housework . This would suggest a quite different interpretation of the situation from that offered by Humphries. On the other hand, it must be remembered that women usually have to do more and heavier housework when their own or their husbands' wages are low . Further difficulties are encountered with Humphries's argument that the value of labour power could be raised by working class control of the labour supply-in this case through the withdrawal of married women and children from the workforce . This, too, must be seen as historically variable . Jane Humphries suggests that although this strategy was a tragically sexist one it did provide a means for the working class to protect its standard of living and raise the value of labour power . In fact, however, the working class did not succeed in withdrawing the labour of married women in this way and it could well be argued that this strategy merely exacerbated the tendency for them to be constituted as a reserve labour force capable of undercutting male wages and being substituted for male workers in periods of recession . Control of the labour supply obviously does constitute an important aspect of working class resistance, but its relative historical power must vary with capital's demand for labour as production expands and contracts. When demand falls in a recession, as Jane Humphries has herself convincingly demonstrated in the case of the great depression of the twenties and thirties (1976), the labour movement's stringent attempts to exclude women workers were not remarkably successful in resisting a fall in living standards . In fact it is not clear that control over the labour supply would necessarily affect the value of labour power, as opposed to the standard of living . Given the domestic contribution of female wage workers the standard of living of the working class nevertheless would rise, as in the model Humphries outlines, if the male wage were to exceed the combined wage earned by all family members under the alternative principle . But the exclusion of married women from wage labour should be seen as an historical question concerned with varying demand for labour and threat of competition rather

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 than as directly related to general considerations of the value of labour power. We would want to argue, then, that there is no necessary connection between the withdrawal of women from wage work and the value of labour power . Although a rise in the value of labour power, complemented by a rise in wages, might enable more families to i maintain a dependent wife if they chose, this rise in the value of I labour power would be the outcome of historical struggle over the standard of living and would not be achieved by the dependency of wives . Historically, in any case, the struggle for an ideal of a `family i wage' has not tended to raise the standard of living of the working class as a whole . As an exclusionary practice it has had a limited success in reducing competition from women workers in those sections of the working class which have achieved a definition of their work as skilled, but in periods of high unemployment it presents capital with a cheaper workforce, and in periods of full employment it militates against a rise in wages by enabling more workers to i be drawn in . The value of labour power is not determined unambiguously by exclusionary practices of this kind, but by the historical general strength of the working class in defining its costs of reproduction at an acceptable standard of living . (iii) The family wage principle divides and weakens the working class . One way of approaching this question is to consider whether the family wage principle tends to encourage militancy or not . Humphries has argued that family responsibilities may have promoted the radicalisation of working men : `the experience of watching the suffering and oppression of their families could instigate class action' (1977a : 255) . There is a general point to be made here, however, that suffering and poverty do not necessarily induce political consciousness and action . On the contrary, there may be more evidence to suggest that the responsibility for a hungry family may, particularly in the absence of adequate strike pay and so on, significantly reduce the likelihood of militant struggle . Many writers on wage labour in the early period of capitalist expansion cite a telling remark from Lord Shaftsbury's speech in Parliament on the Ten Hours Bill . `Mr . E . . a manufacturer . . .informed me that he employed females exclusively at his power-looms . . .gives a decided preference to married females, especially those who have families at home dependent on them for support ; they are attentive, docile, more so than unmarried females, and are compelled to use their utmost exertions to procure the necessities of life . (March 15th, 1844) .' It is a matter of dispute whether we interpret this docility in terms of the peculiar tenderness of the female nature (as Shaftsbury did) or in terms of the industrial consequences of the worker-in this case female-having a vulnerable and dependent family . It is true that the friendly societies, and later the trade unions,



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were the organisations that fostered the working-class militancy of the nineteenth century and that these organisations were largely founded upon the principles of excluding women, relegating them to a dependent status and demanding a family wage . However, the debate among the historians of the labour aristocracy revolves around the question of whether this exclusionary formation of an upper stratum-and it involved the exclusion of many other than women-did not lead to a conservatism, a desire to sustain the differentiation of the working class and a tendency to collude with the bourgeoisie to this end . So it is at least plausible to suggest that the attempt to relegate women to domestic dependence was associated with a restraint of militancy to a lower level than it might otherwise have reached . The question of the militancy of working-class women is a clearer one . Whether or not Engels was right to argue that full female employment was a necessary and sufficient condition of women's emancipation, Lenin was surely correct in pointing out the progressive aspect of women's entry into wage labour : `By destroying the patriarchal isolation of these categories of the population who formerly never emerged from the narrow circles of female domestic family relationships, by drawing them into direct participation in social production, large scale machine industry stimulates their development and increases their independence, i .e . creates conditions of life that are incomparably superior to the patriarchal immobility of pre-capitalist relationships.' (Quoted in Adamson et al ., 1976 : 18-19) . Despite the disguised and contradictory character of the wage under capitalism, and the specific abuses to which women wage labourers have been subjected (see for example Engels's discussion of Jus Primae Noctis and women factory workers), it is clear that, from the point of view of raising political consciousness, wage labour is more desirable than the isolation and privatisation of full-time domestic labour . In addition, when women are in paid employment they tend to be less active in trade unions and less militant than men . This seems to be due to a number of factors-their crowding in low-paid occupations, their low expectations of improvements in pay and conditions, their primary identification with the family rather than with the outside workplace, their high turnover, due both to insecure and interchangeable jobs and to the demands of family responsibilities-all factors associated with the idea of the family wage and women's domestic dependence . The family wage principle weakens the working class by creating divisions between men and women within it . It does this in two ways, both of which we have discussed in other contexts earlier in this paper : By creating the conditions for conflict between individual men and women in the family in the struggle over the distribution of the wage, and by creating the conditions for competition and undercutting of wages between men and women generally in the labour force . In dividing the working class into wage-earners and those dep-

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 endent on the wage for support the family wage system collude : with the moralism surrounding the wage contract in capitalist production and fails to question the disguised appearance of the wage (that is, it reproduces the view that those who earn the wage are actually being paid for their labour, whereas in fact what they sell is their ability to labour, or labour power) . Furthermore, acceptance of the family wage system involves the principle that the obligation to support non-labouring members of the working class should fall on the shoulders of the labouring individuals rather than being met from capitalist surplus . In this respect the demand for support from the state is one that stimulates revolutionary class consciousness . For although Jane Humphries is right to point out that working class organisations fiercely resisted the state provision of support as embodied in the `new poor law' of 1834, there is no evidence that this represented a principled preference for a family system of support over a state system . Outrage against the `workhouse test' was directed against its degrading and offensive form rather than against the principle of poor relief in general, which had been accepted as a right since the introduction of the Elizabethan poor law . (Humphries herself quotes a working-class man's denunciation of the 1834 poor law in which he speaks of the `right' of poor people to parish relief as being of `more than two centuries' standing' (1977b : 29) .) The parish system was preferred to the bureaucratic inhumanity of the nineteenth century poor law . So too in the twentieth century the working class has struggled for state support, in the form of old-age pensions, unemployment and sickeness benefit, family allowances and so on ; yet it has resisted and criticised means-testing, red tape and offensive treatment in the administration of this support . It is true that radical analysis has recognised that centralised state support for non-labourers makes for state control over the labour force and gives the state power to determine who shall be obliged to work for wages . Yet that recognition does not mean that state support stultifies the working class, since it leads to a demand for greater control over its conditions and administration. The demand for state support renders more visible the irrationality and inadequacy of the wage in capitalist production . This indeed formed the basis of Rathbone's campaign for family allowances, since she demonstrated that the assumed family wage in fact catered (in the early decades of the twentieth century) for approximately three million `phantom' wives and sixteen million `phantom' children, the fictitious dependants of men who were in fact bachelors, and left six-and-a-quarter million children insufficiently fed and clothed (1949 : 15-16) . The fact is that the family wage system has never been adequate to ensure the reproduction of the working class . The belief that it does, or that it could be perfected if only men's wages were raised, merely masks the fact that the capitalist wage system can never meet the needs of the working class . So the belief leads to attempts to reform it that cannot succeed and that do not improve the chances of more radical change .

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In the post-war period there have been remarkable changes in women's wage-work participation, so - that by now the principle of women's dependence is beginning to lose some of its pernicious power, though the apparently more benign principle of the family wage seems, curiously, to have survived unscathed . The urgent question is : How many of the gains that women have made in challenging dependence, and that non-employed members of the working class have made in claiming support .through the state rather than through dependence on kin, . will be lost during the course of the restructuring attendant upon the current crisis? It is well known that women stand to be particularly hard hit by cuts in public spending . On the one hand, they are often employed in threatened public-service jobs, on the other, they rely more on publicly provided health, education and welfare services to keep them afloat and enable them to go out to work . It is less clear in what ways women's employment in private sectors of manufacturing and services are likely to be affected by the recession . Their stillmarginal position in the labour force (and much of the increase in married women's employment during the 1970s was in part-time work) makes them more easily disposed of. They are often doing jobs that are either very routine or associated with an obsolescent technology, which will disappear as more advanced technologies are adopted . On the other hand, their potential for lower wages may mean that they will be substituted for higher-paid men as restructuring proceeds . The survival of the idea of the family wage means that there is a real risk of a concerted effort to push women back into dependence and deny them the right to employment . A bourgeois state intent on saving public spending and on strengthening the ideological role of the family could well find allies among those male sections of the trade union movement that fear dilution and deskilling as a result of competition from married women and that have traditionally relied upon the idea of the family wage both as a bargaining counter and as a righteous rallying point for their rank and file membership . We hope we have said enough by now to indicate how disastrous such an alliance would be, not only for women but for the working class as a whole . The family wage ideal has never worked . Families relying on one wage have always been the hardest up . Changes in the age of marriage, the expectation of life and the timing of childbearing mean that women are bound to go on seeking employment . If the labour movement does not allow them to do so on the same basis as men and fight for them to get the same pay, conditions and job-security, then they will be found increasingly in the `informal economy' and the poorly-organised, badly-paid sectors . The existence and expansion of such sectors threatens the gains made in the better organised sectors . In other words, women do threaten men's jobs, but the only way to prevent this is to challenge that distinction, to welcome them on the same conditions, not vainly to wish them away . It is time that men as well as women became disenchanted with the fantasy world of the family wage .



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NOTES

Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh teach sociology at The City University, London and at Essex University . An earlier version of this paper was read at the Leeds CSE conference in July 1979 and at the CSE Sex and Class group in October 1979 . We have learned a great deal from the discussions at both these meetings and also from the comments sent to us by Capital and Class and by the following people : Sally Alexander, Irene Bruegel, Bob Connell, Sue Himmelweit, Jane Humphries, Hilary Land, Kerry Schott, Judy Wajcman and Elizabeth Wilson . 1

2

REFERENCES

Indeed at present the distinction is between men and married or cohabiting women, but it seems likely that `man' will soon be translated euphemistically as `breadwinner' to conform with EEC rules against sex discrimination (Rights of Women, 1979) . Interestingly too, a study in the United States found that men's `help' in the home did not reduce the amount of women's work commensurately : When men helped with physical childcare, women spent even more time on it ; when men put in time preparing meals, women only gained half that time (Leibowitz, 1975 : 223) .

ADAMSON, Olivia, BROWN, Carol, HARRISON, Judith, and PRICE, Judy, 1976 `Women's Oppression Under Capitalism' Revolutionary Communist No . 5 . ALEXANDER, Sally, 1976 `Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century London, A Study of the Years 1820-50' in MITCHELL and OAKLEY . ATKIN Report, 1919, Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, Cmd. 135, HMSOiLondon . __ AUCHMUTY, Rosemary, 1975 `Spinsters and Trade Unions in Victorian Britain' in CURTHOYS (1975) . BEECHEY, Veronica, 1978 `Some Notes on Female Wage Labour in Capitalist Production' Capital and Class Number 3 . BLAXALL, M . and REAGAN, B ., 1976 Women and the Workplace (University of Chicago Press) . BOULDING, E ., 1976 `Familial Constraints on Women's Work Roles' in BLAXALL and REAGAN, 1976 . BRUEGEL, Irene, 1979 `Women as a Reserve Army of Labour' Feminist Review No . 3 . CAMPBELL, Beatrix and CHARLTON, Valerie (undated) `Work to Rule-Wages and the Family' Red Rag (late 1978?) . CIS (COUNTER INFORMATION SERVICES), 1976 Women Under Attack Anti-Report No . 15, CIS, London . COYLE, Angela, 1980 `The Protection Racket' Feminist Review Number 4 . CURTHOYS, Anne, EADE, Susan, and SPEARITT, Peter (editors) 1975 Women at Work Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Canberra. DAVIDOFF, Leonore, 1979 `The Separation of Home and Work?' in BURMAN, S ., editor, Fit Work for Women (Croom Helm, London) . DAVIDOFF, Leonore, et al., 1976 `Landscape with Figures' in MITCHELL and OAKLEY . DENNIS, N ., HENRIQUES, F . and SLAUGHTER, C ., 1956 Coal is Our Life Eyre and Spottiswoode, London .



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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY, ECONOMIC ADVISER'S OFFICE, 1976 `Wives as Sole and Joint Breadwinners' (Mimeo) . DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY, 1971 Two-Parent Families : A Study of their Resources and Needs in 1968, 1969 and 1970 DHSS Statistical Report Series, No .14 (HMSO, London) . ENGELS, Frederick, 1977 The Condition of the Working Class in England Lawrence and Wishart, London . FINER REPORT, 1974 (Report of the Committee on One-Parent Families Cmnd 5629 (HMSO, London) . FINER, Morris and McGREGOR, O . R., 1974 `The History of the Obligation to Maintain' in FINER REPORT (1974) . FOREMAN, Ann, 1977 Femininity as Alienation (Pluto Press, London) . FOSTER, John, 1974 Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London) . GARDINER, J ., 1974 `Women's Work in the Industrial Revolution' in ALLEN, S ., SANDERS, L . and WALLIS, J ., editors, Conditions of Illusion (Feminist Books, Leeds) . GRAY, R .Q ., 1976 The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford University Press, London) . GRAY, R . Q . . 1980 The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth Century Britain c. 1850-1900 (Macmillan, Studies in Economic and Social History, London) . HARTMAN, Mary and BANNER, Lois W., 1974, Editors, Clio's Consciousness Raised (Harper and Row, New York) . HEWITT, Margaret, 1958 Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (Rockliff, London) . HOBSBAWM, E . J., 1964 Labouring Men (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London) . HUMPHRIES, J ., 1976 `Women : Scapegoats and Safety Valves in the Great Depression' Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 8, No . 1 . HUMPHRIES, Jane, 1977a `Class Struggle and the Persistence of the Working Class Family' Cambridge Journal of Economics Vol . 1 . No . 3 . HUMPHRIES, Jane, 1977b `The Working Class Family, Women's Liberation and Class Struggle : The Case of Nineteenth Century British History' The Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 9 ., No . 3 . HUNT, Audrey, 1968, A Survey of Women's Employment (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, London). HUNT, Pauline, 1978 `Cash Transactions and Household Tasks : domestic behaviour in relation to industrial employment' Sociological Review Vol . 26, No . 3 . HUTCHINS, B .L . and HARRISON, A ., 1911 A History of Factory Legislation 2nd edition (P . S . King and Son, London) . KUHN, Annette and WOLPE, AnnMarie, 1978 Feminism and Materialism (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) . LAND, Hilary, 1976 `Women : Supporters or Supported?' in BARKER, Diana Leonard and ALLEN, Sheila (editors) Sexual Divisions and Society : Process and change (Tavistock, London). LAND, Hilary, 1978 `Who Cares for the Family?' Journal of Social Policy Vol . 7, Part 3 . LAND, Hilary, 1980 The Family Wage (The Eleanor Rathbone

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Memorial Lecture for 1979) (Liverpool University Press, Liverpool). LLOYD, C ., (editor), 1975 Sex, Discrimination and the Division of Labour (Columbia University Press, New York) . MARX, Karl, 1970 Capital Vol . 1 (Lawrence and Wishart, London) . McINTOSH, Mary, 1978 `The State and the Oppression of Women' in KUHN and WOLPE . MILKMAN, Ruth, 1976 `Women's Work and Economic Crisis : Some Lessons of the Great Depression' Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 8, No . 1 . MITCHELL, Juliet and OAKLEY, Ann, 1976 The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Penguin, Harmondsworth) . MOLYNEUX, M., 1979 `Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate' New Left Review No . 116 . OREN, Laura, 1974 `The Welfare of Women in Labouring Families : England, 1860-1950' in HARTMAN and BANNER (1974) . PINCHBECK, Ivy, 1930 Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution reprinted 1969 (Frank Cass, London) . RAMELSON, M ., 1967 The Petticoat Rebellion (Lawrence and Wishart, London). RATHBONE, Eleanor, 1949 Family Allowances (A new edition of The Disinherited Family) (George Allen and Unwin, London) . RIGHTS OF WOMEN and WOMEN'S LIBERATION CAMPAIGN FOR FINANCIAL AND LEGAL INDEPENDENCE, 1979 'Disaggregation Now!' Feminist Review Number 2 . ROYAL COMMISSION ON EQUAL PAY, 1946 Report (HMSO, London, Cmd . 6937) . SMELSER, Neil, 1959 Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) . London). STEDMAN JONES, Gareth, 1975, `Class Struggle and the Industrial

STEDMAN JONES, Gareth, 1975, `Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution' New Left Review Number 90 . STRACHEY, Ray, 1978 The Cause (Virago, London). TAYLOR, Sandra, 1977 The Effect of Marriage on Job Possibilities for Women and the Ideology of the Home : Nottingham 1890-1930' Oral History 5 : 1 . THANE, Pat, 1978 `Women and the Poor Law in Victorian and Edwardian England' History Workshop Journal, No . 6 . TILLEY, Louise A . and SCOTT, Joan W ., 1978 Women, Work and Family (Holt, Renehart and Winston, New York) . VIBART, H .H .R ., 1926 Family Allowances in Practice (P .S .King, London) . WEBB, Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, 1894 The History of British Trade Unions .

WILMOTT, Peter and YOUNG, Michael, 1973 The Symmetrical Family (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London) .



Left Orthodoxy and the Politics of Health

Mick Carpenter

`I conceive of a millenium on earth-a millenium not of riches, nor of mechanical facilities, nor of intellectual facilities, nor absolutely of immunity from disease, nor absolutely of immunity from pain, but a time when men and women all over the earth shall ascend and enter into relation with their bodiesshall attain freedom and joy .' (Edward Carpenter, Towards Democracy .)

INTRODUCTION

The following article is based on a paper first produced during the latter part of 1978 for discussion within the Politics of Health Group . It sought to summarise points reached in our collective discussions and, in places, to extend the analysis . While it is in no way a statement of POHG's policy, there is widespread agreement in the group on the fundamental arguments presented in the paper . POHG has been engaged in discussion around health politics for several years now . Originally we concentrated very much on the NHS . Some of the early debates were around such questions as : `Is health care a commodity, and if so, what kind?' . `What relevance do such notions as the "fiscal crisis of the state" hold for the analysis of cutbacks in public expenditure?' . In other words, we took the pre-existing analytical tools of Marxist political economy and sought to apply them to the medical sector . These discussions floundered, partly because not everyone was familiar with Marxist concepts . It was ironic that health professionals in the group should be confronted by what they sometimes felt to be mystification . It reversed their usual relationship to esoteric knowledge . They had become patients! Yet there was also a more general dissatisfaction, a feeling we were getting bogged down, combined with an increasing awareness that too many issues were being excluded by our approach .

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH Within the group there were women who had been active around women's health issues, and whose starting point tended to be different . Rather than working downwards from the categories of Marxist theory to the world of daily experience, they tended to move in the opposite direction . One feature of this was an often critical stance towards the content of health care, which was usually missing from Marxist analyses . It contrasted with the left's undiscriminating `no cuts in health services' position, which tends to lead to an uncritical stance towards existing services . As well as contributions from those who had been active around women's health issues, there were others who had been involved in health struggles outside the NHS. In particular those concerned about work hazards, and the relationship between health and antiimperialist struggles in the Third World, looked beyond health services . The former saw the need to remove the fundamental causes of ill-health in the places where people work, rather than to patch them up in shiny citadels of technological medicine ; the latter knew that the export of western models of medicine had proved patently inadequate to deal with the health problems generated by neocolonial economic and social relations-indeed were a significant feature of them . Finally, the group contained radical epidemiologists who were able to show that the improvements in health made in the past century had more to do with improvements in social conditions than health services . They were therefore more interested in identifying the social and economic causes of ill-health, recognising that the struggle for health could not be separated from the struggle to remove the widespread inequalities which continue to permeate our society . With these main contributory elements to our discussions, we began to make progress . We defined our terms of reference as broadly as possible, emphasising both the need to transform the social relations of health care and the need to show why the struggle for wider social change is necessary to achieve significant improvements in health . These two aspects of POHG philosophy are reflected in our first two pamphlets published during 1979, Cuts and the NHS, and Food and Profit: it Makes you Sick . In working out these perspectives, we have begun to examine the relationship between socialism and the struggle for health . Many of us have been profoundly influenced by the approach taken to health question in the women's movement . In the Politics of Health Group we are seeking to generalise the women's movement's concern with health, and believe that this is necessary if we are to broaden and revitalise the appeal of socialism . The politics of health helps to illuminate much of the relationship between the personal and the political, in the first place by insisting upon their political character, rather than the unchallenged mandate of technocratic experts . As a result I have felt my own views change towards much more libertarian socialism : towards a much more eclectic socialism, one which does not rely overly on a few great figures, or issues, or on political economy, and one which does not imagine that socialism must necessarily fulfil tendencies manifest within capitalism . It can

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incorporate features of precapitalist societies as well as generating structures which have no historical precedent . The paper represented a move towards such politics . Its implication is that the left has not simply got to tack onto its programme a strategy for health, but think anew about what socialism means . There are signs that a `new' politics, partly based on forgotten or suppressed utopian traditions, is emerging in this country . I hope this paper can form a small contribution to that trend . THE POLITICS OF ORTHODOXY

The guiding principle of this article is that there is a need to move from an overriding concern with cuts to that of health, from a defence of the health service, to a defence of people's health . This is not to say that the fight against health service cuts is unimportant, but we need to start from a consideration of people's health needs, otherwise we are always simply reacting to the right wing offensive against the NHS . Ironically, only when we are clear about the kind of health service we want-and what part health services can play in the struggle for health-can we hope to fight the cuts effectively . A right wing critique of the effectiveness and appropriateness of health care has been mounted . On the left, this has largely been dismissed as a smokescreen to justify cuts . While this is partly true, the conservative critique has some substance . What we have yet failed to do is to provide a comprehensive alternative . Instead we allow the right to make all the running, and at best fight a feeble rearguard action . It is this inadequate one-dimensional politics of health that is characterised here as `left orthodoxy' . The phrase describes the consensus that seems to exist about health politics among left activists . As a preparation for this article, I surveyed the pamphlets and publications produced by the left groups during the 1970s .[1] All reformists and revolutionaries displayed marked tendencies towards this orthodoxy, even when, in some cases, aspects of their argument seemed to contradict it . (This paper is not, however, a critique of any particular group . That would require a contextualisation of the arguments in ways which I am not able to undertake here) . The basic source of left orthodoxy is not hard to trace . It lies in the widespread over-romanticised attachment to the NHS on the left, which derives from a belief that the `principles of 1948', under which it was set up, form the basis for a socialist health care service . More than any other public institution, it is believed to embody the principle of production for use . Schools are more often identified as institutions through which the state seeks to reproduce dominant ideologies and exercise social control . The content of education is therefore an issue in a way that the content of health care is not . The railways and other utilities are clearly run to realise exchange value, while the health service, despite prescription and other charges, appears to embody quite different principles . Yet this is not to argue that the Left Orthodoxy is restricted solely to the NHS . It is simply more marked in the medical sector . It would be productive to examine left policy on issues such as housing, education, free

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH collective bargaining, unemployment etc ., for signs of a substantive (if not tactical) consensus, which transcends the apparent divide between reformists and revolutionaries . Let us take for granted that the NHS is different . Nevertheless, if we accept the `socialist' character of the NHS at face value, it leads to the acceptance of a particular kind of socialism, obscures the way in which the NHS serves fundamentally conservative purposes . It has led socialists in this country to think of health services as the `natural' means of tackling the ill-health effects of capitalism, and it has on the whole led them to accept the medical mandate to define health and ill-health even when criticising aspects of doctors' practice . 1) The health service is publicly owned and health care removed from the market place ; 2) Services should be comprehensively available and accessible to all who need them . The health service is seen as a 'quasi-socialist' institution to the extent that it partially realises these objectives. It is criticised as nonsocialist, equally, because such principles have never been realised in practice . The left critique of the NHS, therefore, is largely one which criticises the health service for not having lived up to the socialist promise of 1948 . Much of the subsequent analysis is then concerned with the identification of the internal and external constraints which have frustrated its realisation, with the obvious implication that action should be taken to remove them . The internal constraints upon the implementation of the principles of 1948 are those structural features of the NHS which give rise to privileged groups who are opposed to, or fight a rearguard action against, them . The most important is quite correctly seen to be the excessive sway which the medical establishement has over the service . It frustrates the implementation of Principle (1), for example, by fighting to retain private practice, and Principle (2) by concentrating resources and doctors in middle class areas and towards particular kinds of services [2] and by delaying the development of health centres . The external constraints focussed on include the pharmaceutical and supply industries which are said to `milk' the NHS for their own ends, helping to embarass the service financially . There is also, of course, the reintroduction of charges for various services (one of the biggest demands placed upon the NHS in the early days was for basic things like spectacles and false teeth, which led to charges intended to dampen demand.) But what has received attention as the greatest threat recently has been the financial retrenchment due to the crisis in state expenditure . The chronic starvation of resources for the NHS (as evidenced by the lower proportion of the Gross National Product spent on it compared to many other countries) has long been recognised . The massive cutbacks on expenditure growth of the 1970s, however, qualitatively changed matters . No longer could we be said to be moving, at however slow a pace, towards the gradualist utopia when the principles of 1948 would finally be attained . For the first time it

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appeared to many that things were moving in the opposite direction. This naturally led to a change in emphasis on the left away from the organisational questions of the 1950s and 1960s (i.e . a focus on internal constraints) towards a focus upon problems of finance (that is, upon external constraints) as the major threat to the principles of 1948.

It would be as well to distinguish between a left politics which is inadequate even within the terms of orthodoxy, and that which is inadequate because it flows from orthodoxy, of however sophisticated a variant . To begin with, some recent approaches deal almost exclusively with external financial constraints and ignore internal organisational obstacles altogether . Quite simply, a favoured solution is often to slush-in extra money which, unless it was associated with organisational changes, would largely reproduce the present maldistribution of resources, but at a higher level of expenditure . Just to quote one example, it might provide the basis for further rationalisations which could lead to more small hospitals being threatened. [3] A more fundamental issue concerns the inadequacy of the principles from a socialist perspective . The extent to which they can be dubbed `socialist' at all depends crucially on the criteria that are chosen . In one version of the desired future, socialism is seen as bringing material abundance . With the transformation of the relations of production into common ownership, the barriers to the final abolition of scarcity are removed and all forms of waste associated with capitalism done away with . This vision of socialism imagines the anticipated future largely as a materialist cornucopia . There is, however, another vision which, while not necessarily ignoring material scarcity, nevertheless places much greater emphasis on qualitative than quantitative factors, seeing in socialism a moral as much as material future . It sees a transformation in human relationships as desirable in itself. The fulfilment of the latter vision requires much more than a transformation in ownership or the volume of production . Rather it provides the occasion by which people may begin to discover non-alienated ways of relating to each other, and gain control over their lives . The defining feature of left orthodoxy is its emphasis upon the abolition of scarcity in provision as the sufficient as well as a necessary step . Its associated vision of a socialist health service is primarily one where medical care is freely available to all who need it, regardless of cost . The identification of internal and external constraints is almost exclusively in terms of their ability to frustrate this goal . Socialism, in other words, is plenty for everyone, with some left over besides . As a result, vitally important political questions concerning health and health care are left off the agenda . They do not appear as issues . These problems are of two sorts : an inadequate conception of the relation between health and capitalism, and of the health service in capitalism . Thus, the chief way in which orthodoxy understands the relation of the NHS to capitalism is in terms of the contradiction of trying to run a service based on

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH the principle of use value in a society dominated by production foi exchange . The limits on state expenditure under capitalism mean it is too costly to underpin an NHS based on production for use . Sc it sees the NHS as a socialist institution hopelessly embedded in a capitalist political economy . The view that the NHS embodies, partially or wholly, the prin . ciple of use as opposed to exchange value begs a great many quest . ions, not least of which is what we mean by production for use! There is need for some caution here . For those exponents who focus primarily on external (ie financial) constraints, this is particularly true . In their terms, medically determined services are to a large extent assumed to be beneficial and socially neutral . If doctors in this model are seen to have too much power it is usually seen purely in terms of an abstract rather than rooted critique of hierarchy in the health service . The argument for a more democratic structure is rhetorically presented simply as desirable in itself, rather than fund . amentally necessary to changing what the health service does . In the more sophisticated variants of orthodoxy, those which focus also on internal constraints, a more critical view of medical decision . making processes is taken . questioning in particular the distribution of care, but also some medical procedures . Yet both can be said, in their different ways, to be assuming the social neutrality of the State . The `external' stream of orthodoxy regards the content of State expenditure as neutral and only constrained by capitalism in the sense of not having the resources to do more . In the second case, the ills of the health service are often attributed to the power of the medical profession vis-a-vis the state, and the call is therefore for the establishment of `rational' controls over the profession from above (by such techniques as `medical audits' which seek to determine `efficiency') . In other words, though lip service is paid to democracy, bureaucratic controls from above are typically seen as the major corrective to the dominance of the medical profession . Again we must distinguish between unsophisticated and sophisticated variants of orthodoxy . The former accepts the egalitarian basis of the health service as a given fact, and has an almost blind faith in the wonders of medical science (very few seem to be aware of IIlich's claim that much modern medicine produces as much illhealth as it ameliorates [41) . For them, the only problems are financial ones, since nobody can have too much of a good thing . At its more sophisticated, however, there is an awareness that so called regional inequalities have a class basis, that middle class areas are better-endowed with health services . This is what lies behind the notion of an `inverse care law' [5] which suggests that the working class, while suffering a disproportionate amount of sickness, receive less than their fair share of the benefits of the health service . One problem of such approaches however, is that they focus tar too much upon a redistribution of the `benefits' of health services as a solution to class differences in the distribution of disease . Insufficient attention is given to transforming the social conditions that produce ill-health in the first place . Another problem is a very limit .

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ed critique of medical care itself . Essential to a socialist critique ought to be an assault on notions of `benefit' and `need' as determined by an expert authority autonomous from the mass of the people who use the health service . An `inverse care' notion in no way challenges these strutures of political control over the sick, because it does not question the content of health care, only its distribution . The failure of even sophisticated variants of orthodoxy to see this has meant that the left has been unable to respond adequately to such Government initiatives as the Resources Allocation Working Party (RAWP), which were informed by some concept of distributing health care according to `need'. Critics have argued that RAWP is a formula for disguised cuts, and also that it is not a real attempt to redirect resources at the point of patient care . While both arguments are true, they largely miss the point . It is not a more refined version of RAWP which is required, for this would only substitute a bureaucratically determined planners' assessment of `need' for the medical one . The question of restructuring the social relations of the health service is rarely seen as a major problem by exponents of orthodoxy (although a limited form of `democratisation', usually local authority control, is sometimes posed) . Within a wider and humanistic vision of socialism this becomes an extremely urgent necessity . The choice is not between particular kinds of service, imposed from above : care versus cure, community medicine versus hospitalisation, high technology versus low technology : in themselves these are false polarisations . To pose choices in such terms is not to start from first principles, but from notions of need derived independently of people themselves . A socialist health service will be one which seeks to devise social relations of health care which respect the personal autonomy of both those who work for it and those who are unavoidably sick . It will be one where all barriers of hierarchy and mystification, between health workers and between them and the sick people they work with are torn down . It will be health care provided neither because of the material necessity of wage workers nor out of an imposed set of obligations which fall upon certain people, mainly daughters and wives . The problem of what to do about the sick will not be seen as a purely technical medical issue, where non-humanistic criteria of scientific rationality are imposed upon sick or debilitated people, and notions of `caring responsibilities' imposed on others . This is different from the old fashioned notion that the `whole person' rather than the `symptoms' should be treated . We must attack the notion of `treatment' itself which implies that the sick person is still someone to be `dealt with', whether whole or fragmented . And we need to be clear that these are truly revolutionary demands, for they require a fundamental change in social relationships, from those based on wage labour and familial responsibilities . Transforming the social relations of health care is ultimately tied up with changes in the whole nature of people's material and social existence . This may be a utopian vision, but it can still inform our daily struggles, can help us to think clearly about the demands we raise .

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We must get away from the idea that the kinds of care that should be provided are simply technical questions, whether determined by doctors, nurses or even planners and sociologists . We can see the potential in these directions in the experience of some recent local struggles around hospital closures, and in the approach of the women's movement to health issues . The latter has, from the outset, struggled against what it sees as patriarchally determined definition ; of `need' . Such a vision-which requires much greater clarification than is attempted here-might help us to understand what a truly democrat is health service would be like . It would view any imposed definit ions of need (medical, bureaucratic or sociological) as oppressive The question `who benefits?' cannot be separated from the questior `who decides?' . In a democratic health service, democratic politics structures would exist at a number of levels . However, a meaningfu . workers' and users' control would radiate outwards from the point at which, on a day to day basis, needs are assessed and determined It would create collective organs of control but also allow individual: to articulate and define, with expert assistance, their own needs. Yel it would be very different from `consumerism' . The latter is solely individualist ; it accepts the commoditisation of medicine, and car lead to the subordination of the worker to the user. A democratic socialist health service is not one where power relations betweer worker and user are simply reversed, but one where they are transc ended .

THE POLITICS OF HEALTH AND ILLHEALTH

The demand for control can be concretised initially, at least, b , separating out different elements of control . To do so, it may b, helpful to think of two dualisms : -Control as a means and control as an end -Control over health and control over health care . These dualisms are, of course, related dialectically to each other Our goal is a society in which domination of people by people i ended and our critique of capitalism is based on the premise that th, individualised `freedoms' of these societies, though at one stage liberating force, have led inevitably to new and masked forms o domination . A fuller freedom can only be achieved by collectiv struggle and socialists assert that, on the contrary, it is individualise and freedom which are ultimately in greatest contradiction (thougl perhaps we need to give more thought to the relationship betwee] individual freedom and socialism) . In any case, a situation wher society is genuinely run by the mass of the population, is fundam entally different from collectively organised societies like the Sovie Union which is run by and for a minority and which is unaccount able to the mass of the population . Once again, the question o 'benefit' is the central issue. The definition of socialism in terms o pure abundance is more compatible with a paternalist bureaucrat ; which claims to `look after' and provide for the masses, than on : which sees socialism as a collective means of restructuring socia

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relations in order to achieve freedom from domination, to create the context where people can begin to control their own lives . It is the difference between a socialised and a socialist society . Personal control over health has to be seen as both a means and an end. It is an end because control over our bodies, as the women's movement has emphasised, is central to controlling our lives. Butand this will be argued later in more detail-personal control over health cannot be achieved merely by individuals, for the forces which threaten it can often only be opposed by collective action . Only when we have collectively controlled the social forces producing ill-health, can people genuinely be said to be taking entirely `free' risks with their health . However, as well as being a primary objective, an end in itself, it also has secondary effects . For when people desire to control their own health-or the context in which they will take risks with it-it is because it is necessary to other goals . In a capitalist society people are forced to take risks with their health in order to compete in labour markets to earn their subsistence . In a socialist society the desire for health would be related to totally different sets of goals, connected with developing oneself as a human being. To the well-known question `education for what?' could be added `health for what?' This is not to say that we should envisage the creation of a totally healthy society . Even if that were a realistic goal, to define it as an `aim of socialism' is to rob socialism of what I take to be its essential character, that no social goals are determined external to conscious human choices. In capitalism on the contrary, health and ill-health are both made to serve the needs of capital accumulation . In other words, health is a secondary as well as primary goal, but the exact nature of its secondary character cannot be defined in abstract, but only by reference to the total social context . One way of driving this point home is by noticing that the National Front has a policy of massive improvements in health by physical fitness campaigns and health education . In doing so they are betraying their secondary goals (health as a means) : under the guise of `health' as an `unquestionably' desirable goal, they are seeking to militarise social life . The NAZI regimes of the 1930s also used such campaigns as a preparation for military conquest . The founding programme of the Nazi Party stated : `The State must apply itself to raising the standard of health . . .and increasing bodily efficiency by legally obligatory gymnastics and sports, and by extensive use of clubs engaged in the physical training of the young' .[6] As every student of social reform knows, attempts in the early 20th Century to improve the health of the population were not unconnected to the secondary goal of defending and extending the British Empire . The total abolition of ill-health is not of course a feasible goal in any mode of production, even though much ill-health could so be removed at source . Therefore alongside it must go attempts to restructure health care .

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THE STATE AND THE NHS

One approach to orthodoxy might be a critique which claimed that rather than being a 'semi-socialist' or socialist `island' in a capitalist society, the NHS `functions' in the interests of Capitalism by helping to `reproduce' labour power and take care of `useless' labour power as cheaply as possible . This is to a large extent true . When I worked as a nurse there was a saying that the NHS was concerned with three types of task : `hatch', `patch' and `dispatch' . I know of no better way of expressing the relation of the NHS to capitalism . Is this functional view, however, the only alternative to orthodoxy? It seems to me that, in its own way, it is just as crude . For it is simply what the NHS does which is the crucial issue for the Marxist functionalist approach . From the previous discussion, a socialist critique of what the NHS does cannot be separated from the way it does it . The separation of the mass of the people and health workers from real determination of what is of benefit to them, is crucial to Capital's domination of the health service . Professional knowledge serves to impose notions of benefit on the working class and other oppressed groups in the guise of a `helping' ideology,[7] but one which often accords with the interests of Capital . As socialists we cannot easily isolate the question of whether what is done is beneficial to Capitalism, when part of that process is the very act of imposing definitions of benefit . Perhaps the distinction that some make between the form and the function of the State may be helpful. [8] The form of the Statean individualist practice based on imposed notions of benefits (which to work must often be genuinely ambiguous and not straightforwardly oppressive)-is a capitalist one : it is opaque because the form disguises the character. In practice, however, the way in which it operates directly, or indirectly, in the interests of Capital is complex and not automatic . The best place to start-and the question can only finally be settled by detailed empirical examination-is to examine the relationship between the NHS, the labour market, and other institutions like the family which are grouped around labour markets . A glimpse of these relationships can be seen in Industrial Democracy, where the Webbs identify what they believe are two major threats to national efficiency : `weaklings' and `degenerates' . State social policy in a capitalist society always needs to deal with each, though at different times the response has varied, oscillating from direct repression to attempts to `help', to contain or `rehabilitate' . However, whether the approach is hard or soft, curative or custodial, both groups are always considered a burden. Detailed consideration needs to be given to why the response to these social problems varies, and to the specific role of the health service . Here we can note that the State form is based on the premise that when individuals cannot cope either in the factory or the family, for whatever reasons, it is individuals who have failed the system rather than the system which has failed individuals . A good part of the NHS is concerned to deal with or prevent such problems : care of children to prevent weaklings, the emotional and physical patching up of people who threaten to become labour market or domestic



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failures, their containment and rehabilitation and, finally, dispatch of the remainder at low cost . This is not a total explanation for the activities of the health service, nor does it prevent a great deal of genuine human concern, kindness and committed care . However the chances for humanistic tendencies to come to the fore are diminished in a NHS so powerfully constrained by the need to help reproduce, on behalf of the capitalist class as a whole, the total social Capital . The relation between Capital and the NHS is not a constant but a changing one, within which expenditure crises play a significant, but overemphasised part . But it is the dynamic relationship with the outside society, mediated by the labour market, which must be borne in mind. For example, in a near-full employment economy workers are relatively irreplaceable and this may help to justify workers' demands for extra spending on the NHS, on the assumption by the state that it has pay-offs for maintaining productivity . The NHS is also used to release women from caring roles which might tie them to the reserve army of labour . In a period of capitalist downturn, changes in both these needs of Capital (and general doubts about medical efficacy) have helped to exacerbate the expenditure crisis . We also need to examine the dynamics within capitalism which place changing demands on the NHS . Perhaps those most worth examining are : (i) the ways in which capitalism has led towards urbanised living patterns which both create new physical and mental health problems and disrupt the traditional means of dealing with them ; (ii) changes in the labour process which not only lead to new physical and mental hazards of work, but through a process of intensification burn people out quickly and reject those who cannot maintain a certain pace of working ; and (iii) the vested interest firms often have in promoting harmful consumption patterns .[ 91 The health service also has important legitimating purposes, not least by giving contemporary capitalism a `human face' . Those of us who grew up with the welfare state were told that though not as rich as the Americans, we did have the NHS . Its existence helped sweeten the acceptance of relative economic decline-and there was more than a germ of truth in the claim that British capitalism was as a result more civilised, even if it was also more impoverished . Other forms of legitimation have been pointed out by the women's movement-the health service power structure provides some of the most powerful archetypes of relations between men and women . Medicine has become one of the major legitimating occupations in a society where inequality is presented not so much as God-given, but as due to innate biological properties distributed differently between classes, races and sexes . When doctors participate in this biologistic legitimating process they help to provide `expert' arguments against the social determination of inequality and domination . They thus seek to remove it from human control : making class, sex and race inequality seem everlasting by giving them a medical stamp of approval . Doctors are `experts' in a health service which in appearance is based on achievement principles rather than ownership of property, yet which reproduces the same class, sex and race inequalities

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH to be found in any capitalist firm . Yet whatever we may say about left orthodoxy, it has emphasised a commitment to free health care for all, regardless of its utility to capitalism . To the extent that this has been achieved, it has represented a drain on Capital and is profoundly different from pre-war health services, which serviced `key' insured workers and children. Of course `equal rights' to health care are not realised in practice, but in most people's minds this is probably not self-evident, and this may serve legitimating purposes . Just as the myth of equal access to education helps to legitimate a `social mobility' society (i .e . one based on individual rather than collective advance) so the same arguments could be applied to the NHS . The NHS creates the myth that people start with an equal `stock of health' which they can then `invest' or lay waste by working hard (which never did anyone harm) to maximise their potential . Of course, in reality, working class people have sickness problems which the NHS does not deal with at source, or even adequately after the event, and health and education are not the most fundamental means of distributing people to social positions . Nevertheless, the NHS has mediated the relation between sickness and labour market institutions in a way which, whilst not directly in contradiction with capitalism, does confer what I think are perceived as `benefits' by most working class people . The fact that the NHS does not increase the financial burden that sickness brings is, of course, a contrast with health services in countries like the USA. However, the NHS cannot deal directly with the economic effects of ill-health upon individuals except by patching them up and returning them as functioning workers, parents or pensioners . Illness is a profoundly decollectivising experience . Even though the insecurity and loss of control which are associated with it are essentially social, it is experienced, and dealt with, largely as an individual or individual-family crisis . Yet the crisis and loss of control brought in the wake of sickness is, for those who live by selling their labour power, or are dependent on those who do, as much economic and social in origin and effect, as biological . We cannot hope to understand the power relations that exist between health workers unless we also understand that dependency is closely related to loss of market capacity, or the threat of it, as a major social consequence of much illness . Neither can one understand relations between family members when one of them is sick without looking at the economic and social relations of all family members, and the effect or potential effect of sickness on them . In the last section of the paper I will argue for a materialist analysis of sickness as a necessary means of transcending orthodoxy . It must be complemented, however, by a materialist analysis of the sick . We must show how the individual crises of sickness are not only biological events but mediated by the social institutions of capitalist societies . They are as much a product of them as is exploitation itself: it is a class, not a socially neutral `welfare' issue . To demand economic security for the chronic sick is necessarily to contradict a basic principle of capitalism, that rewards should be related to market capacity .

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It is factors such as these which constrain the way in which the NHS operates, but the relation is a complex one . The `functionality' of the NHS for capitalism is not given but constantly has to be realised in practice-and there is struggle over it, though not necessarily always of an explicit kind . This happens in any State institution : but particularly in the NHS . Because it is supposed to operate in individuals' interests, it has a genuinely ambiguous character . This is ironically part of its functionality, but it is thereby also to some extent its Achilles' heel . There are important constraints on the NHS operating against the interests of Capital, but even within those constraints some degree of variation is possible .

THE NEW BOURGEOIS CRITIQUE OF MEDICAL CARE

So far in this article it has been argued, or implied, that to transform the social experience of sickness requires a general social transformation, alongside changes in the social relations of production in health care . In short, a socialist health service can only flourish in a socialist society . In the final sections, the argument is taken a step further: a general transformation of society is also necessary in order to make substantial inroads into the forces making people sick . It is on this basis that we complete our critique of orthodoxy . For one of its major deficiencies is that it takes for granted medical definitions of health and disease which direct attention away from the social causes of disease . Orthodoxy gives little attention to those features of the social organisation of our society which produce illhealth . Indeed it helps to foster `the NHS illusion'-that the problems of ill-health in our society can be largely dealt with by more and `better' health services, the `better' meaning to a considerable extent `whatever doctors decide' . Left orthodoxy thus encourages the false political conclusion that a strategy for health can be more or less equated with a strategy for the NHS . It compartmentalises health issues into medical ones and fails to confront the truly revolutionary implications of a politics of health . One result of our anxiety to defend the NHS from attack is the dismissal of right wing attacks on the effectiveness of health services as diversionary . Yet there is often some truth in their arguments . Increasing expenditure on health services may well lead to diminishing returns in terms of achieving significant improvements in health . Nevertheless it is still open to us to dispute many of the arguments used to reach seemingly similar conclusions, as well as to differ sharply on solutions to that crisis . Hence we should seek to identify the inadequate bourgeois character of the critique of capitalist medicine . In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish the attack on the NHS from the critique of medicine in general . The right in this country has tended to argue that the absence of the price mechanism is a prime cause of abuse . According to this mythology, the NHS has long since achieved substantial improvements in the health of the population, and people are now putting trivial or false demands on

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH the health service . Often associated with this is the view that demand for health services is potentially infinite, and that, in the absence of price rationing, policy-makers simply have to decide on a cut-off point. Since this arrangement assumes that basic health needs have been met it clearly legitimates cutbacks in the growth of expendture. A basic problem with this view is that it emphasises the amount of influence that patients have in determining the health care they receive . While having some influence, an elite group of producers play the most important role in distorting services towards `trivial' or `false needs' at the same time that more basic needs go unmet . Because of this there is no guarantee that cutting off services at a particular point will change the situation for the better . It is just as likely to change it for the worse, as the elite groups fight hard to protect their services . The critique of commentators like Illich is more telling . It gets closer to the truth for it is primarily an attack on medicine rather than the NHS . i t blames producers for encouraging false expectations that medicine can solve all kinds of problems for which, he argues, there is ultimately no solution . Illich furthermore believes that attempts to deal socially with the causes of disease are either `engineering for a plastic womb', or self-defeating : `Our prevailing ailments, helplessness and injustice are largely the side effects of strategies for more and better education, housing, diet or health' .[10] His solution is to put the wheels of progress in reverse, and he preaches stoicism in the face of disease, pain and suffering . Behind his views on health, as on other issues, is the assumption that there are simply two social alternatives : on the one hand `traditional' society, which embodies everything wholesome, where life is lived spontaneously in obedience to human values, and modesty our protection against folly, on the other `industrial society', the embodiement of all that is dehumanised . An overrationalised society, whose faith in the effectiveness of conscious plans and intentions, leads to a constant tendency to overreach ourselves . Illich's critique of medicine cannot be taken in isolation from a general critique of `modernity' . The merit of Navarro's in many ways excellent critique, is that it confronts Illich precisely at the level of his overall politics . Navarro uncovers many of the capitalist processes underlying industrial societies tracing their effect on health and health care : ` . . the greatest potential for improving the health of our citizens is not through changes in the behaviour of individuals, but primarily through changes in the patterns of control, structures, and behaviour of our economic and political system' . [11] Unfortunately Navarro goes beyond this to claim that all `life style' politics is `not only very limited but naive and sheer escapism' . While much of the pressure towards self-care and the adoption of new `healthy' lifestyles has been conservative, focussing on the individual not the social obstacles to health, it is wrong to see all such

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moves in this direction as inherently reactionary . Like many on the left, Navarro has overacted against ` . . .the cultural politics of the Woodstock nation (which) proved easily cooptable and irrelevant to the solutions of our problems in the sixties .' The tendency to counterpose `lifestyle' politics against the undisputed need to obtain wider changes is one which has been much criticised by the women's movement . It is also where alternative forms of self-help and cultural change in health care have occurred that are poles apart from Illich's prescriptions . Of course, tendencies towards cooptation are present, but that danger is by no means restricted to cultural politics. Illich addresses himself to difficult questions which ought to concern us as socialists : how can people be helped to cope better with suffering if it cannot be entirely eliminated? The conservatism of Illich's critique of medicine is in some respect matched in psychiatry by the persistent polemics of Szasz . One difference is that Szasz brings in an element significantly missing from Illich (and Navarro) : the relation between professional control and patient oppression. Szasz sees much psychiatry as a means of social control, by which it `fulfils a basic human need-to validate the Self as good (normal), by invalidating the Other as evil (mentally ill)' .[12] This is the strand in Szasz's thought which has received most attention : his defence of the mental patient as a convenient scapegoat who is labelled sick and therefore in need of help, whether she wants it or not . This has led many to associate him with radical psychiatrists like Laing and Cooper . But Szasz is not unreservedly on the side of the victims, except when they are being persecuted by institutional psychiatry . He also, in ways strikingly similar to Illich, defines mental illness on some occasions, as a means of refuge for those who wish to avoid the difficult moral dilemmas that accompany life : `I have tried to show that, on the one hand, by seeking relief from the burden of his moral responsibilities, man (sic) mystifies and technicises his problems in living ; and that, on the other hand, the demand for `help' thus generated is now met by a behavioural technology ready and willing to free man of his moral burdens, by treating him as a sick patient' . [ 13] Underlying this is a pessimistic view of human nature . Szasz describes humanity as : ` . . .the innocent and helpless victims of internal passions and external controls that shape and possess him . . .(T)he prerequisites of industrial liberty are not only freedom from arbitrary political and interpersonal control . . .but, also, and more important still, self-discipline' .[ 141 Szasz's message, despite its surface radicalism, is ultimately as chill-

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ing and comfortless as Illich's . Yet while the latter is a `Tory' opponent of all medicine, Szasz is more of a free market opponent of `institutional psychiatry', regarding `contractual psychiatry', (where the patient pays his way) as free of oppression . [15] The proponents of the `deviancy' approach to mental illness are open to the charge of being insensitive to a great deal of mental suffering. This charge is misplaced to the extent that the deviancy school seek to protect us from suffering caused by psychiatric persecution . And perhaps it is also justifiable to be suspicious of 'treatments' which help only by anaesthetising the mental suffering or which are a means, as one critic describes electroconvulsive therapy, of `pursuing happiness through brain damage' .[ 161 Yet Szasz pays little attention to the circumstances which lead to mental disturbance, nor how it is subsequently experienced . He sees it as a label imposed by outsiders, or a manifested defect in an individual's moral character. Alongside individualist critiques of illness as a form of social control stand corporate celebrations of it . Social control can easily be reified into a functional necessity, as it is by Parsons' heartless concept of the `sick role' .[17] Here social control operates only if we assume that modem medicine is effective . Illness represents a threat to the social order : it interrupts an individual's social functioning and limits overall productivity . But there is no need to deal with this by overtly repressive means ; instead the sick-role enables the liberal-professional facade to be successfully maintained. By learning and internalising its norms, individuals are temporarily excused from normal obligations so long as they are motivated, not only to get better, but to seek appropriate professional help . But that was in other more confident days . Now, doubts have set in . While Illich aims most of his missiles at the medical professset in . While Illich aims most of his ion, others save most of their criticism for us . After having been sweetly reassured for years that it was only a matter of time before a cure was found for every ill, we are now informed that we are to blame for not taking sufficient care of our own health . The right have been so successful in putting this message across that it has eagerly been adopted by Fabian socialists like Brian Abel-Smith . Assessing the track-record of the first 30 years of the NHS he declares that `Faster progress could be made in doing what needs to be done if the burden of preventable illness and accidents could be lightened-if people took more responsibility for safeguarding their own health rather than expecting health professionals to restore what has been thrown away .'[ 18] This new ideology has been succinctly summarised by Rob Crawford in the phrase `you are dangerous to your health'[ 19 ] . Traditionally, ill-health was not considered culpable . Now state policy is differentiating the `undeserving sick' in a similar fashion to the undeserving poor.[20] The current ruling-class obsession with levels of public expenditure is, of course, a major influence . Health education ad-

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vertisements encourage us to wear seat-belts, not just for our own sake : ` . . .people who feel they should have the freedom to go through a car windscreen if they choose to, might consider this : have they really the right to occupy hospital beds unnecessarily when medical resources are already so stretched'[ 21 ] . Many of the advertisements are aimed at, and largely blame, women-for overfeeding their charges, or for leaving the front door open and allowing their children to stray out and get run over .

THE CRISIS OF The aim of the new right is to achieve a general lowering of expectations of the NHS . Advertisements in GP's surgeries warn us not COMMODITY HEALTH CARE automatically to expect a prescription . The Government has launched a `Look After Yourself' campaign, and the parks are full of joggers . We need to respond to these developments at two levels . First, to recognise that in some areas the NHS is not meeting needs which clearly exist (for example, the 50% of abortions which are carried out in the private sector) . Where this is the case, the attempt to lower expectations is - purely reactionary and to be unequivocably opposed . But secondly there are other instances where a lowering of expectations concerning medical care can have a potentially progressive impact . This can lead us to rely more on our own resources and knowledge rather than place trust in a medical elite which expropriates from us knowledge and control over our minds and bodies . It can also direct our attention to the social rather than individual causes of much ill-health . There is- no need for us to make the preposterous claim that individuals cannot and ought not safeguard their own health . We can still emphasise that the major factors which affect people's health and set the framework in which individual choices are made, can only be properly tackled collectively . And we can also show that to do so requires a frontal assault upon the most powerfully entrenched vested interests in our society . Professionals may control the sick, but they are hopelessly weak in the face of the forces in our society which make people ill . The new right assumes, on the contrary, that individual avoidance is possible, because it also makes the additional assumption that people are, or ought to be, masters and mistresses of their own lifestyles. Yet in the factory and the wider community the priorities set in motion by capitalism have a profound influence on lifestyles . The power of Capital over people's lives is the power to structure the context in which personal choices are made . As Marx claimed in the 18th Brumaire : `Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please .' A foremost task of a socialist strategy for health is to develop means

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH of struggling collectively to alter the social context in which personal choices are made . Intellectuals should serve and assist that process, without taking over by imposing their own definitions of people's health needs . A necessary task is to try to combat the NHS illusion that health care is the major route for dealing with ill-health ; another is to try to make as transparent as possible, the opaque relationships between ill-health and the mode of production in contemporary Capitalism . As far as the first is concerned, we have to make clear that the crisis of the NHS is not just a question of finance but, from a socialist perspective, a crisis in the commodity form of health care . Since this enters a very complex area, a few paragraphs of explanation are required . Marx's analysis of the commodity focusses on its dual character : as well as having a use-value, a commodity also has an exchange value . What he means by this is that a commodity is a particular way of satisfying human needs through market transactions, i .e . a specific set of social relationships organised around the consumption of use values. Although Marx's practical examples are largely in terms of physically concrete articles, like bales of cotton, he makes it clear that it is the form, whether something is bought or sold, rather than its tangibility or 'thingness' which determines commodity status. Indeed, he explicitly attacks Adam Smith for viewing `productive' and `unproductive' labour largely in terms of 'thingness' . The critical distinction is whether something can be sold to make a profit and accumulate value, and he makes it plain that education and health care could qualify as commodities on these grounds . Clearly work in the NHS is, directly at least, unproductive labour in the strict sense that it obviously does not lead to the accumulation of value . Yet there are other difficulties which derive primarily from Marx's failure to define use values (since he disposes of the issue in a cavalier fashion on the very first page of Capital) . While use values clearly exist independently of commodities, exchange values cannot exist independently of some underlying use value . However, as far as Marx was concerned, this underlying use value could be taken for granted . It did not matter whether it was `real' or `imaginary' . To an extent this was valid, for Marx was concerned to understand a system where use-values were always mediated by exchange values. But it leaves great problems in its wake, not least the ways in which production for exchange distorts use-values, leads to forced wants. It is perhaps of some significance that such issues have come to the fore in the era of monopoly capital when wants are increasingly manipulated by marketing techniques . In a sense, medicine has always been such a commodity, because the monopoly power of producers to determine use values has been long established . For this reason, the claim that medical care is not a commodity because producers rather than consumers determine use values does not seem a valid objection . In many areas of economic life, this is becoming the rule rather than the exception . The danger of the commodity analogy is that it can lead us to

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assume the patient is a consumer and always receives any use values produced . Yet in whole areas of psychiatry, for example, it is difficult to talk in any convincing sense of patients as the prime beneficiaries of any use values produced . Another problem is that of `multiple' use values although this is a characteristic of many, more familiar commodities . As Marx emphasised, the felt need by workers to feed and clothe themselves is matched by a need for capitalists to reproduce labour power . These problems are compounded in the case of health care . For example in the case of an elderly person cared for in hospital, who does the use value accrue to? To the patient, or to the woman who can now go out to work? To her or the employer who profits from her labour power, or to the family who can now afford a holiday? Perhaps it is the reality of multiple use values that helps to mask the class character of the NHS . Another important feature of use values is that they often have time scales attached to them . Some products produce immediate use values but carry long term drawbacks-like cigarettes . A major operation may offer no immediate use-value but carry the promise of long term advantages. A distinctive feature of medical care as a commodity is therefore the weighing of present discomforts against future use-values, which inevitably involves a degree of uncertainty . Even so, many critics of `high technology' medical care claim that discomforts outweigh ultimate use-values . But it would be dangerous (as we insisted earlier) for socialists simply to assume that more `low technology' caring services of necessity have a greater use value, if the problem of who determines use-values is not tackled . Bearing these points in mind, it is still valid to consider the kind of health care provided under the NHS as a commodity form . It is a nationalised rather than a socialist form of health care : the position and dominance of physicians in the labour process largely bears the stamp of the period when medicine was a pettycommodity form of production despite it now being within the State sector. Medicine may appear to depart from mass-produced commodities in being supposedly tailored to individual needs by producers, even though this is channelled through the standardised products of drug and equipment manufacturers . However, in reality, a lot of care is mass produced too-like the routine prescription for tranquillisers that most GPs give their depressed women patients . Yet there is a politically more fundamental way in which health care is a commodity, )y virtue of its being an individualist form of consumption . The production and consumption of the commodities churned out by capitalism are responsible for much of the ill-health and mental disturbances we find around us. Instead of tackling these at source, with all the political implications that would follow, we are encouraged to seek to deal with it by consuming another commodity-health care . The commodity form makes no impact on the forces outside the immediate control of individuals which crucially affect health and ill-health . It could even be suggested that it yields diminishing returns for individuals . For all these reasons, even when the health service is not operating in ways directly funct-

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ional for capitalism, it does not actively operate against its interests, not only because of what it does, but also because of the way it intervenes, at the level of individuals . (For some bourgeois critics this seems a poor justification, while others are more concerned with the cost to the state, particularly when health services are socialised .) There is therefore a crisis in the NHS-as in modem medicine in general-which goes deeper than finance . Pouring money into health services cannot deal with the central contradiction : that between its individualistic mode of intervention and the social and economic production of health and ill-health . Critics like Illich recognise the diminishing returns of modern medicine, but fail to identify any structural causes . Indeed, he sets his face against collective solutions, and can only offer stoicism in the face of pain and suffering. But we can complete the critique begun by bourgeois critics of modem medicine whose suspicion is often based on the classic liberal-economic distrust of monopoly power . A collective democratic solution to the social causes of ill-health is the opposite of social engineering. It means assisting oppressed groups in society to mobilise against, and ultimately control, the forces which make them unnecessarily sick .

THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF HEALTH AND ILLHEALTH

Helping to dissolve the opacity of the relation between capitalism and ill-health-which is genuinely complex-is an important intellectual task . The reason Marx placed such amphasis upon intellectual effort and discovery was not to produce elegant theories. It was based on his conviction that capitalism, unlike feudalism, was an opaque form of exploitation which appeared, on the surface, to give labourers a `fair' price for their labours . Only by digging beneath those surface appearances could the exploitative nature of the system be laid bare . Essentially the same task confronts those concerned about health and illness : the relation between, for example, stress, ill-health and the mode of production is highly complex and mediated through many processes . However the most important requirement is, in the first instance, a sensitivity to the possibility that the capitalist mode of production may be implicated, otherwise we will not seek to establish causative links and miss them even when they are apparent . For example, the link between cancer and vinyl chloride in the manufacture of PVC took much longer to be established because we do not automatically link cancer with occupational conditions . Bourgeois ideology is an integral part of medicine, because it reifies disease categories . Reification is the tendency to fetishise features of the social world by making them appear as relations between things rather than people . They become part of the `natural order of things' . It is not so much futile to try to change them, rather the idea of change is inconceivable in itself . Disease categories are reified firstly when acts of deviance are defined as individual forms of sickness . This lessens the threat of having to accept them as

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authentic acts, the need is for individuals to adapt rather than to change the social circumstances that give rise to them. Soviet psychiatry's treatment of dissidents in only an extreme example of this tendency . As Zola has argued, `By locating the source and treatment of problems in an individual, other levels of intervention are effectively closed . By the very acceptance of a specific behaviour as an "illness" and the definition of illness as an undesirable state, the issue becomes not whether to deal with a particular problem, but how and

when'[ 22] . To assert for example that homosexuality is a form of deviance and not illness, can lead us to accept its authenticity . But not of necessity, for `social control' can also be reified in ways which see deviance as a self-evident problem. It should also be remembered that the notion of deviancy can be related to that of sickness in more than one way . Parsons' conception that . the sick-role was deviant does not challenge medical definitions of illness, but sees the social component of the role as complementary . It is deviant because the normal (in the sense of an ideal?) expectation is to function adequately in one's primary role as worker, mother or whatever [ 23 ] . This is very different from the concept of deviancy described above which sees it as an alternative, and a challenge, to the validity of the medically reified notion of illness. It should not be thought that the patient is always an unwilling victim in this labelling process . For example, Alcoholics Anonymous believes that alcoholism is a disease rather than a form of social deviance, perhaps because `disease' is seen as synonymous with `involuntary', and the burden of shame and personal responsibility is thereby lifted . As we saw, Szasz comes close to arguing that mental illness is a form of subconscious `hiding' from the moral dilemmas of life, not far short of malingering . A more humane approach would be to understand that such hiding is an understandable response to immensely difficult human problems, but that it is ultimately a false solution . It often involves great suffering in itself, and makes us dependant objects of the decisions of others, rather than the active subjects of our own destinies . Yet we may talk of reification in a second sense, even when we do not challenge directly the appropriateness of medical definitions of disease . In such circumstances, we accept the reality of diseases, but attack the failure to go beyond their manifestation in individual bodily processes, to identify the social and economic forces which led them to be there in the first place . Where causes are identified there is rarely any attempt to go beyond a description of the specific agents concerned . As a result disease is either seen as an unfortunate occurrence which, like a comet, strikes out of the blue or else individual acts of avoidance are typically recommended . Until recently, the observance of scrupulous rituals of personal hygiene was seen as the best prophylactic . But with the decline of serious infectious diseases, increasing attention is given to promoting the

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH idea of the `discriminating consumer' and the `careful' motorist, worker, housewife etc . The possibility that collective means of intervention might obviate the need for such individual acts of avoidance is rarely discussed . The use of disease categories need not always blot out considerations of such forms of action, but it often does . In such circumstances plain common sense might be more useful-a central point made in this excerpt from Brecht's beautiful poem `A Worker's Speech to a Doctor' : Are you able to heal? When we come to you Our rags are torn off us And you listen all over our naked body . As to the cause of our illness One glance at our rags would Tell you more . It is the same cause that wears out Our bodies and our clothes . The pain in our shoulder comes You say, from the damp, and this is also the reason For the stain on the wall of our flat . So tell us : Where does the damp come from? [24] Brecht wrote these words at a time when the relationship between ill-health and the mode of production was much more transparent . Even then, apparently, doctors had, despite their high skill and learning, a `trained incapacity' to draw the connections between ill-health and the society in which it occurs . There are two reasons why the relationship has now become much more opaque . First, there is the assumption that nowadays it is no longer the diseases of `poverty' which afflict us but the diseases of `affluence' . Yet the relation between poverty and ill-health is just as strong .[ 251 A glance at the morbidity and mortality tables for different Registrar General's classes, shows this connection . These are, of course, largely based on income gradations, rather than classes as defined by their relationship to the means of production . However, the class differential for a major range of diseases from coronary thrombosis, stomach ulcers, lung cancer and accidents is, by the Government's own figures, very marked indeed . And though women on the whole have a higher life expectancy than men, here too there are marked variations according to social class [26] . The Government conducts virtually no research into the reasons why, and the medical profession appears also to be largely uninterested. However, the assumption is simply made that it is people's 'life-style' or irrational behaviour which is the root of the problem-without any evidence being brought forward to back up these assumptions. The importance of the `diseases of affluence' argument relates to the notion of `individual responsibility', which implies that

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no longer may the blame for ill-health be pinned upon capitalism . Blame may have attached at some long distant date, but the illhealth from which people now suffer is deemed to be a result of capitalism's success, in increasing people's longevity, and in providing people with the income which they can choose to spend on t things which cause them harm . This too, helps to legitimise cutbacks on the NHS, placing question marks over its future expansion . For it is said that the kinds of demands now being placed on it are qualitatively different from those in the past . The NHS has, it is falsely argued, cleared the backlog of poverty-related ill-health . It is now up to individuals to adopt a healthy life style and not place `false' or unnecessary demands on the NHS . If we are not to fall into the trap of left orthodoxy, we need to approach this ideology with caution . It cannot be denied that there have been considerable improvements in health for substantial sections of the working class . It is now widely accepted that these have much more to do with improved living standards than with better health services . But it must also be asked : `where did the improved living standards come from?' Of course, they were fought for by generations of working class people, and were partly made possible by imperialist expansion . The fact that degenerative processes are inevitable in the long run does not mean that the replacement of 19th Century epidemics largely by degenerative diseases is entirely a sign of our success in our combatting ill-health, for they strike those lower in the class structure earlier . In other words, there is something in the way working class people live which burns out their bodies quicker relative to other classes, despite the fact that working class people now generally live longer . The problem for us is to show exactly how and why this happens, which is no easy task . To go beyond the epidemiological evidence which shows clear enough associations between class and differential morbidity and mortality, to specify causal connections is not easy . It can only be done by collaborative efforts between socialist scientists, social scientists and political activists, if the mists surrounding the social production of ill-health in contemporary Capitalism are to be cleared . It involves identifying the ill-health effects of how people live, work and enjoy themselves, and the extent to which people are in control of these circumstances . To say that the causes of ill-health are in `the environment' is too vague : it merely begs other questions, like what mechanisms propel that environment in the direction it takes . Some have answered this by saying that the pursuit of economic growth as the main social priority leads both to pressure to cut the health service, and a worsening of health-in the factory, on the roads, and through the goods people consume . Such an approach, associated with the work of the Unit for the Study of Health Policy [27], challenges both the notions of individual responsibility and left orthodoxy, but within a social democratic framework . It emphasises the need to change economic priorities if we really care about improving health . These arguments represent an advance but they do not go far enough . They tend to see problems as ones of `economic

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH priorities' rather than fundamentally connected with the distribution of power in our society. The focus on `growth' is idealist . Where does growth come from? What kind of obstacles are there in changing course? Furthermore, they tend to accept the idea that much ill-health derives from `affluence', For revolutionaries it is not the pursuit of growth which is the major obstacle to devising-if people wish them--healthier life styles, but the pursuit of capitalist accumulation, which capitalism must of necessity pursue . The implications are profound . First, we do not have to argue that wicked capitalists deliberately set out to produce ill-health, but that economic activity under the Capitalist mode of production will not lead to the pursuit of health goals if these conflict with the need for profits . Second, the extent to which the State can change capitalism's course from the pursuit of growth (accumulation) is likely to be extremely limited . The accumulative mechanism is the central dynamic of our society which mediates the process by which deviants are labelled sick, and the sick as deviant ; it channels the biological agents of disease and structures personal disease-inducing choices . Work is already under way in the USA to construct what has been called a `materialist epidemiology'[28] . In this country there is already sufficient information on industrial health and safety to show the contradiction between workers' health and profits [291 . The recent Science for People issue on health has begun to raise wider issues in this country . The debate around nuclear power has health as one of its central implications-not just for working class people but for the whole human race . The POHG pamphlet Food and Profit: It Makes You Sick has shown how apparent individual choices are in fact heavily influenced by the profit priorities of the food industry . Research has also illuminated the relation between the nuclear family and depression among women [30] . The struggle for significant improvements in health is of necessity one also against capitalism, just as it must be made much more central to the struggle for socialism . Capitalism does not just extract surplus labour and value from working class people, in so doing it also shortens their lives, and often cruelly incapacitates them during their available span . No greater indictment of capitalism exists, no greater reason for fighting to create a socialist society .

NOTES

Mick Carpenter is involved in health politics in Coventry and is a member of the Politics of Health Group . He has worked as a nurse in the NHS and is presently working on a history of trade union activity amongst health workers . He is based in the School of Industrial and Business Studies, University of Warwick . 1

The left literature consulted included the following, all published during the 1970's : Socialist Medical Association : Private Practice out of the NHS, Forward to a Socialist Health Service ; Radical Statistics Group : In Defence of the NHS, Whose Priorities? RAWP deals ; Communist Party : Issues of Medicine in Society ; Quality, Inequality and Health Care by John Robson, Take a Pill by John Robson, The NHS in England and Wales :



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A Marxist Perspective by Julian Tudor Hart ; Militant Tendency : A Socialist Programme to Save the NHS ; International Marxist Group : `Struggle for Health' Pamphlets 1-4, (i) NHS: A Suitable Case for Socialist Treatment, (ii) Crisis in the NHS : For a Workers' Solution, (iii) Defend the NHS, (iv) Crisis in the Health Service : The Socialist Solution ; International Socialists (now Socialist Workers' Party) : What is Happening to Our Health Service? It is my contention that all the works cited above display, to greater or lesser degrees, signs of being influenced by versions of Left Orthodoxy . For example, see Julian Tudor Hart, `The Inverse Care Law', in 2 C.Cox and A .Mead (eds .) A Sociology of Medical Practice, Collier-Macmillan (1975), pp .189-206 . Tom Manson has pointed out that many small hospitals were 3 closed as part of the expansion of the NHS . See his article, Health Policy and the Cuts', Capital and Class 7 (Spring 1979), pp .35-45 . Ivan Illich, Limits of Medicine : Medical Nemesis-The Exprop4 riation of Health, London : Marion Boyars (1976) . 5 See note 2 . Quoted by Searchlight magazine (1978) . 6 M .Edelman, Politics and Society . 7 8 See the three papers by the Edinburgh Cuts Group in the 1978 collection of CSE Conference Papers ; and, since the writing of this paper, the London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group, In and Against the State, London (1979) . 9 In retrospect, it can be said that the present article, amongst other things, fails to take sufficient account of the implications of an ageing population for a socialist politics of health . 10 Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis, p .155 . 11 Vicente Navarro, Medicine Under Capitalism, London : Croom Helm (1976), chapter on Illich, pp .103-131 . 12 Thomas Szasz, The Manufacture of Madness, London : Palladin (1973), p .27, emphasis added to illustrate the teleological character of Szasz's reasoning . 13 Thomas Szasz, Ideology and Insanity, London : Penguin (1974), p .3 . 14 Ibid, p .2 . A clear majority of mental patients have always been women, see Phyllis Chester, Women and Madness and Carol Smart, Women, Crime and Criminology . 15 See The Manufacture of Madness, p .23 . 16 See Leonard Frank (ed .), A History of Shock Treatment, San Francisco : Leonard Frank (1979) ; obtainable from the editor, 2300 Webster St ., San Francisco, California, 94115 . 17 Talcott Parsons, The Social System, London :RKP (1951) . 18 Brian Abel-Smith, NHS : The First Thirty Years . 19 Rob Crawford, `You Are Dangerous to Your Health' International Journal of Health Services, 7 (1977) . 20 `Health Issue Special' . Science for People, 38 (Winter 1977-8) . 21 The Guardian, 23 May 1978 . 22 Irving Zola, `Medicine as an Institution of Social Control', in C .Cox and A.Mead (eds .) A Sociology of Medical Practice, pp .170-185 . 23 Parsons, op .cit. 24 Bertolt Brecht, Poems : Volume 2 London : Eyre Methuen . 25 See the impressive evidence in Peter Townsend, Poverty . Penguin (1979) .

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LEFT ORTHODOXY AND THE POLITICS OF HEALTH 26

The figures are quoted in Prevention and Health : Everybody's Responsibility, London : HMSO . See also `Equal Health for All?' Labour Research March 1979 . 27 N .Dennis, P .Draper, T .Smart, Health, Money and the NHS, Guys Unit for the Study of Health Policy (1976) . 28 Associated with the work of the US based Health Movement Organisation (HMO), unfortunately not available in this country . However, parts of their work have been published as articles in the International Journal of Health Services, in recent years. 29 See for example, Theo Nichols and Pete Armstrong Safety and Profit Falling Wall Press ; monthly issues of Hazards Bulletin ; and Pat Kinnersley, The Hazards of Work, Pluto (1973) . 30 G .Brown and T .Harris, The Social Origins of Depression, London : Tavistock (1979) . However, the authors work very much within a `one-dimensional' approach to environmental factors, and in no way seek to challenge the medical mandate to define `depression' as a clinical as opposed to a social entity .

f

Ireland Socialist l Independent Marxist journal of research and discussion of Irish and Anglo-Irish affairs Topics include : British Labour Party policy (Nos 1, 3, 6) ; Political Economy of Ireland (Nos 2, 5, 6) ; Irish Labour and the National Question (Nos 1, 2, 6, 7) ; State Apparatus of Repression (No 4) ; The British Media (Nos 4, 6) ; Feminism and Ireland (No 5) ; Loyalism (No 7) .

Price (incl . postage) £0 .50 each (S 1 .25) Subscription £2 for four .issues (S5) International money order or $2 extra with nonsterling cheques . Available from : ISR, 60 Loughborough Rd, London SW9, England .

Finance Capital and the Crisis in Britain

Henk Overbeek

In this contribution I will analyse the development of the crisis in Britain over the last few decades . In other studies of this subject, a number of factors have received ample attention : The changing role of the state in the economy, the falling rate of profit, the problem of the nationalities making up the British state, the development of the world economic system are but a few of these factors. What is missing in most approaches, however, is discussion of one problem in particular : The structure ofpower relationsamong individual capitals in Britain and the way in which this structure influences and is influenced by events on the political and international planes . I hope that this article can contribute something to stimulating research into this field . In all major capitalist countries a tendency can be observed whereby the centre of gravity of the process of extraction of surplus value shifts to ever-higher levels of manufacturing . In this way basic industries, and in general industries with a low organic composition of capital, tend to become dominated by, and more and more attuned to, the interests and needs of industries manufacturing final consumer goods and sophisticated means of production . This development has important implications for social relations and political orientations . In these new industries, the production of relative surplus value reaches enormous heights and thus creates room for concessions to the working class . The conditions of production in these industries (continuous production, a high proportion of skilled labour, a high organic composition) require above all the continuity of the production process and thus a reasonable measure of social harmony . These are also the industries most prone to internationalisation of production and sales, and are thus particularly interested in market-enlargement through international free trade .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 These needs differ at least quantitatively from the needs of older industries working under less advanced conditions . There, the reliance on the home market is much heavier, and room for con . cessions to the working class is much smaller . In the United States this development took place in the late '20s and in the '30s of the New Deal . The basis for this development in the States was formed by the shortage of cheap labour, which led to an early emphasis on the application of labour-saving innovations . In Europe, where labour was plentiful and cheap, the need for labour-saving techniques was much less pressing . Here it was only after World War Two, and strongly influenced by American intervention through the Marshall plan, that this shift in the economy was performed . Britain, we would say, experienced a first taste of this during the '30s, but the further unfolding of this tendency was inhibited and slowed down considerably during the first ten years or so after 1945 . During the twenties, the prevalent coalition of interests was that between banking capital on the one hand, and colonial and mining capital on the other . Coal and steel capital belonged to the same coalition, but this position was partly forced upon it by the deflationary policies imposed by the other two . Of this dominant coalition, only the coal and steel capitalists directly confronted the British working class, as the other two fractions depended for their expansion on the exploitation of workers and peasants elsewhere in the world . Politically, this coalition remained a dominant force until well into the nineteen fifties . Economically, a new fraction of British capital, born during the domestic boom of the nineteen thirties, became the most advanced appropriator of surplus value :Modern industry, and especially mass consumer goods industry . Unimpeded accumulation for this fraction required completely different labour relations, which were drawn up during the thirties (the MacMillan Report) and put into practice under the guidance of the Labour and Tory governments of the late forties and early fifties and under pressure from the Unions. By the late fifties there was a reorientation of British foreign policy, away from continued dependence on the Commonwealth and towards better relations with the expanding markets in Western Europe, resulting finally in the British application for EEC membership in 1961 . This application, however, was turned down, presenting British capital with a distressing situation . During the sixties, the position of British capital deteriorated fast. Growing foreign competition, the growing costs of the `welfare state', and the effects of the third technological revolution, in addition to the decline of the Empire and the loss of export markets led to a situation in which something drastic had to be done to reestablish profitability for British capital . The Wilson government abandoned full employment as its number one priority, and the pound was devalued . The largest British corporations and those parts of the City that had become closely related to those corporations did not wait for British membership of the EEC, and invested heavily in Western Europe .

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In this situation, the final entry into the EEC in 1973 could mean only one thing : even further deterioration of the competitive position of British capital, notwithstanding an enormous wave of centralisation of capital. British finance capital (which term we shall define in the following section) was presented with almost insurmountable problems.

I. FRACTIONS OF CAPITAL, FINANCE CAPITAL, AND FINANCIAL GROUPS

In trying to define `finance capital', it may be useful to consider some widely shared misconceptions first . The first problem is the question of whether or not money capital can exist independently of productive capital . In my view this can only be the case when money capital relates to non-capitalist spheres of production . Profits made in the financial sector of the economy are nothing but a redistribution of the surplus product created in the productive sector, within or outside the country under consideration . Capital is a social relation . This implies that capital in the money form must be exchanged against labour to be capital at all . So, money capital cannot exist independently of productive spheres. Under fully developed capitalist conditions of production and exchange we can therefore maintain that there is no such thing as an independent circuit of money capital . This is an important point to make as it directly affects our analysis of the position of the City of London, both in Britain and in the world economy at large . The consequence of this is that a definition of finance capital simply in terms of the integration of the circuits of money capital and productive capital is a platitude . The crucial question is the particular historic form of this integration . This is the point of Lenin's critique of Hilferding's definition of finance capital, namely that he failed to link the concept of finance capital to the outstanding features of capitalist development in the period of the genesis of finance capital : Concentration and centralisation of capital . What, then, is the relation between these phemonena? Centralisation of capital, although being a general tendency of capitalist production, is particularly employed by capitalists as one of the means to counteract any tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Marx, Capital, Vol . 1, ch. 14) . The available data on the centralisation of capital in Britain confirm that centralisation accelerates in periods of capitalist stagnation (Aaronovitch 1975, p 124) : Around 1920, around 1930 and again from 1955 onward . At the same time, however, the involvement of financial institutions in this process increases . Many companies were not able to repay their loans in time, thus giving banks a vested interest in the well-being of the companies concerned . In other cases, whole branches of industry will need thorough reorganisation, often leading to the formation of oligopolies or cartels . In this process of restructuring and socialisation the production of surplus value and the relative importance of different branches of production changes, and with it the established structure of relations between and among different capitals. Financial companies play an important part in this process, both by providing finance and by sell-

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 ing their expertise . Thus, while both centralisation and the increase in the number of links between individual capitals are general phenomena of the capitalist mode of production, economic crisis has a stimulating effect : Centralisation accelerates, and individual capitals increase or shift their relations with each other . A further question is whether or not finance capital necessarily, entails the domination of banking capital over industrial capital, as is often assumed . The argument, going back to Hilferding and Lenin, rests upon Marx's treatment in Capital of the money form of capital as the form social capital assumes, as it is most easily transferred to those branches where profits are highest . `Money capital' as a form of capital in the abstract, however, must be clearly distinguished from `banking capital' or `finance capital', which refers to the institutional framework in which capital appears in the real world . The same distinction should of course be made between `productive capital' and `industrial capital' . This suggests that banks (and other purely financial institutions) do not necessarily form the centres of power. A last problem I would like to address here, is the `nationality' of finance capital. The work of Hilferding and Lenin was based on data from the United States, and, primarily, from Germany . In Germany, however, capitalist industry was built up under the auspices of the state, which directly intervened in the accumulation process while effectively shutting off the national economy from foreign competition. Consequently, finance capital assumed a strong nationally organised form, while this was not the case in other countries. Thus, we would disagree with Bukharin when he states that the tendency toward 'nationalisation' of the economy is always stronger than the tendency toward ' internationalisation', and that the formation of `state capitalist trusts' is a general law of capitalist development. Considering the elements mentioned above, I would propose the following working definition of finance capital : By finance capital we mean the integration of the circuits of money capital, productive capital and commodity capital under the conditions of monopolisation and internationalisation of capital by means of a series of links and relationships between individual capitals . The integration of these circuits takes on a durable structural character which is expressed in a network of relations between individual capitals, into which state organs are incorporated to the extent that state intervention in the economy is developed . These relations can be of the following nature : 1 financial (share ownership ; long-term credits and bonds ; shortterm credits) ; 2 services (advising on mergers and take-overs ; managing investment portfolios for other firms) ; 3 institutional (interlocking directorships) ; 4 informal (informal arrangements ; familial ties) ; In some measure all these relations will develop, but due to specific historical and legal conditions in different countries, different types

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of relations have been particularly prominent . Thus, in Germany and the United States the financial and institutional relations have historically been prominent, while in Britain relations of the second and fourth type have long been the most important ones. In its developed form, finance capital is divided into financial groups . These are groups of companies tightly connected to each other, with a cT aar focal point (usually a bank) from which the group strategy (investment decisions in the first place) is handed down to all lower levels concerned. Spectacular examples of these financial groups are found in the United States : the Rockefeller group with its centre in the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Morgan imperium, the Mellon and Dupont groups, and so on . In Britain, however, it is almost impossible to distinguish financial groups in this sense : The network of relations in Britain has had rather amorphous character until recently . The explanation of this fact must be sought in several factors . First of all, finance capital was very late to develop in Britain . Prior to World War I there was hardly any centralisation of capital . British industry enjoyed a near monopoly on the world market until around 1880 . No tariffs were imposed on foreign trade, which meant the absence of an important stimulus to the formation of cartels and trusts (Aaronovitch 1961, p . 38) . In other countries (U .S ., Germany, Japan) large scale modem industry was set up in the last quarter of the nineteenth century either with strong backing by the state or on the basis of a huge domestic market, while in Britain small scale structures and attitudes lingered on . Secondly, British banking was directed mainly at foreign operations . British industry realised surplus profits on the world market and consequently generated no demand for long term finance, while at the same time (of course partly as a result of this) British banking made greater profits in financing foreign trade and handling portfolio investments abroad than it did in its domestic operations (ibid ., pp . 39-40). Thirdly, as a result of its very early international orientation, there have always existed important relations between American and British capital, as a large part of the capital exported out of Britain during the nineteenth century went to the United States . As a consequence, it is possible that the structure of relationships between British companies is obscured by relations between British and American companies . Although we have not been able so far to do so, we feel that a thorough and systematic analysis of these relations would reveal a much clearer picture .[2] A last reason is that systematic information about relations between companies is available only on interlocking directorships . Thus, although being aware of its limited analytical value in the case of Britain, we must rely on these data if we want to say anything at all about the development of finance capital in this country . It would be much more satisfactory to consider interconnections between capitals within related circuits of capital, but such data are not available . Having established what we understand by finance capital and

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 financial groups, we can now proceed to analyse the forms in which finance capital took shape in Britain and the way in which its development partly shaped the severe crisis of British capitalism in the nineteen seventies.

II. TRANSITION BETWEEN THE WARS . 1919-1939

Up to the First World War, the British economy was dominated by two large groupings of capital . The larger part of the financial world (merchant banks and London clearing banks in particular), linked to colonial capital, accounted for the bulk of Britain's foreign earnings and thus for the role of the City as the financial centre of the world. The second group of capitals that accounted for Britain's supremacy during the larger part of the nineteenth century consisted of the coal-, steel-, textile- and railway-industries . The nineteen twenties are characterised primarily by the decline of these industries and the failure of attempts to reverse this process, notwithstanding the continuing prominence of this group well into the thirties in the political field . The twenties are further characterised by the steady rise in economic weight of the `new industries' producing mass consumer goods. It is the developing balance of power of these three groups that make up the theme of this section . The first signs of monopolisation in the British economy of any importance date back to around 1895 . It was, however, as a result of the depression following the post-war boom in 1919-1920, and as a result of the activities of the state intended to counter this depression by means of forced amalgamations in some basic industries, that the concentration and centralisation of capital gained any real momentum . However, this first merger movement did not dramatically alter the structure of relations between capitals that had developed before 1914 . The integration of the circuits of different forms of capital had until then been restricted to a loose fusion of internationally operating banking capital on the one hand and colonial capital on the other . The depression of the early twenties added to this network the coal- and railway-companies which were particularly hit by that depression. As a consequence of their financial stakes in the industries mentioned, several banks now acquired formal links in the form of interlocking directorships, by placing their directors on the boards of those companies so heavily in their debt (Stanworth/Giddens 1975, p . 12) . This development was forced upon the companies concerned by necessity, and did not point to the constitution of clear-cut financial conglomerates, in which a single overall strategy was adopted. This is brought out most clearly by the debate caused by the government's decision to return to the Gold Standard at the pre-war parity in 1925 . The City strongly supported the return, which was necessary for the maintenance of its leading role in international finance, in which American capital was making headway rapidly as a consequence of the outcome of World War I . The Federation of British Industry (FBI) on the other hand was



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in large majority opposed to this step which would entail a revaluation of 10%, and instead advocated a policy directed at protection of the Commonwealth markets (Winch 1972, p . 128) . The City held the upper hand in this clash and at its insistence a policy of deflation was followed, which for many branches of industry meant the necessity to turn to the production of absolute surplus value to maintain the rate of profit. In the branches that had dominated British exports since the nineteenth century (coal, textiles, steel) this necessity was especially urgent . The result of this policy was a period of violent class struggle in Britain. Money wages declined by 38% in the period 1920-1924, and unemployment never sank below 10% of the workforce during the twenties (Glyn/Sutcliffe 1972, p . 26) . The General Strike of 1926 represented at the same time the climax and the end of this intensified class struggle : In losing the General Strike, the working class lost the initiative it had still held in 1920. The defeat of the workers' movement removed the obstacles to the fulfilment of the requirements of the return to the Gold Standard by making possible mass redundancies and wage cuts. During the thirties the British working class gradually regained some of its strength but now on the reformist basis of collaborating with capital . This process started in 1928, when the TUC leadership met with a group of entrepreneurs from the new modern industries, headed by Sir Alfred Mond, chairman of I .C.I. These contacts finally culminated in the MacMillan Report of 1931, in which the T.U.C . accepted adaptation of the wages to the economic situation . As a result of this `social contract avant la lettre', real wages (for those who had work, of course) remained unchanged during the years 1932-1937, while they actually increased between 1929 and 1932 by 7 .8% (Glyn/Sutcliffe 1972, pp 32-34) . This stability of real wages during the Depression, in such contrast with developments elsewhere in the imperialist countries, was made possible by the sharp decline of agricultural prices on the world market (Dobb 1973, p . 335) . The traditional British dependence upon import of these goods, and the gradual constitution of a Sterling bloc further contributed to the comparatively slight impact of the crisis in Britain : ' . . .manufacturing production (1913=100) in the USA fell from 112 .7 in 1929 to 58 .4 in 1932 ; in Germany from 108 to 64 .4, but in Britain merely from 109 to 90' (Hobsbawm 1975, p. 184) . During the twenties, those branches of industry which had an interest in the production of relative surplus value had been small and without much influence, although they were among the fastest growing (e .g . chemicals, motor cars, electrical appliances) . During the thirties, however, they profited greatly from the peculiar situation then existing. Due to their conditions of accumulation-large scale of production, high organic composition of capital, semicontinuous production, a need for relatively few but highly skilled personnel-they became the principal proponents of a conciliatory policy toward the working class. So, on the one hand, new industries flourished as never before :

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 there was an enormous expansion of employment in several branches producing consumer goods, Britain became the second largest carproducing nation, wages were rising first and constant later, and there was considerable social peace . This sector was characterised by monopolisation on the national level, rather than cartellisation . It is clear, that American direct investments in Britain, concentrated as they were in the modem and expansive sectors, heavily stimulated monopolistic tendencies in these branches of production. On the other hand, however, there was stagnation in older industrial branches and regions, an enormous unemployment (up to 45% at times in coal and steel), cartels were formed at the instigation of the government, and there was a general resistance to technological innovation . An example of this was the attempt in 1936 by William Firth to introduce a continuous wide strip mill for manufacturing sheet steel (used in the production of motor cars for example) . He was only granted permission by the Steel Federation to go ahead (in 1939) after having accepted a supervisory board manned by his principal competitors and the Bank of England (Bum 1961, pp . 54-55) . On the international scene Britain had been moving ever since the First World War towards stronger and stronger protectionism in reaction to the deteriorating competitive position of British capital on the world market . In 1931 Britain left the Gold Standard and Sterling was devalued by 20%. During the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa in 1932 the system of Imperial Preferences was set up . The result was that the share of Commonwealth countries in British foreign trade increased rapidly . These protectionist measures completed the groundwork for the post-war developments . To summarise the most important aspects of the interwar years : During the nineteen twenties economic policy in Britain was dictated by a powerful coalition of internationally operating banking capital and colonial capital, mostly engaged in extractive industries . The specific interests (be it real or perceived) of these groups required the return to the Gold Standard at the pre-World-War-One parity . The heaviest burden of this policy was carried by the old export-oriented industries (coal, steel, textiles) which in order to cut their prices had to revert to an increase of absolute surplus value because resources which could have been used for labour-saving innovation had dried up in the depression of the early twenties . Thus, out of necessity as much as out of disposition, capitalists in these sectors of the economy increasingly turned to restrictive practices and to cartellisation . The state often had to come in to enforce the cooperation of all capitalists concerned, as is often the case when all are convinced of the desirability of limiting production but no one wants to be the first. The weakness of these groups, which had become especially clear during the thirties, found its counterpart in the growing strength of the `new industries' . Born in the twenties, these branches profited greatly from the conditions in the years after the Great Crash . Insulation from foreign competition coupled to a rather stable effective demand made for rapid accumulation in these branches .



III . RESTRUCTURING BY THE STATE . THE POST-WAR LABOUR GOVERNMENT

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The encapsulation of the Empire was important not only in this respect, but also in that it gave banking capital enough breathing space not to come into conflict with modern industry which could still finance its expansion out of its earnings . This conflict could easily have occurred in this period, were it not for the collapse of the Gold Standard in 1931 . It was now postponed, as we will argue, until after World War Two . The most serious friction between different groups of capital in these years occurred between the new manufacturing industries (the motor car industry in particular) and the old basic industries (steel) . The cartellisation in department I and the ensuing high coal- and steel-prices were a continuing source of conflict, which would only be resolved in favour of the manufacturing industries after the war . The same cartellisation, which during the thirties was still an obstacle to the even more rapid devlopment of modern industry, would after the war prove to be very helpful in restructuring these branches according to the needs of the mass-production industries . In the previous section we argued that as the war came, the balance of power between different groups of capital had shifted to such an extent, that a radically different structure in the economy would be needed to accomodate the requirements of the newly emerged and increasingly powerful groups of modem industrial corporations . It would be up to the post-war Labour government to effect this restructuring . In this section we will argue that the government did not nearly succeed in this task because of : The seemingly favourable competitive position on the world market of British capital in general in the years immediately following the war ; The continued strength (at least with respect to the formulation of economic and foreign policy) of colonial interests (both banks and extractive industries) ; The commitment of the government to full employment . In Britain, the war did not in itself create totally different social, economic and political conditions, as it had done on the continent .First, established interests in Britain never lost control of politics. The important political parties and their leadership were not, as in Europe, corrupted by collaboration with occupying German forces . Second, working class organisations were not crushed and/or forced to operate underground . The war, and the national effort to win it, greatly strengthened reformism, while in Europe the revolutionary forces in the working class were greatly strengthened in the resistance movements . Third, on the purely economic front, the productive potential underwent no spectacular expansion, as it had done during the First World War . The ruling class in this way hoped to avoid a deep recession such as had followed the post-war boom in 1920-1921 . Rather than expand and rationalise basic industries, the necessary raw materials and finished products were imported, if possible from the Commonwealth, if not, from the U .S .A. On account of all these factors together, Britain came out of

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 the war with a productive potential that was heavily dated, if not altogether obsolete, in the basic industries : Coal and steel . There was however no immediate necessity for the coal and steel capitalists to restructure their industries, as their European and Japanese competitors were temporarily unable to penetrate into the protected markets of the British Commonwealth, and, even more important, world demand far outstripped world production . Under these conditions capital operating on less than average productivity can still produce quite profitably. Thus, conditions were rather adverse for a new wave of rapid accumulation of capital on a new technological basis. The Labour government, elected by landslide in 1945 by an electorate bent on avoiding the return of massive unemployment, proved unable to alter this situation. There were more than enough plans, but no Plan . All programmes meant to assist in the restructuring of important branches of industry, were left to committees and councils made up of the capitalists concerned with their implementation. These were interested in restriction rather that in restructuring their hopelessly unproductive industries, certainly when compared to the same branches in the United States (see Brady 1950, pp . 205-211) . Labour's economic policy had two main aims : The restructuring of capital and, on the insistence of the trade union movement, the maintenance of full employment. A consequence of this last policy aim was that many unprofitable firms were kept alive through state subsidies and price regulation . The policies of Labour were thus internally contradictory . The maintenance of full employment in obsolete sectors does not go well with an effort to restructure and rationalise industry. Another factor explaining the slow rate of growth, i.e. in comparison with other imperialist countries, was the successful resistance of the Bank of England to Dalton's cheap money policy . On the continent rapid expansion of credit facilities contributed greatly to economic recovery . However, in Britain the City, in yet another attempt to recapture a prominent place in world finance, exported capital and channelled investment into extractive industries in order to relieve the dollar shortage and, if possible, avoid a devaluation of the pound (Aaronovitch 1955, pp . 69-71, 108-9, 113) . This attempt failed in 1949, but the adverse effects of this policy for those industries primarily producing for the home market was nevertheless considerable . The most important structural change in this period is that manifested by the nationalisation of steel . At the end of the war steel companies played a pivotal role in groups of industrial capitals, more than half of the interlocking directorships among industrial companies involving steel companies (Stanworth/Giddens 1975, pp . 15-18) . When the Labour plans to nationalise steel came up, it is therefore no wonder that resistance was much heavier than in the earlier nationalisations of the coal mines and of the Bank of England. A further reason for the resistance against the nationalisation of steel must be sought in the profitability of the industry,

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which it owed to the situation on the world market, where demand outstripped production, major competitors were temporarily out of business and the dollar shortage limited American competitive power. Nationalisation of such a profitable industry, it was feared by large sections of the bourgeoisie, would widen the horizon for the possible nationalisation of other profitable industries, such as banking. It is our contention here, that the nationalisation of the steel industry in 1949 should be seen as the subordination of steel capital to the interests of its most important customers, modern mass consumer goods industry, as the European Coal and Steel Community served the same purpose on the Continent (Bode 1975, Van der Pijl 1978a) . Several developments concerning British steel supply supporting evidence for this hypothesis : When the final legislation was presented, some exceptions were made . Two vertically integrated companies (Ford, and Vickers, owners of English Steel and Darlington Forge) were explicitly left out of the Nationalisation Act . The recommendation of Paul Hoffman, Marshall Aid administrator and director of Studebaker, carried a heavy weight : He threatened to cut off all aid to the British steel industry (most of which was going to the Steel Company of Wales, owners of the first continuous wide strip rolling mill producing sheet steel for motor car production) if the act were passed in its original form (Brady 1950, pp . 189, 217, 220). This subordination is further indicated by the fact that at least one group of steel consumers, the motor car manufacturers, had been complaining ever since 1934 about the high steel prices, and they did not seem too worried about the danger of creeping socialism, but rather welcomed the proposed nationalisation (Brady 1950, p . 196, Burn 1961, pp . 65, 68 ff .) . Thus a new era with radically altered relations of power between different branches of production and different groups of capitals was clearly in the making . The 1950s and early 1960s would bring the decisive change-about, first in the economic field, and then on the political plane . IV . FROM GLOBAL POWER TO REJECTED EEC-MEMBER

Notwithstanding the enormous sacrifices the country had had to make during the War, Britain seemed to resume is place as one of the leading world powers after the defeat of the Third Reich . The `special relation' with the United States and the continued existence of the system of Imperial Preferences helped maintain this position . It was on this basis that Chrurchill formulated the priorities of British foreign policy in his three-circle-theory : British ties with the Commonwealth came first, the Anglo-American axis came second, and Western Europe only figured as the third area of interest . This policy, to which Britain would cling for almost twenty years, particularly served the interests of two prominent sections of British capital, namely banking capital (at least that part of banking capital with very extensive colonial and American interests), and the colonial monopolies and mining interests . The predominance of these interests in this period is illustrated in the work of Aaaronovitch (1955, 1961) .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 However, the contradictory nature of this basis for British foreign policy showed itself almost immediately . Both pillars were undermined, by objective developments and by each other . The maintenance of the Empire, with its preferential treatment and the inconvertibility of Sterling, was a policy aim which fully contradicted US foreign policy after the War, and stood in opposition to the interests of American capital . The United States tried to enforce the `Open Door' through such US-dominated institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) . The successful penetration of American capital in the Empire foreshadowed the untenability of the British aims . The devaluation and return to full convertibility in 1949 should have made this clear right then, even though at that time the Commonwealth still represented the most important domain for the foreign expansion of British capital. Given the predominance of this general foreign policy orientation, it should not be surprising that when the French minister Schuman announced the plan for a pooling of the European coaland stell-sectors-intended as a first step toward further economic integration-British reactions were generally negative (Anouil 1960, pp. 56-64) . The Labour Party and the Trade Union Movement were mostly opposed to the scheme for fear that their priority of full employment would not stand up to the rationalisations foreseen in the Schuman plan . The meeting ground for all opponents of joining the European Coal and Steel Community was the intense dislike of the idea of supra-nationality, although they were led to this position by diverging motives . The same reasons still applied when in 1956 and 1957 the founding of the Europan Economic Community (EEC) was prepared . In 1958 the Federation of British Industries declared itself against membership of the EEC for what would prove to be the last time. After 1955 the shift from the predominance of basic and extractive industries to the predominance of mass consumer-goods industries, to which we alluded in the introduction, picked up pace again . These newly dominant industries, however, found in the Commonwealth a market with little and stagnating buying power and growing competition from American capital . In contrast, the markets of the EEC were expanding rapidly, and the growing importance of these markets for British exports has been documented by many authors . The Suez disaster and the decolonisation of the years following 1956 made it clear, that the decline of Britain as a world power, which had been in the stars for decades in the economic field, could in the end not be resisted by political and military means alone . The role of liquidator of the Empire fell to a man well equipped for the job : Harold MacMillan, who became Prime Minister in 1958. It would take three more years, however, before the bridge was crossed and an application for EEC-membership was filed. During these three years there was a delicate balance in foreign policy between the old orientation towards maintenance of the Empire and the spec-

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ial relation with the U.S ., and a new orientation aiming at the creation of the largest possible area of free trade . For the time being, the balance was found in the creation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) . However, given the limited scope of EFTA and given the failure of the attempt to make the EEC a member of EFTA, this balance was bound to tip before long . Accordingly, in 1961 the Tory government of Harold MacMillan filed for EEC membership .[3] By that time, however, General De Gaulle had come to power in France, and his Government vetoed Britain's accession to the Common Market in 1963, mostly on the ground that Britain would prove to be an American `Trojan Horse' . If we want to assess the failure of this application correctly, we must go into the relations between American and British capital a bit further now : American investment in the UK itself dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century (Van Moock 1977, p . 7) . These investments were to a large extent direct investments in manufacturing industry, and not in basic industries (ibid., pp . 10, 17) . The market for the kind of goods produced by American firms in Britain had expanded during the decade prior to World War Two, thus stimulating American investment even more. Between 1943 and 1950 American direct private investment in the UK increased from 519 million dollars to 847 million dollars, while in the same period total direct American investment in all of Europe declined from 2,025 million dollars to 1,720 million dollars . The British share of American direct investment in Europe thus increased from approximately 25% to almost half (ibid ., p . 27) . This enormous share was maintained until 1960 . During the sixties the proportion of American capital in Europe which was invested in Britain declined to 32 .4% in 1971 . We can see that the relative decline of Britain-i .e . the slow growth of the modern sectors-during the sixties was reflected in, and reinforced by, a slowing down of American direct investment in Britain . Nevertheless, American business in Britain grew much faster than British business, and was heavily export-oriented . Continuation of this trend, it is estimated, will in 1980 lead to a situation in which 25% of British exports are in reality exports by American capital in Britain (Poulantzas 1976, p . 64) . Thus, in the course of a few decades, two groups of fastgrowing, heavily monopolised capitals had sprung up which by the sixties urgently needed enlarged markets for their continued expansion . This enlargement could only be found in unimpeded access to the markets of the EEC, if possible without losing ground in the traditional British export markets, but if necessary by acceding to an outwardly protectionist common market. As we have seen, under Eden and Churchill, Conservative governments of the 1950s remained committed to the old imperial policies for a considerable time after the material basis for that policy had been radically eroded . This policy led to continuous friction with the United States in the fields of international monetary arrangements, accessibility of the Empire to American capital, the condusct of the Cold War, and the

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 final dissolution of the British role `East of Suez' . It was only after the MacMillan government had eliminated most obstacles to better Anglo-American relations, and after the victory of Kennedy in the 1960 elections with his more activist European policy (Van der Pijl 1978b, p . 18), that the US gave up its earlier opposition to British membership of the EEC . The US remained firm on one point, however-a logical consequence of its preference for global free trade arrangements of the Kennedy-round type-and insisted that the Commonwealth would not be incorporated into the EEC system of preferences (Beloff 1963, pp . 101, 106-7) . Beloff sums up the American position as follows : `By the spring of 1962, then, it might be said that the United States objective in economic policy was to bring the whole of the non-Soviet world under the same regime of generally freer trade and payments, but within this world it saw an emergent grouping of two major centres of power-the United States and an integrated Western Europe including Britain .' (ibid ., pp . 113-4) Ironically enough, it was precisely this improvement in AngloAmerican relations-highlighted by the Nassau agreements on military-nuclear cooperation-which supplied General De Gaulle with a strong reason to veto the introduction of an American Trojan Horse into his `Europe des Patries' in 1963 .

V . WILSON'S ATTEMPT TO CURE BRITAIN . . .

The failure of the attempt to join the Common Market added one more to the already impressive list of factors accounting for the slow rate of accumulation and the falling rate of profit in Britain, at least in comparison with the other major capitalist economies . In the middle of the sixties the crisis in the British economy was intensified by a downturn in all of the capitalist world . The problems British industry was facing (a strong labour movement, lagging productivity, stagnant export markets, political prominence of colonial and financial interests, an enormous export of capital and falling profits at home) were now joined by a sharp surge of foreign competition . Under the influence of all these concurring developments, there was an enormous increase in the centralisation of capital . This process had already accelerated during the second half of the '50s, accompanying the restructuring of capital that did take place during this period . The branches in which merger activity was particularly prominent were electrical engineering, textiles, drinks, chemicals and vehicles (Aaronovitch 1975, p . 125) . The merger movement was also more intense in the UK than in the EEC : Between 1958 and 1962 there were 3,384 mergers in the UK against 1,000 in the EEC (Jalee 1970, p . 116) . But the difference became especially striking in the wake of the 1966/7 recession : In 1967 there were 1,068 mergers in the UK, as against 12 in the Federal Republic, 8 in France, 5 in the Netherlands and 5 in Switzerland (Stanworth/Giddens 1975, p . 26n) . During 1967 and 1968 ten percent of all industrial, commercial

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and financial assets changed owners, while a fourth of all companies worth more than £10 million were taken over (Spiegelberg 1973, p . 167) . The government played an active part in some of these mergers (notably in the aircraft-, shipping- and cotton-industry), while in most other cases it stood by passively : between 1965 and 1975 only 33 of the approximately 1,000 mergers qualifying for scrutiny by the Monopolies Commission were actually looked into (Van Iersel 1976, pp . 143ff.) . The result of this high mobility of capital was that the number of interlocking directorships between financial institutions and the top-50 industrial companies increased from 69 in 1946 to 88 in 1960, and to 94 in 1970 . Financial institutions, and particularly the merchant banks, moved closer and closer to the centre of the network (Stanworth/Giddens 1975, passim) . To curb the threat of crisis, to the existence of which this wave of centralisation testified, three forms of action are available to the state : A direct redistribution of incomes, indirect support of profits and undermining the strength of the working class (Glyn/Sutcliffe 1972, p . 157) . The Wilson government of 1964-1970 was active on all these fronts . Through a wage freeze, tax cuts, a general incomes policy and several nationalisations Wilson tried to redistribute income in favour of profits [4] . He largely failed in this respect because working class action successfully withstood the measures directly affecting its income position, and in this way the prospects for a restoration of profitability were worsened. Devaluation and entry into the Common Market are mentioned by Glyn and Sutcliffe as two indirect supports for profits . However, entry into the EEC was once again blocked by the intransigence of De Gaulle, and devaluation failed to do its job, because Labour's policy aims in monetary affairs were contradictory . On the one hand, there were strong pressures on the government to defend the position of Sterling, which required maintaining an equilibrium in the balance of payments and deflationary measures . This was the road Wilson initially travelled . The effort to step up production and raise exports conflicted with this aim, as it demanded inflationary policies and a devaluation of the pound (Mandel 1974b, p . 33) . When the Wilson government decided to follow the latter road in 1967, it was too late to have much impact, and it ran into opposition in the City to a devaluation of the pound (Westergaard/Ressler 1974, p. 240) . The Wilson government was successful in one respect : Although it did not succeed in its attempt to introduce anti-strike legislation, it succeeded where the preceding Conservative governments had not dared go . It abandoned full employment as a number one priority . Some would even go so far as to say that unemployment was introduced as a deliberate policy (Glyn/Sutcliffe 1972, pp . 177-180) . This, of course, was a success for capital only a Labour government could possibly attain without endangering the foundations of the rule of capital : `Between 1964 and 1970 the Labour government tried to serve two masters . It would not challenge capitalism, so it tried to

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 support it ; but it could not make its policy acceptable to the trade unions on whom it depended . Such contradictions are bound to beset a working class party in power, if it does not oppose capitalism, but tries instead to make it run more efficiently and more humanely .' (ibid ., p . 213)

VI . . . . AND HEATH'S FAILURE TO FINISH THE JOB

Whatever can be said about the Heath government coming to power in 1970, it is not that it tried to make capitalism run more humanely. On the contrary. Heath, true to his election pledges, tried it the hard way. His policy of confronting the working class organisations was reminiscent of Nixon's New Economic Policy in many respects . But in foreign affairs, Heath followed the course initiated in the sixties (in which he himself had played an important part as negotiator for the MacMillan government) of joining the EEC . In this respect, the path followed was clearly in the interest of the now dominant sections of British industrial capital, aimed as it was at safeguarding British access to the largest and fastest growing market for durable goods, the Common Market . One obstacle to British entry had been provided by General De Gaulle, and behind him certain groups in French capital, who had feared an American Trojan Horse . After 1968, however, a different attitude in France toward penetration by American capital (American investment in France came to be actually stimulated under Giscard) and a different conception of the EEC gradually came to the fore . In this new orientation, Britain was seen to be a possible counterweight to growing West German power in Western Europe . The major domestic obstacle to British entry into the EEC had been the fact that all through the fifties and sixties, British foreign policy was either dominated, or seriously constrained in its flexibility (which could have led to overcoming De Gaulle's obstinate posture) by a coalition of two groups of capitals : Banking capital (the City) and colonial and mining capital . In this paper we have been arguing that this coalition of interests came under increasing stress as the centre of gravity of surplus value production shifted toward advanced industrial capital . This shift was accompanied by the slow but steady growth of a network of relations between industrial and financial capital . An important turning point was reached around 1970 . A significant sign of this was the floating of Sterling . As late as 1969, the Wilson government was compelled to protect the pound against devaluation, but in 1970 the pound was floated without major opposition in the City . A survey of City opinion, conducted by The Banker, confirms the turnabout in the outlook of the City . Of those interviewed, 55% were of the opinion that the City suffered little or nothing at all from the fall of Sterling, while a full 73% thought that their own sector of the City had hardly suffered from it . Sixty-six percent is in favour of maintaining a floating exchange rate, 23% even favours an exchange rate below the market price, and only 11% would favour support by the State for the position of Sterling . (The Banker, Jan . 1978) . This must partly be explained by pointing out, that the activities of the City were more and more directed at the

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very lucrative Euro-dollar market [5] . Heath's domestic policies, we feel, must be understood in terms of their effects on British industry which entry into the EEC would prove to have . Those industries that had not waited for British entry (which became effective in 1973) and had invested in production facilities on the continent have certainly welcomed the move, since it greatly enlarged their freedom of movement. However, those industrial capitals producing for the home market could expect the move into Europe to cause greatly intensified competition . Only an enormous improvement of their competitive power could ensure a chance for survival . Improving the competitive power of domestic capital required first of all a sharp attack on the strength of the working class . We have already suggested that productivity in the UK lagged far behind productivity in comparable branches of the other major imperialist economies. One of the most important reasons for this had been the defensive strength of the working class organisations . Thus, only an intensification of the policy of undermining this strength, begun in 1965 by the Wilson government, could hold the promise of success . The strength of the British working class did not find its expression primarily in high wages : ` . . .until 1972 wage rates grew at a slower pace in Britain than in the Common Market or Japan, (but) . . .wage costs per unit of output . . . rose disproportionally in the UK .' (Barnett 1973, p . 27) . It is the fact that the working class was able to defend full employment until around 1966 which can partly be held responsible for this growing productivity gap between Britain and the rest of the imperialist world . It was therefore no big surprise that the first successful large-scale attack on the working class came in the form of the abandoning of full employment and the introduction of deflationary measures in the late sixties . A second classical response to crisis is a reduction of the value of labour power : Both in the form of an attack on real wages and in the form of cuts in social expenditure . We have suggested that this course of action, as a rule, is subject to the condition that it does not lead to serious disturbances in the relation between capital and labour . The instrumentality of a Labour government is very clear in this respect . Intensification of the internationalisation of capital (it could also be called internationalised blackmail) is the course of action by far preferred by capital . An example of this strategy is provided by Ford Europe : It is shifting more and more of its production to plants in Belgium and Germany, and is now the largest car importer of Britain (The Economist, Feb . 11th, 1978, p . 114) . However forceful the attack on the working class was during these years, and however successful in reducing its standard of living, it failed in its overriding purpose : That of restoring profitability to industry in Britain and thus convincing British capital to resume investment inside Britain . The enormous flight of capital from Britain in the early seventies in the form of speculative investment in real estate on the continent was the most spectuacular expression of this fact.

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The future of the British state and of British capital seems increasingly dim . The present situation, in our opinion, which is shared by Nairn (Nairn 1979), precludes any possibility of a successful moderate solution . The final choice more and more seems to become the one between an authoritarian regime of the right and a social revolution from the left . In both cases, it is uncertain whether the British state can survive in its present, multinational, form . VII. BRITISH FINANCE CAPITAL NOW : MATURE AND STAGNANT

We have argued that loss of Empire, non-entry into the EEC in the sixties, stagnation and crisis in the sixties and seventies, and finally the aftermath of entry into the EEC in 1973, all accompanied by a merger movement of staggering proportions, have led to enormous changes in the structure of relations between British capitals . Let us now take a closer look, by way of conclusion, at the structure of British finance capital as it emerged in the mid-seventies . Interlocking directorships are of coure only one form of structuring the relations between and among financial and industrial companies . Financial relations, it is sometimes argued, are far more important than directorial links . However, as we indicated in the introduction, information on financial links between companies is, for British capital, not readily and systematically available . Information regarding interlocking directorships is . The Stock Exchange Official Yearbook contains the names of the directors of all companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange, and so the construction of the network of interlocks is a tedious but simple affair . This is one reason why most researchers on British finance capital have largely concentrated on analysing these institutional relations [6] . In other countries, and particularly in the United States, information on financial links is more readily available and has been used extensively in the analysis of finance capital . The works of Victor Perlo and S . Menshikov are well-known examples [7] . But lack of better information is not the only justification for concentrating on interlocking directorships . After reviewing the available information on financial ties in Scottish industry and finance, Scott concludes that ` . . .those connections which are regarded as most important in this respect (i .e . strategic control, H .O .) will be those which are reinforced through directorial links .' (Scott 1978, p . 7) . Thus, until systematic information on other relations becomes available, we feel it is justified to concentrate on analysing interlocking directorates . As we argued in the first section of this contribution, the network of relations in finance capital will change considerably in density and/or in structure, when the continued accumulation of capital comes under pressure . Thus we might expect that the very severe crisis of the years 1973-1975 caused important changes in the network in Britain . A survey of interlocking directorships among twenty six large industrial corporations, four clearing banks, nine large insurance companies and twelve of the most important merchant banks for the years 1972 and 1976 confirms this expectation . The most telling findings were : -The total number of links increased by almost 15% from 112 to 128 ;

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-The City, as a subsystem, has not become more tightly knit under the impact of crisis ; -The relations between financial and industrial companies increased by approximately ten percent, from 57 to 63 ; -The clearing banks and S .G .Warburg account for the bulk of this increase, while the importance of the insurance companies in the network diminished slightly ; -Even more striking is the growth of the number of interlocks among industrial companies themselves from 17 to 27, or almost 60% ; -These changes are reiterated if we look at the centrality of firms, measured by the number of interlocks with other companies : One can say that industrial companies become far more central, especially when compared to insurance companies ; -On the basis of the above, we would conclude that to an increasing extent the axis clearing banks-industrial companies is becoming the most important one . As far as the general structure of relations among individual capitals is concerned, we can conclude that the connectedness has reached a point where we might speak of a qualitative break : Finance capita as the integration of the different circuits of capital has come of age in Britain, along with the belated advent of a true stage of monpoly capital. If our observation in the first section of this article, where we indicated that formation of financial groups is the logical extension of this process, is correct, then a further test seems called for . On the basis of the data I gathered, I came to the conclusion that by 1976 two large financial groups are in the making. I reached this tentative conclusion, which will serve as a guide to further research, by considering several sub-networks : The network of clearing banks and industrial companies, the network of companies with five or more links to other companies, and the network formed by multiple links (links between companies made up of more than one shared director) . The clearest group was that centred around the Midland Bank . It consists of the following companies : Midland, Montagu, Shell, BICC, Dunlop, Imperial Group, Unilever, Rothmans, Rank Organisation, Eagle Star, General Accident and Prudential . The density of this group (the ratio between the actual and the possible number of links) is 27/11 .6=40 .9%. Were we to subtract the insurance companies, considered by Aaronovitch as coalitions of interests rather than as independently operating capitals, the density would increase to exactly fifty percent, or 5 times the density of the whole 1976 network (Aaronovitch 1961, pp . 89-90) . The second large grouping is of much looser composition, and seems to be centered around two financial companies, Lloyds and S .G .Warburg. The other companies making up this group are : B.P., I .C .I ., British Leyland, British-American Tobacco, Hawker Siddely, Plessey, I.C .L ., Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds, General Electric, Vickers, Reed International, Tate & Lyle, and Morgan Grenfell . The density of this group is 24 .8% or 21/2 times the density of the whole network . Similar results were not found in the analysis of the network of 1972.

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 It would thus appear that British finance capital has finally entered the stage in which capitalist interests crystallise into true financial groups in which financiers of a type which is relatively new for Britain command the economy . It will be the task of political economists to closely follow the development of these groups in the future since knowledge thereof can teach us a lot about the possibilities and impossibilities of alternative working class strategies.

NOTES

1

2

3

5

6 7

This contribution is based on my paper `Finance Capital and Crisis in Britain', presented at the CSE Annual Conference at Bradford, July 1978 . I am grateful to the following people for their valuable comments on earlier drafts : C . Buijink, A . Maas, R . van Moock, E . Schrama, R . Bode, L . van Eerden, W . Gooijer, H . Post, K . van der Pijl, J. Rodenburg, D . Hellema, P . van den Tempel . I profited much from the discussion about my paper at the CSE Conference . To Meindert Fennema I owe a special debt for his stimulating remarks, which greatly helped me to clarify many obscure points in earlier versions of this article . A last and very heavy debt is owed to the editorial committee of Capital and Class . The comments I received on an earlier version of this article were most helpful, especially those of Simon Clarke . Nevertheless, all errors and faulty arguments are wholly my responsibility . A first try to clarify this, on the basis of information contained in Who Owns Whom, 1973, yielded promising results . It app-eared that British banks are almost all related along several lines to American banks, and that these relations were almost exclusive in the sense that no major British bank entertained ties with more than one major American bank . According to Nairn (1972, pp . 17-22) this attempt was halfhearted . We do not agree with this interpretation, and find support in Camps (1964, p . 501) who speaks of De Gaulle's genuine surprise at the fact that the British really meant business . An indication of how nationalisation can contribute to this policy aim can be found in the following : `The private steel sector in the U .K. now accounts for something like 15% of crude steel production and (having purchased billet from BSC and elsewhere and rolled it), about one third of the output of steel products . Mostly at a profit.' (The Economist, March 25th 1978, p . 97) . At a profit, not necessarily because of the inherently more efficient production in the private sector, as The Economist suggests, but probably rather because of the `state handouts that have gone to BSC', enabling nationalised steel to sell unprofitably to private steelmakers and leaving it to them to appropriate the surplus value actually created in the public sector . Foremost in the Eurobond business is S .G .Warburg, affiliated to the New York banking house of Kuhn Loeb (dominated by the Warburg family) and associated with the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas . R . Spiegelberg 1973, pp . 77, 94, 97 ; E . Mandel 1974a, p . 414 . Some studies in this field are : S . Aaronovitch 1955 ; S . Aaronovitch 1961 ; M . Barratt Brown 1968 ; Stanworth/Giddens 1972 ; The Economist, June 11th 1977, p . 132 . For a good overview of the analysis of interlocking directorships



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and related topics in different countries, see M . Fennema and H . Schijf, 1978 . An English-language version of this article was presented at the Planning Session of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Grenoble, April 1978 . BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aaronovitch,

S ., 1955, Monopoly, a study of British monopoly

capitalism, London .

Aaronovitch, S ., 1961, The Ruling Class . A Study of British Finance Capital, London . Aaronovitch, S . and Sawyer, M.C ., 1975, Big Business . Theoretical and Empirical Aspects of Concentration and Mergers in the United Kingdom, London . Anouil, G., 1960, La Grande Bretagne et la Communaute Europeenne du Charbon et de 1 Acier, Bordeaux .

Barnett, A ., 1973, `Class Struggle and the Heath Government', in New Left Review Jan ./Feb . 1973, pp . 3-41 . Beloff, M., 1963, The United States and the Unity of Europe, Washington . Bode, R ., 1975, De Lotgevallen van een Sektor, Amsterdam . Brady, R.A ., 1950, Crisis in Britain. Plans and Achievements of the Labour Government, London . Brown, M.Barratt, 1973, `The Controllers of British Industry', in Urry, J . and Wakeford, J ., Eds, Power in Britain, London . Burn, D ., 1961, The Steel Industry 1939-1959 . A study in Competition and Planning, London . Camps, M., 1964, Britain and the European Community 19551963, London . Dobb, M ., 1973, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, New York . Fennema, M . and Schijf, H ., 1978, 'De analyse van dubbelfunties : theorie en methode', in Cahiers voor de politieke en sociale Wetenschappen, I, no . 3, Jan . 1978, pp . 11-59 . Glyn, A . and Sutcliffe, R ., 1972,British Capitalism . Workers and the Profit Squeeze, Harmondsworth . Hobsbawm, E .J ., 1975, Industry and Empire, Harmondsworth . lersel, J .P . van, 1976, 'Europese fusiecontrole nog niet in zicht', in Nieuw Europa, 3, 1976, pp . 138-150 . Jalee, P ., 1970, L'Imperialisme en 1970, Paris . Mandel, E ., 1974a, Marxist Economic Theory, London . Mandel, E ., 1974b, Decline of the Dollar . A Marxist View of the Monetary Crisis, New York . Marx, K., 1974, Das Kapital, vol. 3, Berlin/DDR . Moock, R . van, 1977, US investeringen en US 'hulp' in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Amsterdam . Nairn, T ., 1972, ' The Left Against Europe?', in New Left Review 75, Sept./Oct . 1972, pp . 5-120 . Nairn, T ., 1979, 'The Future of Britain's Crisis', in New Left Review 113-114, Jan ./April 1979, pp. 43-70 . Poulantzas, N ., 1976, Klassen in het huidige kapitalisme, Nijmegen . Pijl, K . van der, 1978a, Een amerikaanse plan voor Europa, Amsterdam . Pijl, K . van der, 1978b, 'Class Formation at the International Level' . Paper for the CSE Annual Conference, Bradford . Scott, J ., 1978, 'The Intercorporate Configuration : Substructure and Superstructure', paper for the ECPR planning session, Grenoble, April 1978 .

1 20

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Spiegelberg, R ., 1973, The City . Power without Accountability, London. Stanworth, Ph . and Giddens, A ., 1975, `The modern corporate economy : interlocking directorships in Britain 1906-1970', in Sociological Review, 1975, mimeo reprint. Stock Exchange, Stock Exchange Official Yearbook, London, 1972, 1976 . Westergaard, J . and Ressler, H ., 1974, Class in Capitalist Society : a Study of Contemporary Britain, London . Winch, D ., 1972, Economics and Policy . A Historical Survey, London .

RACE& CLASS

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The State and the Future of Socialism.

Leo Panitch The purpose of this paper is to address the question of the role of the state in Marxist theory from the perspective of the future of socialism . From this perspective one still has to decide whether one should address oneself to the devil or the deep blue sea. That is, should one concentrate on the role of the bourgeois state vis-a-vis the future of socialism, i .e . its role in seeking to foreclose or forestall that future? Or should one concentrate on the socialist state of the future, on the role of the state in the transition to socialism and under socialism or communism? It is tempting to focus on the devil we know, as have most recent Marxist writings on the state, not least because, in the immediate future, the pressing question before revolutionary socialists remains how to combat the bourgeois state, or how to operate within it, if we follow the Eurocommunist perspective, until such time as sufficient mass support is created to embark on a socialist transition . But the very progress that has been made in Marxist theorisation of the capitalist state, has underlined the great lacuna in Marxism of systematic theorisation of the state under socialism, both of the nature of the state in `actually existing socialism'[2] and of the possible `institutional forms of socialist democracy in the West' .[3] Nor is this, of course, simply a theoretical requirement, it is also a strategic one . For if the socialist movement in the West is to effectively move toward a socialist future it has to distinguish itself from `actually existing socialism' in terms of concrete possibilities and expectations . The choice of a democratic road towards state power over an insurrectionary one, as in the case of so-called Eurocommunism, is in this sense but a minor step . Beyond it lies the enormous question of the mode of proletarian rule after the stage of participation of communist parties in the bourgeois state via the `historic compromise' . If the democratic socialist alternative is to be an effective one, it will have to address

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 itself credibly to this question . With all of these considerations in mind, I will talk both about the devil and the deep blue sea, well aware that in the process I may deal with neither satisfactorily . I will restrict myself to western capitalist countries, and to the future of socialism in these countries . Let us turn first to the question of the role of the capitalist state in forestalling or foreclosing the future of socialism . Here one is really addressing, not simply the repressive role of the state at the moment of a particular or hypothetical revolutionary conjuncture, but much more broadly the general mode of operation of the state in capitalist society : the way in which it sustains accumulation, integrates or represses class conflict, reproduces social relations, represents the dominant classes ; in short, the role of the state in maintaining the capitalist mode of production . If, in the outpouring of Marxist writings on the capitalist state in the last decade, there is one concept above all that has gained general currency in this respect, it is the concept of `relative autonomy' . This concept embodies the notion that the state is not a mere agent of the ruling class, but has to be seen as acting independently on its behalf, uniting its various competing fractions and, situated itself not in relation to the ruling class alone, but within the entire field of class struggle . Although this conceptualisation can be shown to have been constructed to a substantial extent out of Marx's own writings (not least in Capital, as I have argued before[4]) most people would probably agree that it is the concept of `relative autonomy' that has above all stood out as marking a break, or at least an advance, between recent Marxist theories of the state and the traditional approach to the subject, which at least interpreted Marx in terms of seeing the state as an instrument, a tool of the bourgeoisie . Yet, there is, I think, a far more significant common departure from classical Marxist notions of the state in the recent theorisations. And that is the tendency away from seeing the state primarily, or at least in its predominant aspect, as consisting mainly as Lenin, after Engels, put it, of `special bodies of armed men' . [ 5 ] There can be no doubt that Marx and Engels laid very great stress not only on the state as a class organisation, but on the state as a repressive class organisation, stressing the overtly coercive aspect (a standing army, prisons, police, `institutions of coercion of all kinds') as the salient instruments of state power . Not just domination by one class over another is at the centre here, but actual physical force . When Marx and Engels speak of the withering away of the state, as we shall see below, it is not to public authority they are referring, but to repression as a mode of rule . In the currently fashionable functionalist terminology among Marxist theoreticians of the state (now shared by Mandel, Miliband, Poulantzas, O'Connor and Offe), the accent in classical Marxism clearly falls on the `coercion' function of the state, as opposed to the 'legitimation' or `accumulation' functions . The accent in recent theorisations, on the other hand, falls clearly on 'legitimation', or `consent', in contrast to coercion . The reason for this is not hard to find-it lies in the periodisation of these

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theories, in their evolution in the context of the emergence in this century, and especially since World War Two, of the liberal democratic state system `as the normal mode of capitalist power in the advanced countries' (Anderson) . There remains considerable disagreement, of course, as to the primary means by which this consent is created . Some stress the role of cultural institutions in fashioning ideological hegemony, whether those are seen as part of the state (as with the Ideological State Apparatuses) or more properly as extra-state agencies facilitating the state's legitimation function . Others would stress the integrative role served by welfare reforms ; still others the direct incorporation of legitimation within the state's expanded accumulation function in the form of accumulation providing its own legitimation via promises of growth and full employment. Anderson has, in my view, gone to the core of the matter in his argument that `The novelty of this consent is that it takes the fundamental form of a belief by the masses that they exercise an ultimate self-determination within the existing social order' : ` . . . The general form of the representative state-bourgeois democracy--is itself the principal ideological lynchpin of Western capitalism, whose very existence deprives the working class of the idea of socialism as a different type of state . . .The economic divisions within the "citizenry" are masked by the juridical parity between exploiters and exploited, and with them the complete separation and non participation of the masses in the work of parliament . This separation is then constantly presented and represented to the masses as the ultimate incarnation of liberty : "democracy" as the terminal point of history . The existence of the parliamentary state thus constitutes the formal framework of all other ideological mechanisms of the ruling class . It provides the general code in which every specific message elsewhere is transmitted . The code is all the more powerful because the juridical rights of citizenship are not a mere mirage : on the contrary, the civic freedoms and suffrages of bourgeois democracy are a tangible reality, whose completion was historically in part the work of the labour movement itself, and whose loss would be a momentous defeat for the working class .'(6] The importance of this formulation is that it locates the production of cultural domination at the very centre of the state system itself . Coercion is not left out, but it is displaced from a central role in the day to day functioning of the state to the revolutionary conjuncture, at which point coercion-via the army-becomes both `determinant and dominant in the supreme crisis', including any serious, albeit naive, attempt to legislate socialism peacefully from parliament . In this last respect, Anderson is much more categorical than Marx, who admitted the possibility of a peaceful transition in the exceptional conditions of America and England, or contemporary theorists like Althusser who suggest that where the balance of classes forces is particularly favourable `a peaceful and even democratic transition

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 becomes possible and necessary.'[7] It is not my brief at this point to adjudicate between the positions . It is rather to point out that the general stress laid in recent Marxist theorisations on the legitimation function of the state, when taken together with the current debate on the Eurocommunist strategy, may have the effect of limiting our perception of the coercive function of the state solely to the question of the revolutionary conjuncture, to the detriment of our perception of the role state coercion is again coming increasingly to play in the normal day to day operation of the capitalist state . The stress that Anderson and Therborn have recently put on the representative nature of the bourgeois state and on the labour movement's role in securing this, is consistent with Marx' and Engels' approach to the question of democratisation in the bourgeois republic . They too stressed the need for the labour movement to work towards the `maximisation of the weight in the governmental structure of the representative system'[8], while continuing to develop revolutionary strategy to pass out of this state system . But if the representative form has become the general mode of capitalist rule in our time, as it was not in Marx' and Engels', it must also be recognised that the same intra-state dynamic that Marx and Engels observed of the particular representative forms they encountered, has been replicated now generally in the capitalist states . That is, the domination of the executive arm of the state over the legislature . The reasons for this are too complex to be gone into here ; they have to do with the concomitant emergence of mass parties with extensive party discipline ; and with the development of the state's accumulation function which places emphasis on direct ties with business and technical bureaucratic `expertise' in capitalist planning . In any case, the objective `decline of parliament' within the state system, must have implications for the centrality of parliament in cultural domination . The extent to which this has been the case, may be seen in the widespread emergence of corporatist structures within liberal democracies, whereby legitimation for state policy is secured through the attempted integration of the industrial class organisations of labour with the state . Here the juridical equality between citizens in the state is supplemented by the formal equality of status granted to the central organisations of labour and capital vis-a-vis the state . But these corporatist structures have proven in recent years to be unstable, as the unions have repeatedly been forced to opt out of cooperative behaviour within them in the face of rank and file militancy . The fact that these corporatist forms have been tied to the state's accumulation function, particularly in terms of union cooperation in incomes policies, has served to delegitimate the union leadership insofar as they participate actively in wage restraint . Increasingly, the state's response to this development has been a coercive one vis-a-vis unions as free associations, at least in the form of repressing rank and file actions and legally insulating union leadership from its effects. In the face of strong union opposition, this trend to coercion against the freedom of unions as indigenous class organisations has not yet been effective . To make it stick, in the face

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of an organised working class mobilised against these coercive measures, would involve the extensive use of police powers, and probably severe limitation of free speech and assembly . Capitalist states have backed off from such a venture heretofore, but in the face of the continued economic difficulties of advanced capitalism, particularly the simultaneous experience of high wage pressure, unemployment and inflation, and in the absence of political movement which would incorporate and transcend rank and file industrial militancy, an authoritarian turn towards the `strong state', even while maintaining the shell of liberal democray, seems a likely development .[9] It is possible, in other words, that the accent placed on the legitimation function over the repressive function of the modem bourgeois state will come to be seen not as characteristic of the norm:1 mode of bourgeois rule, but as corresponding only with a very specific period in capitalism's history . Of course the scenario we have sketched applies less to countries like Italy and France, where the main arena of working class integration vis-a-vis the state is the parliamentary one, than to countries like Britain and Sweden, where the salient area of integration has shifted to the corporatist structures of the state . The difference is clearly a product of the relative dominance of social democracy in one case versus communist parties in the other in terms of working class politics, although it is arguable at least that the eventual entry of Communist parties into governments of the bourgeois state would establish a basis for corporatist developments in Italy and France, if the socialist project were not to be carried through . In both cases, however, it appears that the state's response to the contradictions posed by class struggle of a dimension which threatens the stability of the system is a coercive one . In the Eurocommunist case, this appears in the form of the likely response of the state to an attempt to actually carry through the socialist project via parliament . In the social democratic case, it appears in the form of a state response to a tenacious industrial militancy which becomes the main channel of struggle in the absence of effective political representation of working class interests . In the former case, the turn to coercion will likely be more spectacular when it comes ; in the latter, it will come more gradually and insidiously . The timing and the actual successful accomplishment of such a shift back toward coercion as the dominant aspect of the state will of course entirely depend on the particular balance of class forces in each country, as well as internationally . It is thus by no means a foregone conclusion . But to stress again the coercive function of the capitalist state in the face of intractable working class pressures, serves at least as a warning against simplistic assumptions about the ease of a transition to socialism via either the parliamentary or corporatist structures of the advanced capitalist state . It is a reminder of the state's coercive role in forestalling or foreclosing the future of socialism . This does not obviate the need to theorise about the institutional framework of the democratic socialist state of the future, for the reasons already given, but it does serve, as we move to consider this, to place it in an appropriate context .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 There are two grave dangers which must be avoided in undertaking any consideration of the institutional forms of the socialism of the future . There is first of all the danger, represented not only in traditional utopian thought, but also, I believe, in a great deal of the socialist self-management literature, of drawing models of democratic socialism, blueprints of the future, without consideration of the revolutionary process which will give rise to them and will compose their indissoluble elements in a transitional period . They tell us that men change and institutions change and that relations among them change, but they rarely tell us how, and thus ignore the question of what constraints the process of change will impose on their abstract, even if detailed, models . A second danger is seen in the tendency to assume a revolution in constructing a vision of the post-revolutionary social and political matrix, to assume that men and their institutions have not changed in the process of making the revolution . This is a common cynical approach to the question of socialism, seen for instance in Kolakowski's dismissal of the socialist project in the West by conjuring up the horrors of imagining `what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would mean if the (real not imaginary) working class took over exclusive political power now in the U.S .' Edward Thompson's riposte to Kolakowski revealed clearly the sterility of this approach : ` . . .I doubt whether you have given to the question a moment of serious historical imagination : you have simply assumed a white working class, socialised by capitalist institutions as it is now, mystified by the news media as it is now, structured into competitive organisations as it is now, without self-activity in its own forms of political expression : i .e . a working class with all the attributes of subjection within capitalist structures which one then "imagines" to achieve power without changing either those structures or itself : which is, I fear, a typical example of the fixity of concept which characterises much capitalist ideology .'[ 10] It will be seen that what both utopian and cynical conceptions of socialism leave out is the political process of revolution itself. The great contribution of Marx in this respect was not only (as the economic determinists would have it) to have located the economic contradictions of one mode of production which will lead to its replacement by another which grows out of these contradictions, but also to have laid particular stress on the role of struggle, making the possibility of socialism contingent on struggle, rejecting the idea of transition from one form of society to another as an automatic process without revolutionary intervention . For Marx the very definition of socialism is only completed in the process of struggle . ('What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is then in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from which it emerges .')[11] Moreover, a pre-condition for socialism is a particular kind of consciousness, which cannot be developed outside of the struggle for socialism itself. ('Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the exercise itself, the alter-



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ation of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution ; the revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown, in any other way, but also because the class overthrow-' ing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew .') [12] If we are going to seriously begin addressing the question of the institutional forms of socialist democracy, therefore, we will have to do it not abstractly, but in direct relation to the organisations and strategies of the working class and the allied classes who are engaged in the revolutionary process . It is with this in mind that the remainder of this paper will examine the three main conceptual elements of the Marxist theory of the socialist state : the smashing of the bourgeois state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the withering away of the state . There are those who consider each of these inviolable and unproblematic scientific concepts . It will be immediately apparent that I do not . Let us begin not at the beginning, but at the end, with the withering away of the state . We begin here not because is easiest to deal with, being the furthest removed and the most contingent on unforeseeable actual historical developments, but because the acceptance of the ultimate stateless character of communism has fostered an unfortunate tendency to consider the question of the state in the transition of only secondary importance, and has thus interfered with rigorous consideration of the socialist state at all in Marxist theory . In my reading, at least of Marx and Engels in their maturity, the withering away of the state had a very special meaning which is not adequately captured by the phrase in question . It meant not the end of public authority in society, but the end of class repression as embodied in the state . A great deal depends here on definitions of terms and on translations from the German, of course . But it seems to me incontrovertible,despite various inconsistent and loose usages of terminology, that Marx and Engels did not see the state as simply a repressive and coercive apparatus, although this is its determining and dominant aspect in class society, but as also encompassing other functions, which would continue to be exercised by public authority in a fully communist society . These common functions are encompassed by the state of class society ; it colours them, absorbs them, structures them in the context of its primary role of maintaining ruling class domination, but it nevertheless contains them . A basic example of this may be seen in the state's role in the prevention and containment of epidemics . The state's action in this regard is structured by the mode of production of medical goods and services, by the great differences in living conditions among the classes, all of which the state helps to reproduce while dealing with disease . But the particular function remains nonetheless and will remain in communist society . No other interpretation can be given to the many, albeit largely incidental references, in Marx' and Engels' writings to the 'legitimate functions of the old governmental power' (the Civil War in France) or to the `social functions (of the state in communist soc-

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iety) that are analogous to present state functions' (Critique of the Gotha Programme) .[13] In the third volume of Capital, Marx explicitly refers to how even in `despotic states, supervision and allround interference by the government involves both the performance of common activities arising from the nature of all communities, and the specific functions arising from the antithesis between the government and the mass of the people .'[ 14 ] And as Draper has pointed out in this regard, even Engels' celebrated approach to the origins of the state contains this perspective . The State arises `only after the division of society into classes, and because of this division : but it does not arise out of the whole cloth . It has roots in activities and offices in non-class society .'[15] The 'special bodies of armed men' do not arise out of nothing, but on the basis already established in the primitive community whereby, as Engels put it in AntiDuhring, the safeguarding of common interests ('adjudication of disputes ; repression of abuse of authority by individuals ; control of water supplies', even `religious functions') were `handed over to individuals, under the control of the community as a whole . . . . They were naturally endowed with a certain measure of authority and are the beginnings of state power .'[16] One could go on, but there is no need to further belabour the point. The question remains, however, of what institutional form this public authority of full communist society is to take . Marx properly refused to be drawn into the drawing of detailed blueprints for this, but it is arguable that general phrases like the `simple administration of things', and the 'superintendence of production', or the refusal to consider this public authority as political, in order to distinguish it from class rule, obscured rather than clarified the basic point involved . At one point at least, Marx in his disputation with Bakunin, did refuse to quibble over words and suggested the question be formulated precisely . `What form can the administrative functions take on the basis of this workers' state, if one wants to call it that'. And when one comes to examine Marx's impression of the framework of this `workers' state', it soon becomes clear that what is involved is not so `simple'. There are offices of public authority involved . They are highly decentralised, elective, their occupants are not career bureaucrats, but there is nonetheless a public authority embodied in actual institutional forms, and based on a highly sophisticated set of electoral devices, although `the election has none of its present political character' .[17] Engels makes the point even clearer : ` . . . .on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate .' To be sure, `the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which conditions of production render it inevitable',[18] but this does not alter the basic point. Marx and Engels clearly had the impression that this authority and subordination could be nonrepressive and based on fully voluntary consent in a non-class communist society . In this sense, it would be `in the interests of society'



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and not separated from society . But politics and the state understood as representative public authority, and not as class repression, remains. Althusser has properly made the same point with regard to ideology : ` it is clear that the ideology (as a system of mass representations) is indispensible in any society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence In a class society ideology is the rel-

ay whereby, and the element in which, the relation between men and their conditions of existence is settled to the profit of the ruling class . In a classless society ideology is the relay whereby, and the element in which, the relations between men and their conditions of existence is lived to the profit of all men .' [19] So it must be with politics and the state, and Marx' and Engels' general refusal to use the terms as applied to communist society has only obscured our understanding of this . It has contributed, moreover, to failing to ask of the transition to socialism, not only how the political forms appropriate to it will render a non-class society, but how they will in turn develop institutions appropriate for the exercise of public authority in non-class society itself . With this in mind, we may turn to the question posed by the `dictatorship of the proletariat' and `the smashing of the bourgeois state' in the transitional period . The `dictatorship of the proletariat' has been much in the news recently by virtue of its rejection by the twenty-second congress of the PCF and its abandonment by 'Eurocommunism' generally . Yet it must be said that it is the core concept in the Marxist theory of the transitional state . The question is to what extent is it true, as Althusser has recently argued,[20] that this is a scientific concept which cannot be abandoned by Marxism in theory or practice? The dictatorship of the proletariat expresses two fundamental aspects of Marxist theory, both of which are essential to mark it off from social democracy . The first is that it expresses the idea of the working class coming to power in the same sense that the bourgeoisie is in power in capitalist society, as a hegemonic class . Social democracy rejects this above all in Marxism, defining socialism not in terms of the conquest of power by the working class, but rather in terms of class cooperation . Although it was by no means apparent at the turn of the century, the immortal words of Ramsay Macdonald have come to express fundamentally the perspective of social democracy as we now know it : `Socialism marks the growth of society, not the uprising of class . The consciousness it seeks to quicken is not one of economic class solidarity, but one of social unity . The watchword of socialism, therefore, is not class consciousness, but community consciousness .'[ 21 ] The dictatorship of the proletariat, expressing hegemonic working class rule, and a working class state, in the same sense as we speak of the bourgeois state, is not in this light, to be readily abandoned .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 The concept expresses, more than simply class domination, however . It also refers to the fundamental nature of the State as Marx and Engels saw it in a class society . The accent, from the point of view of class struggle in the transitional socialist society, falls on the repressive, coercive function of the state, just as it did in their conception of the capitalist state . The reason for this, as Marx again and again pointed out, was to `gain time', to `appeal for a time to force', which was `the first desideratum-for permenent action.' [22] Engels again made it crystal clear : `A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is ; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon-authoritarian means if such there be at all ; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries .'[23] As expressing a mode of class rule, the accent of the dictatorship of the proletariat falls, as it did for their theory of the bourgeois state, on repression not consent, on the coercion function, not on the legitimation function . Coercion is both dominant and determinant at least in the initial stages of the transitional state . In Marx and Engels (and Lenin) these two aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat are indissolubly linked . The problems with the concept arise, however, precisely out of this linkage . There are three such problems. First, how can the accent on the coercive function in the initial stage effectively be married with the democratic forms described by Marx in The Civil War in France? Secondly, is the concept of dictatorship appropriate to the further development of the transitional society, in which the state still expresses the class rule of the proletariat but in which legitimation becomes dominant and coercion only determinant, after the armed threat of the reactionary forces in the immediate post-revolutionary period is suppressed? And finally, can we dissociate the two elements of the concept so that we retain the conquest of power by the working class, but in the context of a peaceful transition to socialism, jettison the dominance, even in the short run, of the coercion function? It is the last question that is directly posed to the dictatorship of the proletariat by Eurocommunism, although it will be seen to encompass the first two as well . Those who would retain the concept to express the actual political form of a fully democratic state in the transition to socialism can only do so by sleight of hand . Althusser, following in a long tradition, has recently contended that `the political form of this class dictatorship or class rule of the proletariat is `social democracy' (Marx), `mass democracy', `democracy taken to its limits' (Lenin) .'[ 24 ] But in order to make this view stick, one has to empty of all meaning the term dictatorship, so that it loses not only its rhetorical effect, but also its theoretical import . The basis for distinguishing between political forms which are authoritarian and coercive and those which are democratic and consensual becomes lost . Why, as modern Marxist theoreticians of the state are generally agreed, is it insufficient and inadequate to designate liberal democracy merely as the `dictatorship of the bourgeoisie'?

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Precisely because it does not give us a basis to distinguish between fascism and liberal democracy as political forms . Indeed, one can only consistently employ such a concept vis-a-vis the socialist state by rejecting the idea that capitalist democracy has any substance at all . This is the way Lenin approached the matter in State and Revolution . He made light of bourgeois democratic forms (something he was not always wont to do-viz . Left-Wing Communism), saying they excluded the exploited from participation in democracy . In turn the dictatorship of the proletariat would exclude the exploiters from its democracy .[25] This makes good rhetoric, but poor theory . Are the exploiters to be allowed to maintain indigenous class organisations, as can the working class under capitalist democracy? If not, we are talking of two very different forms of exclusion here, which cannot be grasped through the same prism, as Lenin would have had it . And are the opinions of the exploiters to be allowed to be circulated openly? What of the opinions and organisations of their supporters in the middle classes and even in the subordinate classes (of which there will be many, or else the exploiters would not constitute a serious political force)? And what of formal participation in the elective organs of `mass democracy'? On what basis is exclusion to be established? Is it to take place culturally and economically, as in bourgeois democracy with many of the exploited, or by political fiat? For Lenin, the answer was absolutely clear, and understandably so, writing even as utopian a tract as State and Revolution at the outset of the civil war : ` . . . .there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence .' Yet in the same breath, Lenin speaks of `democracy for the vast majority of the people' . Can the two be so easily married? Insofar as the main accent falls on dictatorship vis-a-vis the field of class struggle, can one envisage a vast exercise in democratic decision-making by the working class and its allies? Does it not involve, above all, discipline, with the appropriate political forms, for the popular forces as against the reactionaries in the struggle? The question is so very difficult and momentous, not because it involves abstract moral principles of democratic rights for all in all conjunctures, but because the different political forms involved are of no little moment to the working class itself and the transition to socialism . There is, again, general agreement among modem Marxist theoreticians of the state that the dictatorial capitalist state has much greater relative autonomy from the bourgeoisie than does the liberal democratic state . Dictatorship as a political form cannot permit extensive political self-activity for the bourgeoisie as a class . As Poulantzas has pointed out in consideration of some of these instances of authoritarian capitalist rule, they entail serious costs for the bourgeoisie in that they do not enable `contradictions to be regulated by the organic representations of these various fractions (of the bourgeoisie) within the state apparatus', with the result that `conflicts within the power bloc (are) . . . settled by sudden blows, jerkily and behind the scenes', eventually even threatening `the organised hegemony of the bourgeoisie as such .'[26] Dictatorship in the proletarian state will have more serious effects in terms of the

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consequences of great relative autonomy of the political apparatus from the working class . In State and Revolution, this problem is not really addressed, but it becomes inescapable once the question of t4e role of the Leninist party is introduced (which is not at all in State and Revolution) . The point was of course made by Rosa Luxembourg, who deserves in this context to be quoted at length :[27] Lenin says : the bourgeois state is an instrument of oppression of the working class : the socialist state, of the bourgeoisie . To a certain extent, he says, it is only the capitalist state stood on its head. This simplified view misses the most essential thing : bourgeois class rule has no need of the political training and education of the entire mass of the people, at least not beyond certain narrow limits . But for the proletarian dictatorship that is the life element, the very air without which it is not able to exist . socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase . It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force-against property, etc . The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed ; the building up, the positive, cannot . New territory . A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways . Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts . The public life of countries with limited freedom is so povertystricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful, precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress . In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elections, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of the labouring masses . But with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more and more crippled . Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element . Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule . Among them, in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously-at bottom, then, a clique affair-a dictatorship, to be sure, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense . The problem which is present in Marx and Engels as well as in Lenin, is a matter of trying to fully reconcile irreconcilables, of perfectly balancing the need for coercion and the need for discipline, on the one hand, with the need for maximum mass democracy and the need

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to minimise the power of the executive, on the other hand . At the theoretical level, the problem is only -seemingly swept aside by incorporating democratic forms into the dictatorship of the proletariat, for in this formulation the accent must fall on coercion and discipline . For Lenin `the formula "dictatorship of the proletariat" is merely a more historically concrete and scientifically exact formulation of the proletariat's task of "smashing the bourgeois state machine" .'[28] It seems to me that .the obverse is, however, true . The historically concrete and . scientific (if there is such) way of addresssing the problem is to begin with the concept of `smashing the bourgeois state' . For it is through this concept that Marx and Engels really approached in detail the question of political forms appropriate to socialist democracy, while retaining within it the notion of working class hegemony, in the transitional period . Only here do we not have an `a priori' decision that coercion is to be `dominant' as well as `determinant' . The formula, `smashing the bourgeois state', although unfortunately cast in negative terms, contains the most positive of Marx's political formulations . The image that is brought to mind of seizing a hammer and getting to work is entirely contradicted by its substance . For what is involved is the creation of new forms much more than the destruction of old . There is not space here to lay out in any detail Marx's treatment of this question in The Civil War in France and elsewhere in his political tracts of the 1870's .[29] The principal elements of the pattern of political power to be created are these : The standing army is replaced by a popular militia ; a career bureaucracy is replaced by election to administrative posts, with officials paid the average worker's wage ; the elected deputies, like the administrators, (40 million people rule only in the sense that `the thing begins with the self-government of the commune'[30]) are subject to recall in order to limit the independence of government (deputies also have administrative functions) ; factories are handed over to workers to be run as co-operatives with production regulated by a national plan . Much here is unclear and inadequate, of course . If all state officers are to be elective and their occupants to be subject to immediate recall, this contradicts the need for discipline and efficiency, and not only in the immediate post-revolutionary class struggle . Is the national plan to be composed and administered under the aegis of the communally elected deputies or representatives of the co-operative factories? How are the two repositories of popular power to be co-ordinated-is this a case of 'parcellised sovereignty'? Above all, with Marx and Engels no less than with State and Revolution, where are the unions, and where is the party, the main embodiment of the struggle which is in the Marxist theory of revolution, the essential transformative linkage between the old society and the new? The fact that so little attention has been given in this century to the positive substance of the concept of `smashing the bourgeois state' is to be much lamented . And this poses all the more pressingly the immensity of the theoretical, let alone practical, tasks before Marxism today . I have already suggested that advances can only be

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 made through the explicit recognition that the tension between coercion and consent, between discipline and democracy cannot be swept aside in theoretical formulations for the sake of political expediency . The state in the transition to socialism is to be largely defined by this tension, and if it is attenuated by too great an emphasis on the one to the detriment of the other, the socialist society of the future will suffer at the hands of its state . The tension is, of course, already presaged in the revolutionary party, via the theory and practice of democratic centralism . Any advance towards understanding and demarking the . political form of the future socialist state, whether one follows the insurrectionary or the democratic strategy, will thus have to take into account the structure and practice of the revolutionary party . In this regard, Marxists must recognise with the Gramsci of the workers' councils that there has been a dangerous tendency in Marxist theory and practice to divide the question of revolutionary politics into two separate elements : the destruction of the bourgeois state first and after that the creation of political forms appropriate to socialist democracy . For Gramsci, the revolution and its political forms were indivisible . ` . . .the revolution is not necessarily proletarian and communist if it proposes and obtains the overthrow of the political government of the bourgeoisie . . .(or) even if the wave of popular insurrection places power in the hands of men who call themselves (and sincerely are) Communists.' Instead, `to the extent that it can be achieved by party action, it is necessary to create the conditions in which there will - be not two revolutions, but in which the popular revolt against the bourgeois state will be able to find the organisational forces capable of beginning the transformation of the national apparatus of production from an instrument of plutocratic oppression to an instrument of Communist liberation .'[ 31 ] To focus on the questions raised by `smashing the bourgeois state' means, therefore, not crystal-ball gazing, but conceiving institutional forms of struggle and control which presage socialist democracy . Practically this means not only a highly politicised, critical and initiatory mass party membership, but also an openness in party structures to relations with and inputs from non-party workers . If the tension between discipline and democracy is structurally resolved to the sole benefit of the former in making the revolution, one is chasing a chimera in thinking this will be overcome in the even more difficult period of post-revolutionary rule . Moreover, the party cannot be seen as the only institutional midwife in the revolutionary process . Workers' control structures in industry are another, and in this respect and with particular regard to the state, the question arises of workers' control not in industry alone but in the apparatuses of the state itself. It will in my view be impossible for all administrative posts to be elected and subjected to immediate recall in the socialist state . But a limitation on executive power may be sought via the creation of state workers' councils in government departments themselves, linking the organisations of state workers today with a new role in the socialist state beyond defence of their immediate, sectional interests in the highly politicised society of



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the transitional to socialism . Therbom has addressed this properly recently, and without falling into the utopian perspective rharacter i stic of much socialist self-management thought :[321 ` . . .we have contrasted the cadre administration of existing socialist states to the bureaucracy and technocracy of the bourgeois states . In order to function effectively as instruments of collective working class supremacy, the cadres must simultaneously belong to a labour movement independent of the state and exercise powers of non-commanding direction over bureaucrats and managers . Recent Western strategic formulations have emphasised only the first aspect . But the advanced democratic and socialist state will also need to employ political and ideological weapons against bureaucratic-managerial reproduction of the subordination of the workers . Some of the political cadre functions may be fulfilled by unions of state employees, such as those already developed in the monopoly capitalist state, and through devolution of central powers to elected regional and local assemblies . However, state bureaucrats and managers will not thereby disappear, and problems of popular control will remain . Under Social Democratic and liberal pressure, the present conceptions of socialist democracy have largely evaded the serious and complicated questions of bureaucracy and technocracy . In the end, sweeping theses on autogestion (or self-management) may prove as misleadingly utopian as the picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat drawn in State and Revolution .' The questions raised in this paper barely skim the surface, and the answers are excruciatingly inadequate . Above all, I have avoided speaking directly to the question of finding the means of transition from the bourgeois state of the `historic compromise' to the socialist state . It is troublesome, to say the least, that there is apparently little serious open discussion of this question in the Eurocommunist parties today . A facile identification of Eurocommunism with social democracy is in my view indefensible . The abandonment of the `dictatorship of the proletariat' does not make these parties social democratic as long as they retain a definition of socialism in which the proletariat becomes the hegemonic class . Whether `parliamentary illusions', to use Luxembourg's apt litmus test (not to be confused with an immediate and dominant parliamentary strategy) are being created among the supporters of Eurocommunism remains however a'central question to be asked . For even if communist parties came to governmental office in certain western liberal democracies, this does not rule out the factor of coercion in subsequent developments . Engels' warning of the `insane cruelties of revenge (to which the bourgeoisie) will be goaded the moment the proletariat dares to take its stand against the bourgeoisie as a separate class, with its own interests and demands'[33] remains worth heeding, particularly in a conjuncture today which reveals certain tendencies towards a reassertion of the dominance of the coercive function in the advanced capitalist state .

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 It is to be borne in mind, in other words, that the tension between coercion and consent which will be the defining characteristic of the transitional socialist state, cannot be easily passed over in either strategic preparations or theoretical work. Revolution is going to be, as it always has been, an affair in which force plays a considerable part . And those who would look forward to the future of socialism only on the basis of a watertight guarantee that it be a fully consensual and tidy process are doing socialism no more service than those who argue that socialism has no future apart from the example set by the fully aggressive regimes of `actually existing socialism' . Our task is not to ignore, but to theorise and prepare for a politics of the socialist state which is adequate for the class struggle of the immediate transitional period but which is also capable of laying the groundwork for the fully democratic and consensual state under communism .

FOOTNOTES

1

This is a revised version of an earlier paper presented to the Conference of Socialist Economists, Bradford, July, 1978 and to the Third International Colloquium of the Interuniversity Centre for European Studies, Montreal, April 1978 . 2 Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, London, New Left Books, 1977 . 3 Perry Anderson, Considerations in Western Marxism, London, New Left Books, 1976, p .108 . 4 See `The Role and Nature of the Canadian State' in Panitch (ed .), The Canadian State, Political Economy and Political Power, Toronto, U. of Toronto Press, 1977, pp .3-5 . 5 V .I . Lenin, The State and Revolution, in Selected Works, Vol . 2, Moscow, 1970, p . 292 . 6 `The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci', New Left Review, 100, Nov . 1976/Jan 1977, pp . 28, 30 . 7 See `Speech in Amsterdam, 1872' . in David McLellan, Karl Marx : Selected Writings, Oxford U . Press, 1977, pp . 594-5 ; and Louis Althusser, `On the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party', New Left Review, 104, July/Aug . 1977, pp . 13-14 . 8 Hal Draper, `Marx on Democratic Forms of Government', The Socialist Register 1974, London, Merlin, 1974, p . 111 . 9 For an elaboration of this argument see L .Panitch, `The Development of Corporatism in Liberal Democracies'. Comparative Political Studies, Vol . 10, No . 1, April 1977 . 10 `An Open Letter to Lesjek Kolakowski', The Socialist Register 1973, London, Merlin, 1974, pp . 99-100, n . 69 . 11 `Critique of the Gotha Programme', in Marx and Engels, Selected Works Vol . 3, Moscow, Progress, 1970, p . 17 . 12 `The German Ideology', in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol.5, 1845-1847, New York, International Publishers, 1976, pp . 52-3 . 13 Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol . 2, p . 221 ; Vol . 3, p . 26 . 14 Capital, Vol . III, Moscow, 1959, pp . 376-7 . 15 Hal Draper, `The Death of the State in Marx and Engels' . The Socialist Register 1970, London, Merlin, 1970, p . 298 . 16 Quoted in ibid .



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17 Quoted in ibid, p . 296 . 18 Engels, `On Authority', Selected Works, Vol . III, p . 378 . 19 L . Althusser, For Marx, Penguin, 1969, pp . 235-6 . 20 'On the Twenty-Second Congress', op .cit., p . 10 . E . Balibar's On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (London, New Left Books, 1977) takes the same position . Although it is useful for its insights on the particular reasons for the French Communist Party's abandonment of the concept, its own theoretical contribution is weak . It provides for the most part an uncritical regurgitation of Lenin's position on the concept, whereby Balibar not only repeats Lenin's mistakes, but presents them as science by virtue of their pedigree . 21 Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Society, 6th edn ., London, 1908, p . 144 . 22 Marx, in McLellan, op. cit ., p .379 . 23 Engels, 'On Authority', op. cit ., p . 379 . 24 Althusser, `On the Twenty-Second Congress', op . cit., p . 13 . 25 `The State and Revolution' in V . I . Lenin, Selected Works, Vol . II, Moscow, pp . 349-51 . 26 The Crisis of the Dictatorship, London, NLB, 1976, pp . 30, 49-50 . 27 `The Problem of the Dictatorship', in R. Luxembourg, Selected Political Writings, London, Jonathan Cape, 1972, pp . 244-7 . 28 Quoted in G . Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?, London, NLB 1978, p . 25 . 29 For a recent account, see B . Ollman, Marx's Vision of Communism : A Reconstruction' . Critique, No . 8, Summer, 1977, pp . 5-41 . 30 `Notes on Bakunin' . quoted in Draper, `The Death . . .', op . cit., p . 296 . 31 `Soviets in Italy', New Left Review, 51, Sept ./Oct ., 1968, pp . 45, 48 . 32 Therborn, op . cit., pp . 279-280 . 33 Engels, Introduction (1891) to The Civil War in France, Marx and Engels Selected Works, Vol . II, op . cit., p . 180 .

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Reviews WOMEN AND TRADE UNIONS by Sheila Lewenhak Benn (London : 1978) £7 .50

WOMEN IN BRITISH TRADE UNIONS, 1874-1976 by Norbert C . Soldon Gill and Macmillan, Rowman and Littlefield (1978) £12

Reviewed .by Sally Alexander The waged workforce has always comprised both men and women, so why is it that the organised working class has so often excluded women? Why have women workers found it so difficult to sustain unions of their own? Why has women's representation within the trade union movement been so weak? These two books attempt to answer these questions . Both follow the fortunes of women workers through their different phases of unionisation ; both provide a narrative of the main events in women's progress towards equal participation in the trade union movement . Sheila Lewenhak and Norbert C . Soldon differ little in their selection of the main events . The trade union movement proper is taken as given and is used to provide the background to the separate story of women workers . They choose the same landmarks . Segregation within the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834 foreshadows the principal characteristic of women's organisationuntilthe 1920's. Separatism, a tactic forced on women by craft workers' exclusion and the ultimate indifference of the `new' unionism of the 1890's, culminates in the formation of Mary MacArthur's National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) in 1906 . The two world wars give an impetus to women's organisation, though the industrial recession beginning in 1919 wipes out the bulk of women's wartime gains in membership . From 1919 onwards, unemployment weakens women's hold, not only on organisation, but more significantly on industrial work itself, as women are pushed back into domestic service through their own insistent economic needs, as well as government (conservative, national and labour) policy . This policy is reluctantly acquiesced in by women trade union leaders when the recession proves recalcitrant . The post-1945 history of

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women waged workers is dominated by the demand for equal paya demand repeatedly checked by wage restraint imposed by successive labour and conservative governments . The militancy of women workers (notably the Fords upbolstresses in 1968 and the Leeds clothing workers in 1970) finally forces Barbara Castle's hand . The story ends in the mid-1970's with the limited promises of equality legislation, and the reader is left to ponder the fragility of women's industrial and economic gains in the context of a declining manufacturing sector, the micro-chip, massive public expenditure cuts, and a government aggressively determined to revitalise private enterprise . Within this shared narrative framework, the emphases are different . Apart from the resort to a rather facile notion of progress, Soldon avoids analysis, relying instead on the confident chronology of facts . Yet what is interesting about his book is that he does pay some attention to the ideas of the leaders of the women's trade union movement . Thus his account of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) for instance, remains much closer to the thoughts and aspirations of the women who led it than does Lewenhak's, which focusses on broad shifts in policy . (Soldon reminds us, for instance, of the formidable propaganda skills of Lady Emilia Dilke, the leading influence in the WTUL during the 1890's and for whom the WTUL was `A Crusade' . The secret of Britain's industrial greatness, she claimed at the height of British Imperialism, rested on its dependence on the unlimited supply of cheap labour of women and girls (p . 28) and her motto was, `Don't think of the Empire on which the sun never sets-think of the wage that never rises' . (p . 50)) Soldon's account proper begins with the formation of the Women's Protective and Provident League, later renamed the Women's Trade Union League, in 1874 . Women's unionisation, he suggests, (with the exception of the textile workers) made gradual but steady progress as a movement led by `women of genius' through two world wars, recession and unemployment, and the post1945 'stop-go' economy . The numbers of women in textiles declined, but on the other hand, the numbers in engineering grew . More and more women entered industry as `work became lighter' and the service sector expanded . Higher wages and union efforts raised women's status, which was further uplifted by new `enlightened' attitudes among men and women workers (as husbands allowed their wives to go out to work for instance) . Equal pay was eventually implemented through legislation because `Progress by negotiations was difficult to attain by women whose position in the labour market was always near the bottom .'(p . 185) Sheila Lewenhak in a much more interesting if occasionally muddled presentation, eschews the idea of steady progress, either in the organisation of working women, or the representation of their interests within the trade union movement . Women, she argues, have always worked in industry and participated in class struggle, but their separate voice is lost and their different needs are overlooked unless they organise independently from men . Women waged workers have persistently been ignored or actively discriminated

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 against by men at all levels of the trade union movement, and their lower legal and civil status has made this possible . Thus, with hindsight, Lewenhak laments the ill-found optimism which led to the amalgamation in the 1920's of the WTUL and the NFWW with the TUC General Council and the National Union of General Workers respectively . The cumbersome machinery of women's advisories, committees, and conferences that were set up not only took some years to become self-sustaining, but were frustrating and ineffectual because their decisions were not binding on the trade union movement as a whole . Unemployment and wage-cutting from 1921 onwards meant that men, both among the rank and file, and in the trade union leadership, forgot about women workers except when forced to confront the `menace of cheap labour' . What's more, on the shop floor, men's methods of selfprotection often involved collusion with employers for women's exclusion from, or at least segregation within, an industry . Equal pay, an issue that divided women as well as men, often only engaged the attention of men, she argues, because they hoped that its enforcement would compel employers to throw out their `inferior' female labour. (A hope that was in some cases fulfilled between 1970 and 1975 when many firms managed to avoid the added costs of equal pay by restructuring divisions within the workforce, putting women either in special low grades, or getting rid of them altogether.) After 1945, despite the absolute majority of the Labour Government, even the meagre promise of the Royal Commission on Equal Pay (1944-6) for equal pay in the common classes of the public services, was set aside as inflationary when the wage-freeze was re-established in 1948 . It wasn't until the 1960's Lewenhak shows, that the movement for women's equality came to vigorous life again, and then it was women's own militancy and persistence that prompted legislation . Men's support was secured only because they at last recognised that women's presence in industry was inevitable, given changes in the production process . Men desired, therefore, to protect their own jobs . Sheila Lewenhak's purpose is to show `why trade unionism is less developed among women than among men' and her examination of the obduracy of the trade union bureaucracy, male rank and file hostility to female labour, and employers' implacability go part of the way toward providing an answer to this question . She shows how difficult it has been for women to have their own demands raised at the TUC or even within those unions with a strong female membership . Arguments over equal pay in these masculine strongholds too often degenerated into a wrangle over whether women should be allowed to work for wages at all-even socialist leaders in the first decades of the 20th century could not be relied upon to defend women's right to work . And Lewenhak points out that it was women in the white collar unions (not affiliated to the TUC until 1946) who were in the vanguard of the equal pay campaign from the 1920's through to the 1960's, not the socialists in the trade union movement nor the more militant male dominated blue collar unions. She convincingly demonstrates the ways in which female

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labour has often been used as simply one bargaining counter between male workers and capital . Nevertheless, despite the indisputable evidence of men's discrimination against women, and the suppression or deliberate obstructions of women's separate demands, men's fear of scab labour on the one hand and a desire to see women in their `proper place at home' on the other cannot by themselves explain women's persistently weak hold on industrial organisation . In the context of the capitalist mode of production, where competition between different groups of workers is always rife, it is a commonplace that the weakest go to the wall-but why women and why so persistently? Labour history (perhaps following Lenin) has tended to assume a quite untroubled correspondence between the wage relationship itself, class consciousness, and workers' defensive organisations . GDH Cole outlined the connection quite clearly : Trade Unions arise as natural responses of the workers to the conditions of capitalist employment . They arise as bodies for the collective defences of the immediate interests of particular groups of workers and for the improvement of these workers' conditions of life . (British Trade Unionism Today, Gollancz, 1939, p . 11) For as long as labour history focusses on mule spinners, miners, engineers or even gas workers, the notion of trade union consciousness (and organisation) as a spontaneous outcome of waged work itself may be sustained . However, the study of women workers rudely challenges such an idea . Women workers have often been militant (according to Emilia Dilke, chairman of the WTUL in the 1890's, women's propensity to strike was an obstacle to organisation) but they have had to learn habits of trade unionism, as Lewenhak, echoing Mary Macarthur points out . Part of the problem has been that women have not always concentrated upon their own `immediate interests' as `particular groups of workers' . Women's thoughts have always been on their domestic responsibilities rather than their waged work, while their notoriously low standard of living has always reflected the subordination of their own needs to those of their families . Women's sense of themselves as waged workers has often been weaker, under industrial capitalism, than their sense of themselves as wives, mothers and daughters . The state's differential treatment of women workers from the 1840's onwards has compounded this self-perception as well as men's attitudes and expectations . But most significant of all, the social relations of production have been so closely entangled with those of kin that the conditions of waged work in themselves have reinforced women's place within the family and subordination within the labour force . For instance, sub-contacting in spinning, pottery, tailoring and shoe-making in the 19th century meant that women in some branches of those trades were employed directly by husbands and fathers . Unions in these occupations, until the late 1880's at least, were the exclusive preserve of men (and, sometimes, boys) . When compelled to open their ranks to women they did so at lower

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 rates of membership, and offered the reduced benefits appropriate to men's economic dependants. Sheila Lewenhak touches on some of these questions, but only fleetingly . For instance, she points out that the principal features of women's lives were set down by the 16th century-'the lesser value placed on "women's work", the "woman's wage", the "family wage", and "sweating" .' (p . 11) . But unfortunately this discovery seems to inhibit any further curiosity in these categories and what constitutes them . Even the term `women's work' is never broken down and systematically explored (although the recurrent pull of women into different forms of domestic work and mechanised factory work is noted .) Similarly, the observation that the British trade union movement was founded on hierarchy remains an observation (p . 25-6) in spite of the useful implication that the methods and forms of organisation appropriate to craftsmen are inapplicable to the working conditions of most women . The hegemony of craftsmen and their union practices throughout the British trade union movement until-arguably-the 1930's is of particular significance to the understanding of women's trade union history . How do we explain, for instance, the apparent paradox that Mary Macarthur, socialist leader of the NFWW, co-operated on recruitment and wage bargaining throughout 1915-18 not with the Workers' Union, a general union like her own, but with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (and other skilled men's unions)-an alliance which committed her to negotiating women out of skilled and semi-skilled jobs during 1918-19 because such jobs belonged to men? It could be argued that the NFWW was never in fact a general union so much as a federation of many small trade societies (mostly short-lived) . Indeed, it seems that those groups of women most effectively organised in the period 1870-1930 (except during the 1914-18 war) were either in industries already partly organised along craft lines (eg some branches of the textile industries ; some printworkers and book binders ; some white collar trades) or else they were in a trade which could achieve a degree of local protection (usually temporary) against the mass of unskilled labour within one particular firm or factory (eg some East End trades) . Finally, waves of trade union activity appear to have occurred among women waged workers in periods of technical innovation and capitalist reconstruction-the 1890's ; 1906-18 ; mid-1930's1945, mid-1960's to the present. This pattern of organisation suggests connections between changes in the labour process, dislocation of the customary and local sexual divisions within different trades as well as a heightened trade union consciousness among strategic groups of workers at these times . These were also periods of active feminist intervention in the trade union movement . However, Sheila Lewenhak raises some of these questions only to suppress them in favour of a narrative history which depends for its coherence on the policy decisions of the trade union leadership . And yet the posing of a simple conflict of interests between men and women in the trade union movement is irrevocably unsatisfactory

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without a fuller investigation of the jobs that women do, the reasons why women do them, and the influence of both of these on women's attempts at collective self-help. Barbara Drake concluded in 1921, after a rigorous survey of women's organisation in different trades, that despite the special circumstances of women's lives (ie their work in the family), the greatest obstacle to organisation was their semi-qualified and badly paid work . Mary Macarthur, on the other hand, claimed it was women's lack of education, low standard of living as well as their low pay . Since then, feminist studies of women's work, and organisation, have not moved much beyond a reassertion of the difficulties confronting women's unionisation as a result of their `dual role' or `double workload' . Sheila Lewenhak's failure to more than gesture towards the problems surrounding the relationship between the labour process, the family and `consciousness' (whether class or feminist), means that, as we have seen, she has to lean very heavily on men's neglect of women workers to explain women's vulnerability within the trade union movement . On the other hand, Lewenhak's argument does raise some interesting and pertinent political issues . Was the labour movement as a whole weakened by the capitulation of industrial feminism in the inter-war years? Women workers themselves, of course, lost out, not only through their relegation to the seeming invisibility of the home and low-paid, casual work, but also because the dismantling of the WTUL and the NFWW made it much more difficult for them to reassert their demands in a more propitious industrial and political climate . But it could also be argued that the trade union movment in abandoning industrial feminism undermined its own strategic position vis a vis capital-ie the pushing to the side-lines of the demands for equal pay and training opportunities, and the failure to address directly the problems of working women (by promoting demands for improved maternity provisions, nurseries and so on) meant that the trade union movement confined itself to a narrow conception of equality among workers, and precluded the possibility of fighting for the preservation of living standards or `fair wages' for all members of the working class, irrespective of sex or family status. In the 1970's feminism has forced its way once more into the trade union movement . Women are the growth sector for the unions, and their presence has brought the demands and aspirations of feminism to the agenda of the TUC again . The 40,000 people who marched behind Len Murray last October for Legal Safe Abortion signalled a victory for a much broader concept of equality between men and women than has been possible hitherto . But what Sheila Lewenhak's book shows very clearly is that the political gains of feminism within the trade union movement are not immutable, they can be wiped out either by economic recession or political reaction . Despite their limitations, the information these two books provide is a weapon in the struggle to maintain and extend the political and industrial demands of feminism within the trade union movement today .

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ECONOMY AND CLASS STRUCTURE OF GERMAN FASCISM By Alfred Sohn-Rethel CSE Books (London 1978) £2 .50

Reviewed by Claudia von Braunmuhl The `story' of the book is easily recounted . In the early thirties Alfred Sohn-Rethel was keeping himself alive by jobbing around in various industrial lobbies, and hence he was close to the very suture where economic demands were being `translated' into adequate political strategies . Against the background of his Marxist training the author here converts the insights from correspondence, contacts and documents into historical studies in essay form . He outlines the dilemma which confronted German industry, and in particular the steel industry, as a result of the enormous rationalisation efforts of the mid-twenties ; he analyses the formation of fractions within German capital, with different exigencies of production and distribution exerting their divisive influence ; he contrasts the agricultural policy actually implemented with the officially proclaimed small peasant ideology ; and he attempts a political-economic determination of the arms industry and its reflections in political and military decisions before and during the war . In keeping with its `documentary' character, the volume also contains some of the brilliant class analyses of rising fascism which Sohn-Rethel originally wrote for the 'Deutsche Fuhrerbriefe', an irregularly appearing publication of one of the lobbies, the 'Mitteleuropaische Wirtschaftstag' ; and finally the volume ends with an historical analysis of June 30 1934, of the reasons and the circumstances underlying the exceedingly bloody liquidation of the socalled Strasser-wing of the NSDAP . Some of the material will certainly be of interest to historians . This is not, however, where Sohn-Rethel originally saw the significance of his studies . He understood his note-the original German edition makes this much more explicit than the rather streamlined English one-as historical materialist prolegomena to a theory of capitalist reproduction with epistemological aspirations . It is worth noting that Sohn-Rethel consented to the publication of the book under consideration only after his Intellectual and Manual LabourA Critique of Epistemology had enjoyed a wide and lively reception . (The introduction to the German edition is very clear on this point .) The English translation has been subjected to a process of streamlining that slims the book essentially to one dimension, namely that of a contribution to the theory of fascism . This operation one may justly regret, since the original version, although admittedly less stringent, contains traces of theoretical and methodological initiatives and procedures that are at least as valuable as the ready results . The book has been made easier to read, but with some loss of substance . The publication of notes, hastily written forty years before they



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were finally put to print, did not come as an easy decision to SohnRethel, particularly as he considered them to be mere preliminaries to his more far-reaching epistemological schemes . A second reason for his hesitation may lie in the ambivalent circumstances that enabled him to collect such information in the first place, and if so, his misgivings were well-founded . When an article, originally published in the 'Deutsche Fuhrerbriefe' was reprinted in a non-revisionist left-wing journal in 1973 this was followed shortly afterwards by an obviously pseudonymous article published in a magazine close to the CO, which was little less than an all-out attack culminating in arguments of the 'lackey-of-capital' and 'class-betrayal' kind . SohnRethel's reply was obviously pained and none-too-subtle . It would, perhaps, have been more advisable to point out the sheer necessity of compromise in those times, rather than to style himself retrospectively as an individual antifascist resistance fighter operating in the very heart of the system ; although the kind of activity SohnRethel pursued when working with the MTW certainly bore features of this kind. The book presents a theory of fascism . Its point of departure and its focus are located within the dual character of production under capitalism, in the material labour process as valorisation process, which is the central category of surplus value . According to Sohn-Rethel fascism is the political form which emerges when absolute surplus value production has become dominant . With the socalled `classical' mechanisms of crisis alleviation in historical decline, fascism is the continuation of bourgeois domination in times of falling and potentially negative profit rates . Fascism is precisely not, as the famous Dimitroff formulation of the contemporary theory of state monopoly capitalism would have it, the domination of the most powerful fraction of finance capital ; on the contrary, it is brought about by the weakest link in the chain of world capitalism, and there again by the economically weakest fraction of the bourgeoisie . What is more important, however, than this contribution to an ongoing and far from concluded debate, are the methods SohnRethel uses . These constitute a far too little appreciated contribution to a materialist determination of political action, or, in other words, to a theory of the relation of the economic and the political spheres . Before discussing briefly how this works in the case of fractions of capital (the conceptual link central to Sohn-Rethel's approach) it should be mentioned that he situates his analysis integrally at the level of the world market . He does not do this in the usual fashion of additively introducing a supplementary element, after having considered factors of so-called interior policy separately and in isolation . Instead he moves a priori on the level of the world market ; that is, on the only level with reference to which it is possible to deal adequately with the specific economic, social and political genesis of worldwide crisis phenomena in Germany, and so to understand Germany's historically specific `solution' to this crisis-fascism . This is shown convincingly when Sohn-Rethel embeds the anal-

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 ysis of the particular valorisation situation of the German steel industry within the business cycle of steel production and distribution on a world level ; equally when he investigates the internal and external political strategies of the electrical and chemical industries, as they are incorporated into their world market mediated and oriented interests in production and selling ; and when he expatiates on the relevance for the fascist seizure of power of the relative boom in the Anglo-Saxon countries and the fact that it bypassed Germany . Sohn-Rethel provides an exemplary analysis of the consensus among originally divergent fractions of capital which underlay the so-called 'Machtergreifung' (seizure of power) . He retraces the interests of the various fractions of capital in terms of the specific demands of world market embedded surplus value production, and sees the consensus as the outcome of the pressure of world market movements upon those fractions. The electrical industry, firstly, had no interest in repressive internal and aggressive external policies ; on the contrary, because of its relatively favourable liquidity, it could maintain its economic interests without political intervention . The steel industry was, by contrast, quite different : After the intermediate up-swing of the rationalisation boom, it suffered from overcapacity and therefore depended heavily on a restrictive wage policy and the politics of autarky, with state orders and solid tariff barriers against world market competition. The interests of the chemical industry were different again, as Sohn-Rethel demonstrates in the case of IG-Farben : This group originally kept its distance and then moved to all-out support for the Nazi regime, prompted by the experience of unforeseen bottlenecks in the field of research and development and by the prospect of easy access to and support by the state. Equally exemplary is the way Sohn-Rethel elucidates the necessity of institutions relatively distant from economic demands, the function of which is precisely to translate those demands into political programmes acceptable to fractions of capital in divergent valorisation situations . The book demonstrates this using the example of the 'Mitteleuropaische Wirtschaftstag' (MTW) . It is clear that (regardless of whether or not Sohn-Rethel may have exaggerated its importance) the MTW developed, in its programme of Middle-Eastoriented political and economic expansion, a perspective which proved attractive to German capital, as the world market experienced a boom which by-passed Germany and exerted considerable pressure on its profit-rate . Once industrial and financial capital had managed to incorporate agrarian capital into the compromise it was this consensus programme that made it possible for Hitler to become a successful political phenomenon rather than a more or less apocryphal one . Sohn-Rethel then analyses the Gleichschaltung (synchronisation) of the Social Democratic Party, the trade unions and the constituent Lander on one hand, and external expansion on the other, as necessary practical consequences of the path chosen . He presents them cogently as essentials of fascist policy, and he also comments on the correspondence between the ideology and social



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composition of the NSDAP . All this, however, remains much more at the level of sketches and drafts than of fully developed analysis and interpretation . To my mind it is precisely this which gives the book its value and richness, though something of this texture is lost in the more finished, `result oriented', English version . It is valuable for these qualities as well as for its direct contribution to the theory of fascism . In other words students of political science concerned with the functioning and dynamics of the political system of capitalism gain just as much from the book as those who are more historically oriented .

IN AND AGAINST THE STATE Discussion Notes for Socialists by London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group (London, 1979), pp . 64, £1 .25.

Reviewed by Peter Fairbrother This pamphlet is presented as `discussion notes for socialists' . The authors conclude by calling for debate and discussion about strategies `in opposition to the capitalist state' . Socialists must respond to this call and, for this reason, I have written the review as a contribution to this debate . The London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group identify a political problem for state workers and `clients' in the welfare sectoreducation, health, housing, personal social services, and social security . They ask us : As `clients' can we rebel? As socialist state workers must we confine our political activity to after hours? Additionally, must state workers inevitably promote the reproduction of capitalist social relations? Does state work provide `special opportunities' to hinder the reproduction of capitalist social relations? Or is this possibility a `reformist illusion'? Obviously, these are questions socialists should ask if class struggles involving state workers and their `clients' are to be understood and encouraged . Their importance is determined by the fact that the capital relation has increasingly taken a state form which is now being challenged . And, as is the nature with political pamphlets, this one informs, provokes and suggests a way forward for state workers and `clients' . However, as I shall suggest, the argument has a sting to it which is disquieting as a socialist strategy . The argument, in brief, is that there is a socialist political strategy available to state workers, particularly service workers and state `clients' . This strategy needs to be rooted in an understanding of the state, principally as a welfare state, which disburses as well as represses. The state is not only an institution to be seized, controlled or substituted as some have suggested, but it is also a form of class relationships which opponents of the state must identify . According to the authors this understanding must initially come from an exploration of the contradictory experiences people have as state

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workers and `clients' . This will provide the basis for building class based alternative forms of organisation that are different from the traditional but limited forms, such as parties or unions. It is a suggestive but inadequate argument. According to the authors, first hand experience of the state is the starting point for acquiring sn understanding of the nature of the struggle necessary to challenge the state as an institution and a relationship . Hence, if we are to understand the necessity for the political strategy advocated by the authors, we must be familiar with the first hand experiences of state workers and `clients' . Toward this end a number of conversations with such people are reported . These conversations include a recipient of welfare (a widow with ten children who is dependent on the state), a manual state worker (a bus conductor), a number of non-manual state workers (law centre workers, 'non-legal' advice centre workers, four teachers, two Community Health Council workers), and a number of electorally based activists (two Labour Party councillors and one Labour Party activist) . The narrow focus of the pamphlet is immediately apparent. In different ways the experiences of these people are welfare experiences ; they are - all centrally involved with different features of the welfare sector . Moreover, most of these people are non-manual state workers employed principally in the community service area. Admittedly, the authors note that they themselves belong to the `professional' segment of state employment-'social/community/ advice/research'-and that these experiences inform the analysis . This, however, does not overcome the narrow focus of the pamphlet . To rectify this, it would be necessary to extend the argument to include a consideration of a variety of state experiences as `clients' or victims-as young or old, black or white, man or woman, single or married-as well as different sectors of state employment-in the law courts or immigration centres, on the buses or the trains, when employed in defence or social security, in a nationalised industry or in local government . Only by considering the variation in experience and position will we be able to begin discussing the limitations and possibilities of political action `in and against the state' . Moreover, such a discussion should contain an examination of more than left Labour Party activists . There are, of course, other elements of the Labour Party which deserve critical attention by socialists . It is also important to gain an understanding of the experiences and practices of members of the Communist Party and the revolutionary left, as well as non-aligned socialists . Without a consideration of these political groupings and elements, the politics of strategies `in and against the state' are oversimplified and, perhaps, misunderstood . The second part of the pamphlet is concerned with an analysis of the capitalist state as a welfare state . Such an analysis is central to the development of an oppositional strategy, although it is not clear what the connection is between the perspective presented in the pamphlet and the often inchoate and underdeveloped perspectives state workers and clients acquire in struggle . All the same, the authors note the importance of developing a theoretically adequate understanding of the capitalist state . They do this via a critique of

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the Fabian (Labour Party) misrepresentation of the state form as mother-bountiful ; this perspective fails to recognise that the state form is experienced as alien and repressive . Hence, a problem is raised for socialists, particularly when the state is being restructured : It is contradictory to fight the cuts and defend the state when the state entails alien and oppressive social relations . This is the dilemma for socialists to explain and overcome . The authors propose an identification of the capitalist state as a political form which is `built into the whole structure of capitalist social relations' . It is not a form simply to be seized and wielded for socialist purposes, as has been suggested by some recent writing . Instead, the authors present a summary variant of state theorising found in some CSE circles . In the course of their argument they elaborate a confusing (and confused) analytic distinction between the state apparatus (institution) and the state form (social relations) . On the one hand, we are involved with the state in a routine way as a hierarchy of rules and a mechanism of powers and controls ; on the other hand, the state is a form of relations, a form of social organisation that entails a class practice of fragmented and individualistic relations . In any event, the task for socialists is to struggle against the state as a form of capitalist relations . This necessitates the development of `alternative forms of organisation which will counteract the fragmentation imposed by the state and give material expression to class solidarity' . However, such an analysis is one-sided, even in its reference to the state, since two features of state relations are neglected : The repressive aspect of state domination and the related complex structural ambivalence of state work. The authors provide a salutary reminder of the way in which domination is structured into the state form and apparatus in covert and mediated ways, but it is equally important to note that there is a blunt edge to state domination through the judiciary, defence organisations, police, and even social and community services . Similarly, the ambiguous position of state workers as coercers or controllers, and as workers engaged in providing resources needed by others is something that needs to be fully explored by socialists . These pathways are not adequately explored in this pamphlet . The full implications of this narrow perspective are evident in the final part of the pamphlet . Significantly, the authors view class struggle as forms of `material counter-organisation' which usually lie outside traditional forms of struggle . They refer to the challenges to the capital relation entailed by recent developments involving sexual politics, black struggles, and the less conventional forms of industrial and political struggle-work-ins, occupations, mass demonstrations, and so forth . Furthermore, the authors remind us to remain aware of the limitations of political organisations (political parties like the Labour Party, Communist Party, and revolutionary parties which, according to the authors, seemingly ignore the daily practices people experience in relation to the state ; unions whose economistic base is important but insufficient for the development of socialist struggle .) However, there are two serious deficiencies in the argument . Firstly, the authors fundamentally misrepresent the significance of

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 some working class political organisations, particularly union organisation . They suggest that unions are primarily concerned with pay and conditions but not with control of jobs, or, more precisely, unions seldom challenge `the social relations implicit in the state' . There is, undoubtedly, an important truth in this claim but it is also necessary to assess accurately the significance of union organisation for class struggle . It is worth considering the proposition that union organisation, particularly at a workplace level, represents a fundamental challenge to the social relations of the capitalist state, albeit in a primitive or elementary form . After all, workplace unions potentially signify unity where previously there was division . Workplace union organisation can provide one of the means whereby social relations can be defined as collective problems subject to collective concern. The narrowness or breadth of this concern is a question of history, not the union form, as seems to be implied by the argument in the pamphlet . Further, it must be noted that under certain circumstances collective organisation enables the agenda of collective concerns to be extended and developed, some examples of which, perhaps ironically, are summarised by the photographs in the pamphlet . All the same, this is not to claim that there are no problems or limitations with the union form of collective organisation . On the contrary, it is to argue for a more detailed and elaborated discussion of the limits and possibilities of union organisation, particularly at a workplace level . Secondly, and partly as an extension of the above point, the authors are too ready to dismiss certain forms of industrial action, in particular the strike . With reference to the winter strikes of 197879 by public sector workers, they claim that strikes are harmful to working class needs and demands, that public sector strikes neglect the ideology of state work as caring work, that public sector strikes tend to overlook the significance of attacking state relations through example and `alternative forms of organisation' . Without doubt it is important to note the contradictions and complications of strike action by state workers and to reassess the purpose and character of some strikes, especially where their effectiveness is not self-evident . Nevertheless, it is equally important to consider the significance of strikes for state workers . The starting point for such a consideration is the recognition that the strike is a basic form of opposition, an elementary example of a 'prefigurative struggle' . More particularly, it should be remembered that the merit of some socialist writing has been to develop the argument that strikes and similar forms of collective action provide formative experiences for workers in the unfolding- class struggle . In other words, it is to recognise that an essential feature of strikes is that new social relations can be forged, that new understandings can be gained during the course of strikes . Thus, the task for socialists is to extend and develop this argument with reference to the circumstances and conditions of strike action by state workers . Unfortunately, the authors' neglect of these issues limits an . otherwise interesting discussion about the importance of broadening the range of collective struggles, redefining issues, rejecting insidious managerial priorities and procedures . The task before us

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is to translate forms of struggle over traditional issues into new forms of struggle that broaden the range of issues addressed and challenged, without at the same time forgetting the difficulty and importance of traditional struggles about wages and conditions or the sectional struggles of those who suffer the state . Despite the limitations and weaknesses of the pamphlet, its publication should be welcomed by socialists. It provides an occasion for us to address a series of important questions that need to be answered . Those questions should be asked at home, at work, at union meetings, at `political' meetings whenever and wherever possible . The answers to these questions will be crucial to the form and direction of socialist activity in the coming struggles . These are indeed discussion notes for socialists . They should herald the beginning of a lively and important debate .

POOR PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS : WHY THEY SUCCEED, HOW THEY FAIL By Frances Fox Piven and Richard A . Cloward Vintage Books (New York, 1979) 381 pp . £3 .50 pbk . Reviewed by Geof Rayner This is a refreshing and stimulating book . It shows that you don't have to swallow lumps of indigestible French prose (or the AngloSaxon derivatives) to produce a relevant and exciting analysis of the class struggle . The book does not rely upon a `purified' vocabulary ; question-begging bits of grammer (like 'elites') are frequently found in the text, but it does not unduly suffer therefrom . One reason why the book is so good is that it has evolved out of practical questions of struggle in which the authors were personally involved . It shows that one does not have to be a party to the parlour chats of so-called intellectuals to produce thoughtful assessments of working class strategy . For Cloward and Piven real revolutionary practice means getting one's boots muddy on ground that is often the least fertile for socialism and trying to make the best of it . The `least fertile ground' in this case is the USA in the depression years, and roughly from the sixties until today . The study focuses upon the struggles of the most oppressed sections of the working class : The numerous ranks of the unemployed in the thirties, welfare recipients and 'disenfranchised' blacks, as well as employed workers struggling for union recognition . The main focus is not that of the working class struggle as such, but those who at the time were the most formally disorganised and with the least political and ideological `clout' . The book charts what it sees as the relative success of some groups, like industrial workers, and also the overall failure of others (welfare recipients) to secure their demands or ambitions. The really good thing about this study is that it completely avoids any kind of moralising about `the poor', a characteristic that

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 virtually drips off most bourgeois texts that deal with `social policy' issues, and which also infects much socialist writing . The authors note that many on the left use the term 'lumpenproletariat' to refer to the poorest and most dependent sections of the working class (the 'lazarus layers' of the industrial reserve army in Marx's Capital) . However they argue that this is a complet misuse of the term : These `dangerous classes' were criminal elements `from all classes' for Marx and Engels . The authors suggest that customarily this group is made to carry the can for many sins of capitalism,,and that the `welfare' system is constructed to ram this home to the poor . They say that in the US ideological proscription of the poor is greater than elsewhere (due to the strength of individualistic and competitive ethics) and that the welfare measures are cynically devised to reinforce this process . (These themes were explored in a more detailed way in their earlier books, the well-known Regulating the Poor : the Functions of Public Welfare and the collection of essays The Politics of Turmoil) . Essentially the book is concerned to re-examine and reassess both the strengths and weaknesses of these movements . It has a clear polemical line which they attempt to validate through their gleaning of historical evidence . The point that the authors attempt to drive home at every possible opportunity is that `orthodox' left organisational strategy (building committees and organisations, appointing `leaderships' etc) is, at best, largely irrelevant and at worst, a formidable obstacle to the development and success of particular struggles . All too often, they say, ` . . .when workers erupted in strikes, organisers collected dues cards ; when tenants refused to pay rent and stood off marshalls, organisers formed building committees ; when people were burning and looting, organisers used that `moment of madness' to draft constitutions' . When campaigns and mass action do turn out to be a visible failure (in terms proposed by the organisers, that is), the source of the problem is then seen to be the inherent 'unorganisability' of the people involved, the failure to `build' an organisation of sufficient strength, leadership `sell-outs', or else the sheer difficulty in trying to build a grass-roots campaign amongst amorphous and scattered groups . Piven and Cloward attempt to refute the first two hypotheses, though they tend to accept, with some qualification, the others . Leaderships, they say, are so frequently coopted and bought out because they detach themselves from the membership of campaigns and hence are easy prey to inducements and `compromises' offered by the state . Robert Michel's old thesis of `the iron law of oligarchy' is summoned up as their theatrical prop . At times they are led to say that the effects are the inevitable result of large-scale centrally directed organisations . The examples they muster in support of this thesis are consistently interesting and provocative ones . One concerns the evolution of the industrial trades-unions . Here, they say, the strategy of 'popular-frontism' (Comintern-inspired, but also locally-derived) assisted the eventually successful attempts by the state to neutralise this movement . The Communist Party militants,

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who were probably the most energetic and determined of the socialist organisers, directed the growth in the bureaucracy of the unions and allowed the roots of the organisation (that is, the every-day practices of class struggle) to wither. In doing so, they helped assist the co-optation of the union leaderships into collaboration with the state, and the strengthening of the hold of arch-bureaucrats (like George Meany) over the structure and political direction of the organisations . Whilst a militant base of organisers helped tradesunions free themselves from craftism and hence to swell their memberships, the bureaucratically devised Congress of Industrial Organisations reaped all the benefits . In a footnote they quote from C . L . R . James, who succinctly, if rather over-dramatically summarises this development : `The history of production since (the creation of the CIO) is the corruption of the bureaucracy and its transformation into an instrument of capitalist production, the restoration to the bureaucracy of what it has lost in 1936, the right to control production standards . Without this mediating role of the bureaucracy production in the United States would be violently and continuously disputed until one class was undisputed master' . Other sections of the book deal with the civil rights and welfare rights movements . Even these campaigns, they say, were eventually overtaken by bureaucratism, with `bargaining' by the leaderships being substituted for grass roots militancy . The state was quite willing to form some rapprochement with the protesters, even though, in the short term it meant the state machine itself undergoing some internal turbulence and having to `pay its way' out of trouble . Bourgeois writers have always seen the `Great Society' programme as a paradox, as it was brought in by President Johnson, who otherwise devoted his attention to obliterating the Vietnamese people from the face of the earth . This `paradox' can be extended into recent history : `People's Man' Jimmy Carter is bringing any of the remaining liberal elements of these programmes to their final demise in his recently proposed welfare `reforms' . Readers of Regulating the Poor would not find these events so paradoxical . The authors, as I have previously indicated, were involved in these building struggles : ' . . .(W)e were intimately involved in the affairs of the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Committee) : We participated in discussions of strategy, in fund-raising efforts, and in demonstrations. We were strong advocates of a particular political strategy-one stressing disrupting protest rather than community organisation-which was a continual source of dispute among NWRO's leadership' . The strategy of the dominant leadership, based upon organisationbuilding and the extraction of compromise legislation from the state, is judged by Piven and Cloward to be a failure . How so? They suggest there are two tests : Whether the organisation was able to

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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 reach its stated objective, and second, whether it managed to exploit `the momentary unrest among the poor to obtain the maximum concessions possible in return for the restoriation of quiescence' . According to them it failed on both counts . The main indictment the authors lodge against these `poor peoples' movements' is not, therefore, that they failed to build themselves into truly revolutionary forms of organisation, but that they failed to reach their maximum feasible potential (given that there were no developed grounds for total revolutionary upheaval) . They consider that the older movements, like that of the industrial workers, were considerably more successful, in that they won real, lasting concessions-shorter hours, better pay and welfare benefits . Even here, though, the gains were limited by more ambiguous concessions . In this review I may have exaggerated the virtues of this book, and rather neglected its demerits . It does have these too . There is really no hard, theoretical `core' to speak of, and the chapter that attempts to summarise their views--'the Structuring of Protest'really fails to deal with the question of alternative forms of struggle. However, even though at times it overstates its case, the lasting impression one has is a good one, since it is based on the following simple (but true) notion-that working class organisations must devise tactics, which flex and expand their members' sense of autonomy . Any organisation which fails to serve this spirit of defiance, serves, in effect, itself. ON AMIN'S MODEL OF AUTOCENTRIC ACCUMULATION A. A. Brewer Apology and corrections The Editorial Committee of Capital and Class apologise to readers and to Anthony Brewer for the typographical errors and omissions which occurred in his article published in Capital and Class No . 10. We publish below a list of errata and corrections to the text, and the footnotes and bibliography which were omitted inadvertently . 1 The footnotes and bibliography were omitted, and are published below . 2 On p . 116, line 14, add `[3]' . 3 On p . 116, the two lines following equation (2) should be deleted and replaced by : `where p is the price of department I output in the second phase relative to the first .' 4 On p . 116, four lines below equation (2), for `(delta v 1)' read `(delta < 1)' . 5 Throughout the text and the appendix, d (Roman) and delta (Greek) are confused . They should all read delta . 6 Pages 120 and 121 are reversed, i .e . p .120 is part of the appendix which starts on p . 121 . 7 Throughout the appendix, p (Roman) and rho (Greek) are confused . Rho should appear only in the list of notation . In the remainder of the appendix, p (Roman) is as defined below . The notation is Amin's . 8 In the list of notation on p . 120, 'p, q' (Roman) should be defined as `physical output per unit of equipment in departments I, II .' Also, 'd, p' should read delta, rho (Greek) and the last

155 line of the definition should read `so that a 2 = delta a, and b 2 = rho b l . [4]' . On page 120, the first line of equation 5 should conclude with a 9 subscript 1, not a comma . 10 On page 120, in the line following equation (7), the bracket should read `(see above, p . 115)' . FOOTNOTES

The author teaches economics at the University of Bristol . This paper is based on sections of my forthcoming book, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, a Critical Survey ; see chapter 10 of that work for a more general assessment of Amin's work . I would like to thank Ben Fine for helpful comments . In Amin (1978), he gives a numerical example which purports 1 to show that value magnitudes give a better measure of the growth of net product . 1The resultf are vitiated by an arithmetic error : the values of v 11 and v 2 (p . 26) that he gives are not solutions to the equations concerned . This is not a printing error, since it is carried forward into subsequent workings . The result is obviously wrong, since Amin gets a growth of net output in value terms of 130% between periods with a constant labour force . Since the value of net output is measured by the hours of labour performed, which is assumed constant, it must obviously be a growth of 0% . The first condition involves assuming that capitalists do not ad2 vance wages but that workers get a share, at the end of the period, of what they have produced during that period . Marx, in his schemes of extended reproduction, assumes that consumer goods output must match demand by the workers employed in the following period . Altering this would not alter the results of the analysis in any significant way . There have been (to my mind, rather pointless) debates about 3 whether values should be calculated on the basis of past or present techniques ; these are irrelevant here, since the point is that Amin is inconsistent . Rho will not appear in what follows, since wage goods are not 4 subject to depreciation .

BIBLIOGRAPHY S . Amin (1974) : Accumulation on a World Scale (2 vols) . New York, Monthly Review Press . (1976) : Unequal Development, Hassocks, Sussex, England, Harvester Press ; New York, Monthly Review Press . (1977) : Imperialism and Unequal Development . Hassocks, Sussex, Harvester Press ; New York, Monthly Review Press . (1978) : The Law of Value and Historical Materialism . New York and London, Monthly Review Press . A . Emmanuel (1972) : Unequal Exchange . London, NLB ; New York, Monthly Review Press . N.Kaldor (1963) : `Capital Accumulation and Economic Growth' in F . A . Lutz and D . C . Hague (eds), The Theory of Capital . London, Macmillan. J . Robinson (1964) : Essays in the Theory of Economic Growth . London, Macmillan .



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