The Myth of C

Scan page 6

and Leicester will bring further unemployment and disruption to the lives of workers in these cities if it is allowed to go ahead. In Hull, the closure of the IT factory will add 20% to an already above average unemployment rate.

The situation facing the IT workers repeats that facing thousands of other workers especially in Stee and the car industry. As a result of the inability of the capitalist ecinomy to meet the needs of the working class, sections of workers have begun to raise the question of the working class itself taking over the management of production.

Such questions however are posec initially, from within the existing reformist traditions of the working class, and for this reason take the existing capitalist relations of production for granted.

'LEFT UTOPIANS This fact is of course seized upor by the reformist leadership, especially through its 'left' face: Wedgewood Benn. Benn and his left talkers seek to steer the rising resistance of workers to the capitalist crisis into all sorts of 'safe' utopian adventures in 'industrial democracy' ', and even more radically sounding, 'workers' co-opera tives' Such tactics as these have one aim: to subordinate the working class to the need of capitalism in this period for wage cuts and unemployment, while appearing to fight them.

The unions involved in the Hull factory of IT havecalready published a 'social audit'. This has been presented to Benn in an attempt to prove that the factory could form a viable basis for continuing production in the form of a workers' co-operative.

Before rushing into such dangerous diversions, IT workers would do well to consider what has actually happened at previol examples of such schemes. Despite the struggle involved, for example, to set up the motor cycle co-op at Meriden, the end result was in fact very similar to that which a capitalist management would have aimed at.

The labour force was halved iror 1750 to 870, all demarcation was ended, and wages are at a flat rate of £50 a week - lower than the general average in ine area. In other words, in order to make itself 'viable' ', the co-op was forced, despite the absence of individual capitalist owners, to carry out capitalist policies: wage cuts and redundancies.

It is vital to understand why this kind of result is inevitable for WOT" ker co-ops.

DEPRESSION The capitalist, as Marx pointed out, is only the carrier and the pe sonifier of the capitalist relations of production. The physical absence of the capitalist in a particular case does nothing to annul those relations.

At a time of increasing world economic depression, the laws of capitalist production dictate wage cuts, redundancies and speed-up as individual firms compete ruthlessly or the diminishing mass of surplus alue and profit.

"he Hull 'social audit' does not st. t from these facts, but starts from the standpoint of 'good' versu: bad' management.

"„bitrary and remote decision -making combined with frequent and unpredictable switches of production programmes and a ruthless attitude to employee security were the constant experience under Litton in Hull."

All this is no doubt true. But the report suggests that the release of "hitherto untapped resources of human motivation and worker participation in management and performance" could somehow overcome the objective development of the world capitalist crisis!

PROFITABILITY The report is concerned to question whether the piant is "inevitably loss making" ". In other words the purpose which these "untappea resources" are to serve is boosting profitability. And in conditions of capitalist slump it is inevitable that the restoration of profitability involves speed-up, wage cut and redundancy.

This is absolutely clear if the problem of markets is considered. As long as capitalist production remains predominant in the world economy the IT 'co-op' would be forced to make money sufficient to pay their own wages, replace worn plant and purchase raw materials on the market at rapidly rising prices.

To do this, IT workers would have to be assured a market for their typewriters. But the capitalist world economy is now entering most serious slump since the 1930 Production is falling and unemploy ment is increasing. This leads to massive reductions in purchasing power of both capitalists and workers and so a fall in demand for production including typewriters. The volume of sales for typewriters in Britain alone fell by 1/5 during 1974.

This is precisely why Litton Indus tries decided to ciose down IT in the first place: it was no longer pro fitable.

SPEED UP If IT is to be reopened as a pro• fitable concern, even if under the regime of a workers' co-operative this can only mean tast the productivity and the intensity of labour in the factory ha increased as a result of speed-up and the re placement of some vorters by machinery together with a cut in the wage bill.

It is precisely by such methods a these thre individual capitalist firms seek to reduce the labour time content of the finished product in order to sell it in a shrinking world market at a price marginally below their competitor's. There is no other course open to IT if it is to remain 'viable' in a car italist economy.

in the last analysis the Hull rep openly admits that it has no stra gy to defend the IT workers.

«We do not underestimate the difficuities in maintaining production in the current circumstances of economic recession.

We are aware for example that we can do little to prevent the cyclical decline of the US market ... but we assume that the recession, however severe, is temporary and urge the govert ment to ask itself whether when the recovery occurs it would be desirable to leave the British economy so vulnerable in imports"

(emphasis added)

In other words in the final analysis all IT workers can do is to bury their heads in the sand and await the passing of the recession!

The workers at IT and all over the capitalist world, are looking for a policy not for after the recession but for now to defend their living standards.

The WSL therefore rejects completely as a diversion the strategy of workers' co-ops. These utopia schemes can lea: to nothing but defeat and demoralisation.

The starting point has to VES deveiopment of an independent working class policy to meet the crisis.

On closure both the Leicester anc Hull factories must be occupied and a regime of workers control established to prevent the owners from selling off machinery or separating the two factories. Workers committees must be elected on a factory basis to organise this.

There must be no lay-offs. The re-establishment of production at IT must be on the basis of division of the work available among the total workforce with no reductions in pay.

Yet only in the context of a planned economy can this demand be realised. Therefore as part of the struggle for such a planned econoiny we demand the nationalisation of IT under the management of the workers themselves.

The books of IT must be forced open by the factory committees, and the figures exposed to show the case for nationalisation without compensation.

Workers management is vital to prevent IT becoming subordinated to the needs of capitalist profitahility through the State.

STATE CONTRACTS Furthermore we have seen only too clearly recently how the Labou government is prepared to subordinate the State sector to the demands of the capitalist market through the cut backs in social service and education expenditure and the threat of redundancies in the state steel industry.

Therefore an essential part of the struggle for effective nationalisation under workers' management is the demand for government finance and government contracts to maintain production at IT.

All these demands mean workers must force a fundamental change in the policy of the Labour governmen The present reformist leadership of the Trade Unions and the Labour Party attempts through the social contract to subordinate the actions of the working class to the capitalist crisis. Those leaders who will not take up and fight for these demands must be driven out and replaced by Those who will.

'The Editorial Board would welcome readers' comments and views on this or any of the articles in "Socialist Press" • Where possible letters will be published.

----- pull-quotes -----

The closure of the Imperial Typewriters factories at Hull