The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the situation in many important and devastating ways for The Working Class - all of which are strongly and consciously Anti Working Class, and primarily to the great advantage of the wealthiest Groups, at the top of this Society.
Changes have been made, and are increasingly being implemented, that the Ruling Class have desired, but never dared implement for a truly vast period of time. And, the changes are many and various, and are being pursued at an accelerating rate, as all the many layers within the Employing classes, increasingly realise the favourable conditions now emerging for them all - but only as long as they quickly implement all their many opppurtunities for maximising their ever greater advantages over the Workers!
Don't get me wrong! Most of the Employing Class were, at first, increasingly terrified! But the Government kept many of the Organised Workers quiet with Furlough Pay and their prodigious Loans to the bigger Companies to help see them through.
BUT, the promised "return to normal" has not only failed to materialise, as promised, but has also engineered a vast series of detrimental changes ALL OVER SOCIETY - especially to the detriment of Workers, but also to the disabled, the old and even radical changes in the vital Nationalised Services of the People.
And, as more, and indeed most, of the power echelons of the Employing Class began to realise their advantageous opportunities, they are now pursuing them with increasing vigour!
In the UK, because of the Shut-Downs, the increasing diminution of the Possibilities and Efforts of Working Class Organisations, such as The Trades Unions, and the Left around the dismissed Corbyn Leadership in the Labour Party, the rump of that Party in Parliament have moved ever much more to the Right, including installing a Knighted ex-National Prosecutor as Labour Party Leader!
And as the "NO CASH" transactions increasingly replace cash means of paying, everything moves inexorably OUT of people's direct control into an all embracing IT System fraught with possibilities for the dishonest!
And have you noticed Inflation, beginning to mount?
That is yet another way to move more and more day-to-day financing into being covered by Credit, while at the same time house prices soar - but sold as a means of making house owners richer without doing anything, but in the end ONLY really benefiting the money-lenders and Mortgage providers!
As furlough comes to an end and the economy struggles to recover, millions will lose their jobs, for automation will add to all those NOT re-employed after the end of Covid: and the banishing of the Eastern European pickers and temporary Farm Workers will usher the newly unemployed into those low paid jobs, unorganised by Trades Unions - clearly ideal areas for the Employers!
And the real major hits, clearly unavoidable in the coming period, have not yet clearly established what they will mean for the Working Classes. But, it wont take the experienced commentators on the Left very long to realise the full consequences of the wholly new changes, and if they too Sell Out, as has been the norm in such circles in the past, the necessary Cataclysm of Country-wide Action, involving all the hardest-hit Groups - including the Unemployed, the newly created indigenous Poor of Farmworkers, the disabled, the old, and the students, will not elicit the necessary Fight and a New Dark Age will increasingly establish itself Worldwide!
Originally published here 13/04/20 as Coronavirus and Capitalism
What are governments putting first, the health of key workers, or the health of the economy?
What the COVID19 crisis tells us about the Capitalist State
and The People - and how the response could be conducted differently...
THE ESSENTIAL PREMISE:
Remember, the UK is a Capitalist State, run by a right-wing, strongly pro-capitalist Tory Government. A vast crisis, such as this current Coronavirus Pandemic, cannot but increasingly reveal their priorities in running things primarily in their own interests - the interests of the capitalist class.
And that isn't in the interests of the majority of the People!
Their primary motivation is ALWAYS keeping their own wealth and Power.
The major issue in this serious Pandemic boils down to the main key roles of the State, the Crisis and maintaining the status quo. There can be no doubt whatsoever that State controls will be necessary in fighting the pandemic: but it really depends upon what kind of a State is involved in making those decisions.
For depending upon the Economic System currently instituted in an affected country, government policies pursued can be very different indeed, for they will depend exclusively upon what the role of the State is considered to be by those in charge. And a Capitalist State will have very different objectives from those of a Socialist State. And in a bureaucratic Stalinist State, like China, it will react very differently to a Socialist State with real Democracy.
For, as the Pandemic is certain to be limited in duration, those policies, on the one hand, will most certainly be to protect the people from the Pandemic, but they will also, most certainly, on the other hand, be very differently determined, depending on what kind of State will emerge "after the deluge"! Will the State relinquish emergency powers as quickly as it adopted them? What about during a subsequent economic crisis??
A State's primary purpose will always be determined by exactly what, and therefore also, who, in that society, it is primarily designed to serve! If it is Capitalism - or even Stalinism - and therefore, its directing practitioners, who consider themselves primary, it will pursue very different set of policies, in addressing the Pandemic, to the exactly opposite situation that which would pertain, if it were, instead, addressing the circumstances of the vast majority of the population, and hence the Working Class.
For, such a crisis could clearly expose both gross inequality and the purposes of the Capitalist State all too overtly, and if not managed strictly in ways to purposely-hide its directing intentions. So, any policies about testing for the Virus, and Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) will be vital!
Getting proper protective equipment out to all key workers should be the number one priority of any State working in the interests of the people
Who will get tested and when?
And, who will receive the necessary PPEs?
And will they be isolating or protective PPEs?
And crucially are the PPEs intended for the detected-infected or for the as-yet-uninfected?
But, with the insistence upon hand-washing, where are they getting infected from?
For some countries seem to be spraying possible sites, where the virus could settle! What then would be used in those circumstances?
Now clearly, there are other ways of combating the Pandemic by using the above means in very different and better ways! We have to ask why did they choose the ones that they did?
Were their reasons medical or political?
Why have right wing populist governments such as USA and Brazil (and the UK if we're honest), dragged their feet and been so much more reluctant to lock down than their equivalents in Social Democratic countries?
The former are obviously NOT currently terminating the Pandemic: in fact they are purposely extending its duration! And, with the very clear pressures for early partial or temporary reductions in the extents of the Shutdown, could not this elicit second or even more waves of the Pandemic!?
How many of the old and infirm will survive these waves?
For, the biggest collections of deaths are in populations within care homes.
Why is that considered to be a good policy? And why are those figures not published home by home?
For answers, you only have to look at the political advantages for the powers-that-be!
Why wasn't a testing of the population organised, with those having the Pandemic being isolated, at home but with isolating facemasks until they were clear (this would in the end effectively deal with 80% of the detected infections who get a 'mild' version of the disease). They would then be monitored, and if it intensified in any they would be immediately transfered to Hospital. All others tested and found to be OK, would get a protective face mask and be released.
All travel, particularly from aboard, but also, initially, at home travel would still be banned as they are now! So, extractable zones would be systematically sectioned off and treated in these ways, gradually clearing increasing areas, within which tested clear individuals would be allowed free movement, and could meet and socialise with others similarly OK'd, but must wear their protective aids.
Workplaces could be targeted, particularly those directly serving the public, such as shops.
Everyone else would be under similar conditions to now, but would get their turn as their zone was arrived at via constant extensions.
A General Shutdown would be gradually and systematically lifted.
From restriction to our homes, areas of locally restored free movement would be gradually be increased, until well-defined and increasing areas would allow gradually re-instituted local travel!
Instead of the total shutdown of all free and unmonitored social protest: such would be made available in all the released areas. And these MUST always start in the most highly populated districts in towns and cities, and only last-of-all in the sparsely-populated estates of the privileged!
THE VITAL POSTSCRIPT:
And, how should the system, described above be organised?
Should it be by the police or army?
NO!
It should be by the People themselves, within the successively released enclaves, each of which should elect their own Area Council to do the organising, and whose meetings should be open to the public! For, as has been shown by the discipline of the majority of the People in the Shutdown, by their are highly responsible and evident clapping-and-helpful support of the NHS, and who, along with the appropriate resources, will do an infinitely much better job than any Tory Government of Billionaires could even imagine!
For, unlike a top-down rigorously imposed control, the maximally democratic monitoring by everyone, and immediately-responsive actions of the local People's Councils will straight-forwardly implement the maximally fair outcomes, with the energetic and guaranteed support of their People.
This article was originally posted on this blog in April last year, but is no less relevant today.
Brooks & Wolff realise the Current Dangers
for Workers and COVID 19 and consider a call for
A General Strike
In a key episode of The Michael Brooks Show on YouTube we see a significant critical-&-political Turning Point has suddenly emerged. Instead of focussing all the usual diverse criticisms of the way the Pandemic has been addressed by Governments worldwide (and in the USA in particular): it is alternatively conceived of, for the first time, as a clear Pro-People and Anti-Capitalist Combined-Agenda for a General, Co-ordinated Action of the Working Class, against the inhuman Economic System and instead consider an alternative one, for the benefit of Ordinary People!
First, Brooks himself, in a remarkably energetic contribution, reacted to the currently increasing pressures from Big Capital, to try to get all workers back to work, in spite of the still raging Pandemic, and, to instead propose, via a bottom-up organisation, of what Brooks termed "localist solutions" - wherein the people in a well-defined local district, would organise, for themselves, their own, democratically-elected committees to control both the safety and provisions for their locality.
And only the very day before, the writer of this paper (in England) had suggested very similar "Special Local Councils" with the same purposes to Brooks' suggestion, along with a very different plan to, when the time is ripe, release small areas from the Total LockDown, along with appropriate & essential Testing of the contained population, adequate Personal Protective Equipment deployment, and the instituting of freedom of movement, within such enclaves, for those proved to be clear of the virus, by prior population-testing.
While, the shops and essential services, within the enclaves, along with both employing organisations and Firms there, should be a priority for Testing-and-release from shutdown as soon as possible. And, the small sizes of such enclaves would make this majorly effective, and new co-operative services of all kinds could easily be self-organised and made safe! And the evidently necessary discipline, on all fronts, wholly organised solely by the locally-elected Councils for the enclaves. Such organisation, alone, would allow a gradual and reliable extension of Released Areas with ensured safety!
Second, Brooks then brought in Economics Professor Richard Wolff (one of the founders of Democracy-at-Work) into the discussion to contribute his political ideas of "What is to be Done!" And, he immediately changed the emphasis, by suggesting that the pressure of a return to Work by the Big Capitalists, should be countered by what would amount to A General Strike!
Sent home workers would NOT return, without the guaranteed provision of full and adequate safeguards for the workers involved, with the Pandemic still raging! And, if the Government failed to do it: they would do it all for themselves!
With the colossal death figures still appearing daily, Workers would NOT expose themselves, their fellow workers. and their own families and children, to the risk of catching the virus!
Thirdly, Chris Smalls, a worker within Amazon, was included in the Discussion, for he had been suspended by Amazon for organising his fellow workers against the conditions in which they were being expected to work - with fellow workers working well within the generally-set inter-personal limits of 2 metres, and in which some were actually falling ill with the Coronavirus, while actually still working.
Chris had little trouble getting the agreement of fellow workers upon what should be acceptable conditions of work, and in the midst of all this, he was sent home by the management as a "danger to his fellow workers!". But his still energetically-pursued objective has remained to get his fellows to go home until acceptable conditions are provided.
This single YouTube video has changed the game in the USA among ever-larger sections on the Left, and if Trump, which seems likely, joins the Big Capitalists in attempting to hurry People back to work, it is clear that this Turn, could become an Ever-Growing Flooding Wave of Dissent!
Indeed, in spite of its terrible death figures, the Italian Government is already getting sections of workers back to work even now.
So, it appears likely that many will refuse to do so, to protect themselves and their families! If this happens, it will be a key moment in the long fight against Capitalism's exploitation of the Working Class.
There is a current on-going series of films on the BBC (Can't Get You Out of My Head), which far from being politically radical, is actually in concert with that station's News Programmes, and much of its General Content across the whole range of genres, from Drama to all other types of entertainment, are purposely working increasingly hard to either instil-into, cajole, bully or merely influence its listeners and viewers, into a hopeless and increasingly cowed state of accepting that all of the mounting calamities besetting them, at present, are entirely of their own selfish making, and actually natural built-in weaknesses within themselves.
But this isn't True!
Even the total dishonesty and complete incompetence of the Tory Government, led by Boris Johnson, is NEVER revealed by the media for what it is, and what they are trying to impose both physically-and-blame-wise by allowing to pile up, all the agonies of their OWN mishandling, into a slowly-but-surely drift into putting most of the blame upon the people themselves.
Even, any "good policies", are never carried through to a satisfactory conclusion, because they were really always only gestures, included in order to con ordinary Working People into thinking that the Government has their best interests at heart, while, in fact, always-and-ever getting things back to having the money once again rolling into the pockets of the Wealthy - their pockets: with every one back at work - preferably on lower wages, and inferior working conditions, and, if possible, well-separated from each other, rather than working together, where their natural Class Consciousness would be mutually generated once again!
Though the powers-that-be may seem to be failing, we have to clearly acknowledge just how the seemingly tumultuous mess, is, in fact, dramatically changing the forms, conditions and remuneration of employment or benefits for most workers, to significantly minimise the possibility of collective action by Workers to defend and even extend their circumstances.
And with the demise of the Unions and genuine Working Class Political Parties, the once possible means are no longer available. JUST when they are needed most!
So, they have to be replaced in a wholly new way, by using any still-extent Democracy, but now legitimately extended, well beyond the rare occasions when Ballot boxes are involved - to Public Meetings, initially addressing local issues, in the current Crisis, with decisions by Culminating Votes, along with actual organisational arrangements, to effectively carry them out! And, selected enforcers - subject to Instant-Recall-and-Replacement, if they are not carrying out the democratically-arrived-at will of the majority in such meetings.
Much earlier in this health crisis (in 2020) I published a series of papers urging that the organised response needed to be in the hands of such local democratic structures, for doing the basic jobs nest, and putting any National organisation into the empowered hands of the NHS, bypassing the Tories biased structures, and installed "leaderships"!
And all that would have been incomparably better than what actually ensued.
I will now re-issue these papers again herewith, to allow The People to make THEIR Judgments as to what should happen NOW!
This paper started with the incentive to talk about Work-and-Fulfillment within an alternative Socialist Society, as distinct from the Capitalist Societies we all currently inhabit! But, such a single purpose endeavour as that intended objective, was immediately and dramatically overtaken by the significantly fast-deepening crisis of current World Capitalism, revealed by the latest bi-monthly Lecture by Dr. Richard Wolff in the Judson Memorial Church in New York City.
For it was precipitated by the joint effects of the beginnings of a mighty global virus epidemic, due to a wholly new Coronavirus, but occurring along with a Major Simultaneous Crisis in the Global Oil Industry, due to the threat of competition from the burgeoning Fracking Shale Oil Industry in the USA, which immediately caused a dramatic drop in the price of Oil across the Globe, and then immediately thereafter, a catastrophic drop in the value investments upon the Stock Markets of the World.
To make matters worse, the crisis caused by COVID19 was quickly transforming into a Global Pandemic, which literally nowhere was prepared for after, many still recovering from the economic slump of 2008!
Clearly, that joint Crisis had to be addressed NOW, urgently and even before any discussion upon Jobs, because a New Worldwide Recession could well be already in-motion, and the right political actions by the Revolutionary Left MUST come first, for the Current Crisis could be the initiation of a Revolutionary Situation.
JOBS
So, in this context, the struggle for Jobs will also be transformed!
The ways people earn their livings have dramatically changed under Capitalism, and though all occupations have not been equally affected, not every one has been affected in the same ways, or to a similar degree. And, it is the jobs of what are termed the Working Class (the Employees) and their families, that have been affected most damagingly, while those of the Owning Class - the Employers, also including a wide range of business owners, from many of the so-called Petty Bourgeois, though vastly smaller that The Working Class, and whose livelihoods depend exclusively upon the Workers - as Customers for their essentially-supplied goods (as in local individual shop-keepers in Working Class areas), whose Life Standards don't usually rise very much above those of their customers. But thereafter, via larger scale suppliers of needed utility services-and-regular-supplies, then upwards to a swiftly improving range of well-remunerated suppliers, and particularly to more expensive Services, then on to the ever more well-financially endowed middle class professionals in Medical and Financial Services. For while all of these people need to work-to-Live, most would never agree to being categorised as being members of the Working Class, though at times of Acute Crisis they are undoubtedly hit too!
Only the real Owning Class - the Bourgeoisie, have Resources well beyond their Daily Needs, as apart from previously accrued Wealth, and the consequent wherewithal for further Investments, their primary sources of regular additional income, in addition to Profits from their Owned Enterprises, are also significantly added-to by Interest from investments, Rents from owned and rented-out Properties, and even lucrative fees from Financial Services and/or Advice expensively supplied to those who can pay.
Clearly, the overall numbers involved are totally dominated by the vast size of the Working Class, but reduce swiftly across those intermediate Groups, until arriving at the Big Bourgeiosie, the numbers then shrink to a relatively tiny proportion: indicated by the fact that the total wealth of the bottom 3.5 billion people on Earth is matched exactly by that of the top 80 individual Capitalists, mostly situated in the USA!
But, not all of these Classes enjoy what they have to do, to continue to exist. Nor are most of their jobs at all fulfilling!
Yet there are Jobs that can be, and often are, fulfilling: those that serve their fellow workers in Health and Education - those doing significant research and development in Key areas of Knowledge, Care and Advice, plus Firemen and Lifeboat men, Arts and Crafts workers, as long as they are not undercut by cheaper factory-produced competing goods, or have been somewhat elevated to exclusively supplying the rich.
Actually whatever it is that workers do, they are all majorly affected by how the vagaries of the current Employer-Employee relation can affect their security and happiness. Literally everyone below the Bourgeoisie are damaged by the usual relations, which regularly throw many out of their jobs, and into sometimes desperate hardships and homelessness!
Now Capitalism, being always driven by the Profit Motif, will always put cheapness over quality, for what it produces for the Mass Market, and hence drives its employees into ever more unfulfilling repetitive tasks, taking away any of the pleasures of creative activities, for the more profitable drudgery of tending the faster repetitive processes of machines.
So, these two dominating, and likely to escalate pressures, effectively remove what pleasures could be got from work: so, even changing ownership of the Workplace, would never be enough! Even the Distributive Co-operative Movements (owned by their customers) could NOT significantly improve the lot of their workers, because of competitive pressure from the abundance of Capitalist alternatives, who would simply buy all their required resources from cheaper, more exploitative sources.
So, any attempt at piecemeal changeovers, will simply never solve the problems of labour: Capitalism itself has to be dismantled!
Now the recent effort of the People's Forum in New York to present the whole of Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto, read in a succession of major languages by native speakers, actually addressed many of these seemingly intractable questions at its very launch, in 1848. And it did not shrink from a Revolutionary capture of State Power by the Communists, which was essential to both defeat the local Forces of Reaction internally, and thereafter go on to defeat Capitalist Armies of Intervention, and continue to defend the Revolutionary State! The subsequent history of Russia after the Revolution proved that this part of their analysis was not only correct, but imperative in ensuring the continuation of their State.
But, for such a Revolution to happen at all, in a mostly Feudal/Peasant Economy, had meant that it had to both carry out the objectives of a Capitalist Revolution, to dispense with the earlier economic stage of Feudalism, and almost simultaneously demolish it as it was created, in order to establish its own absolutely crucial anti-capitalist intentions.
And, in such a country as Russia that involved a very short Alliance with the Peasantry under the banner of Peace, Bread and Land - to keep them on-side, but it actually and unavoidably ground to a halt, and they had to continue to increasingly concede to the more successful Peasants, who naturally saw the Future very differently to the Working Classes of the cities, and were striving for Feudal type Landed Estates; so the necessary Counter-Capitalist security measures expanded to also suppress the Kulaks (rich peasants) and their followers demands. But, in the countryside, the old alliance dissolved in the light of new "Landed" perspectives, and the security organisations found themselves opposed by Peasant-Soviets, increasingly dominated by the Kulaks.
A major Fight then arose between the Bolshevik Leadership of comrades like Lenin and Trotsky, and a fast burgeoning administrative Bureaucracy organised and led by Stalin!
But there are No Peasants in the UK!
The Fight will be against the Big Bourgeoisie!
The small businesses will finally be won to our side.
Surely, in a dangerous pandemic, the number one priority has to be a vast increase in the provision of PPE, both to protect the as yet uninfected, and to isolate the infected, to prevent ever more general contagion?
Why didn't that happen in the UK?
Well it wasn't for the reasons given at all!
Imagine if large amounts of such PPE had been made widely available. All NHS staff would be suitably equipped. As would all those care workers looking after the elderly and infirm in Care Homes. All those still having to be involved in all forms of Public Transport would also be equipped and protected! Any lockdown would only need to be temporary as small local areas could be provided with the right Protection, to allow a local raising of the Lockdown.
And a sequence of short term Lockdowns - followed by fully PPE-equipped free movement areas could have been instituted! The worldwide Pandemic could have been controlled and even greatly minimised in its most disastrous effects!
So why was it not quickly established as The Priority Policy from the Start?
It is obvious why didn't it happen! It was because the ideal place to lock up the entire population was in their own homes ON PAIN OF DEATH!
Otherwise safe behind appropriate PPE, The People could be ON THE STREETS DEMONSTRATING - and that, for the Powers that be would be the Worst Case Scenario!
Even the avalanche of deaths, particularly of the old (and even if a majority of those are reliable Tory voters) would be a better outcome for them than armies of masked and angry citizens taking to the streets.
Instead of being isolated from each other and limited to their own homes, they would be meeting outside their places of work, or demonstrating in enormous joint actions demanding the safety of workers be put first.
Low paid key workers would finally realise their power and number.
They would walk out of places of work which were dangerous to their health! New organisations and groups would spring up out of Trades Unions and Political Parties.
NO! There are far too many of them! Such a crisis as this could be what triggers a World-Wide REVOLUTION, and the Many could finally replace the Few!
It could be the End of Capitalism!
Better to keep the lockdowns and restrict PPE than risk that...
In a key episode of The Michael Brooks Show on YouTube we see a significant critical-&-political Turning Point has suddenly emerged. Instead of focussing all the usual diverse criticisms of the way the Pandemic has been addressed by Governments worldwide (and in the USA in particular): it is alternatively conceived of, for the first time, as a clear Pro-People and Anti-Capitalist Combined-Agenda for a General, Co-ordinated Action of the Working Class, against the inhuman Economic System and instead consider an alternative one, for the benefit of Ordinary People!
First, Brooks himself, in a remarkably energetic contribution, reacted to the currently increasing pressures from Big Capital, to try to get all workers back to work, in spite of the still raging Pandemic, and, to instead propose, via a bottom-up organisation, of what Brooks termed "localist solutions" - wherein the people in a well-defined local district, would organise, for themselves, their own, democratically-elected committees to control both the safety and provisions for their locality.
And only the very day before, the writer of this paper (in England) had suggested very similar "Special Local Councils" with the same purposes to Brooks' suggestion, along with a very different plan to, when the time is ripe, release small areas from the Total LockDown, along with appropriate & essential Testing of the contained population, adequate Personal Protective Equipment deployment, and the instituting of freedom of movement, within such enclaves, for those proved to be clear of the virus, by prior population-testing.
While, the shops and essential services, within the enclaves, along with both employing organisations and Firms there, should be a priority for Testing-and-release from shutdown as soon as possible. And, the small sizes of such enclaves would make this majorly effective, and new co-operative services of all kinds could easily be self-organised and made safe! And the evidently necessary discipline, on all fronts, wholly organised solely by the locally-elected Councils for the enclaves. Such organisation, alone, would allow a gradual and reliable extension of Released Areas with ensured safety!
Second, Brooks then brought in Economics Professor Richard Wolff (one of the founders of Democracy-at-Work) into the discussion to contribute his political ideas of "What is to be Done!" And, he immediately changed the emphasis, by suggesting that the pressure of a return to Work by the Big Capitalists, should be countered by what would amount to A General Strike!
Sent home workers would NOT return, without the guaranteed provision of full and adequate safeguards for the workers involved, with the Pandemic still raging! And, if the Government failed to do it: they would do it all for themselves!
With the colossal death figures still appearing daily, Workers would NOT expose themselves, their fellow workers. and their own families and children, to the risk of catching the virus!
Thirdly, Chris Smalls, a worker within Amazon, was included in the Discussion, for he had been suspended by Amazon for organising his fellow workers against the conditions in which they were being expected to work - with fellow workers working well within the generally-set inter-personal limits of 2 metres, and in which some were actually falling ill with the Coronavirus, while actually still working.
Chris had little trouble getting the agreement of fellow workers upon what should be acceptable conditions of work, and in the midst of all this, he was sent home by the management as a "danger to his fellow workers!". But his still energetically-pursued objective has remained to get his fellows to go home until acceptable conditions are provided.
This single YouTube video has changed the game in the USA among ever-larger sections on the Left, and if Trump, which seems likely, joins the Big Capitalists in attempting to hurry People back to work, it is clear that this Turn, could become an Ever-Growing Flooding Wave of Dissent!
Indeed, in spite of its terrible death figures, the Italian Government is already getting sections of workers back to work even now.
So, it appears likely that many will refuse to do so, to protect themselves and their families! If this happens, it will be a key moment in the long fight against Capitalism's exploitation of the Working Class.
David Harvey is one of the leading Marxist scholars in the world, and his analyses of Marx's key works are invaluable for any current Marxist theorist or activist. In one of his Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, he not only bemoaned the loss of the traditional Political and Industrial Organisations of the World Working Class, but also admitted that all the present day alternatives were both usually entirely disparate in their mobilising-motivations, as well as always being short-lived in the Mass actions they organised and participated in.
And, even though he also saw absolutely no-way-out of Capitalism's ever multiplying crises either, he could not conceive of what he called "A Revolutionary Solution".
Yet, without such a demolishing of the current Capitalist Structures of Provision, Distribution, and Enforcement being so eliminated, the Working Class (in no position to be self-supporting in these regards) would as a result suffer the most!
It was, as Harvey saw it, more like the terminations of many prior Economic Systems via unavoidable demolishing cataclysms, that could never, for truly long periods of time, remedy the collapse, delivering only a Dark Age, which took a considerable amount of time to slowly-find working alternatives, especially in what would now be the most highly developed Ex-Capitalist States.
Indeed, no matter what means he considered, he concluded that a Social Democratic transformation of Capitalism was the only way forward, and that within which, wholly new pro-Working Class facilities, as well as appropriate Social Services and access to Education, which could possibly be constructed FIRST, to equip the Class for Revolution.
But that did happen in the UK, following the Second World War! I know because I benefited from it directly, as a Working Class boy from a very deprived background, who got an Education and ended up a Professor in a University. Yet Education at all levels was still staffed by the old Middle Class. I was educated to join those colleagues instead, and never to appropriately equip my Class!
But, how on earth did a majorly Peasant State like Tsarist Russia, ever manage to do it? Harvey doesn't answer this question.
Also, Harvey does not consider that the Working Class-in-Arms could take over Capitalist enterprises, Trading Firms, Banks, and the rest, Pay No Compensation, and from the outset re-organise them Democratically as Worker-Owned and Run enterprises. For, after all, they had always staffed such firms under Capitalism. It would be the ex-Ruling Class who would not even be able to feed themselves, or work the complex machines of Industry.
They were tasks always carried out by the Working Class!
Amazon Warehouse by Andreas Gursky
Globalisation and neoliberalism may have completely changed the way industrial capitalism works, but the computer-controlled warehousing and distributive arrangements are still ALL staffed by ex-workers, who had lost their well paid jobs and unions, and got their current posts wherever they could find them - thereafter kept totally isolated from one another (in roles such as delivery drivers).
They could, after the Revolution, come together collectively to organise what they now OWNED. And, once-skilled workers could get together and forcibly take over premises, machines and facilities, as well as transport to construct and run all ex-capitalist service companies, and transform them into Real Social Services.
"Workplace Democracy and Democratic Ownership: moving from theory to strategy". Richard Wolff and Gar Alperovitz at Left Forum, 2013.
Some very interesting and unexpected revelations come out of this debate - worker co-ops alone will solve nothing as they will inevitably recreate all of the same problems regarding market competition and consumption that you get with laissez-faire capitalism - the only difference will be workers rather than bosses will have to become cutthroat in order to survive.
So what is the solution? Society must control the economy, not the other way around. Top-down Stalinist type controlled economies didn't work either - so what does the relationship between society and the workplace need to be in order to make work work for the benefit of all?
Gar Alperovitz hints at a possible way out looking his work with steel workers in Youngstown Ohio in 1977... democratic community ownership of companies and resources, rather than worker cooperatives, as a way of really democratising the means of production (and distribution and digital infrastructure, in the modern world), and subsequently the entire economy.
Billionaires. Whether we blame them directly, or the system that creates them, they still have to go....
Who do we immediately identify as the perpetrators for our despair?
On studying the evolution of Capitalist Economics today - some 140 years after Karl Marx's magnificent effort to explain it ended with his death - the many major crises, the World Wars and the increasing acceleration of mounting state and personal debt, have elicited various (although always temporary) "solutions", that simply defer, but never solve, the ever-mounting problems with the economy. And these "solutions" constantly construct innumerable extra barriers to ordinary Workers being able to see any kind of solution of their own!
And, the protectors of that System, have compounded the felony, with their Divide-and-Rule policies, involving their loudly apportioning blame to some different, and hence easily-identified, section of the population, as well as diverting the problem, again purely temporarily, by facilitating a vast increase in the Debt Mountain, to finance some kind of apparent alleviation.
In consequence, the real causes of these crises become ever more opaque and impenetrable, and an increasingly worried population begins to look round for identifiable culprits, which, in addition, to the everywhere identified "foreigners" which are blamed (use Brexit and Trump as case studies, if you must), they were also directed to other targets, much-closer-to-home, such as their own personal inadequaces, for example, or those of their spouses! For, a brief check upon the men of their extended family, by financially-harassed wives, could reveal the severely curtailed abilities of them all to provide what is needed for their respective families: "they become the problem, and are told so in no uncertain terms!"
Families are decomposing everywhere! But, in doing so, it only compounds the difficulties, multiplies the problems, and hides the real causes ever more effectively.
These problems are not due to the personal failings of workers. Ordinary people are not to blame.
In the past, the immediate causes-and-consequences used to be much more easily identified, and the solutions were equally obvious: workers were organised in Unions, and could act together in a Strike. In some circumstances a whole Industry could be involved, or even a nation-wide General Strike of all workers.
But successively, every Capitalist downturn was cleverly used by employers and their political allies, to dismantle, bit-by-bit, the power of the Unions, by both exporting jobs abroad, as well as bringing in various Anti-Union Laws, so that today, what jobs are available are low-paid and usually un-organisable by Unions.
The situation is rapidly becoming insurmountable economically.
And, the old ways of fighting against this exploitation no longer work.
Even the British Labour Party, in spite of its current Left Wing Leadership (AND Party Membership) is being dismantled by the pro-Capitalist Labour MPs in Parliament, who increasingly side with the Tories against their own movement.
The only old way left is agitation in the streets!
Bring the People out in Mass Demonstrations - BUT crucially they must be well-armed with an understanding of what is really wrong, along with a supported programme to end it!
Can we really have Democracy when the workers in a workplace have absolutely no say in what they do there? Should the "bottom line" of profit for an owner totally and always outweigh the needs and interests of the workforce?
It certainly depends upon who owns the business! To make any real change they would surely have to be socially-owned.
Now, of course, the status quo is usually argued-for very differently. For, management insists that only those who now make the decisions are the only ones competent to do so: while the workforce just don't know enough to even be involved. And, when no one is informing the workforce, or even making available the necessary knowledge, that may well be true.
So clearly, as with Political Democracy, so must it also be with so-called Democracy-at-Work! All information must always be made fully available for everybody to be involved to have access and discuss what they are attempting to achieve. And, sufficient resources to overcome any advantage to the privileged, must be fully available to the workforce too.
Currently, the workforce is always totally deprived of such information. But, if full access, along with requisite time, were allocated to such information, the workers, being intimately involved throughout their worktime, will soon learn to handle it, and crucially, with very different objectives to either owners or managers. Indeed, it will amount to a revolution in the efficiency and creativeness of both the work processes and their organisation. How could it be otherwise - the motivations involved will be very different!
Prof. Richard Wolff and his colleagues have written and spoken at length about the need for democracy at work.
Just compare a Steam Railway Charity run by unpaid, and fully-involved enthusiasts, with the current chaos in our de-nationalised, run-for-profit rail services in Britain today.
What we are talking about, has never been fully achieved anywhere! For, in spite of the clear advantages of Socialised State Planning in Russia and China, after their Revolutions, the workplace was still relatively unchanged from prior Capitalist organisation. For the managers were appointed by the central government. There was NO Democracy-in-the-Workplace!
Clearly, "Socialism" is not what they actually had in those countries, and it was easy for a privileged bureaucracy to emerge, who did not put the working conditions, or the opinions of the workers, high on their agendas at all, and absolutely never delivered any decision making into the hands of the workforce themselves.
Indeed, Democracy-in-the-Workplace would not only transform that institution, but also significantly transform the Working Class involved, because they will, themselves, not only make the crucial decisions in what they are involved with every single day, but they will also discuss and even argue with their workmates, as to what policies the company should be employing. Instead of being excluded from the decision-making that affects their lives, and the wherewithal to make those decisions, they should instead be fully involved in both, and will therefore learn by their successes and their mistakes.
Socialism has to involve real Democracy at every level, in a Society in which Inequality and Privilege have been permanently terminated.
Indeed, the whole approach to the education of the working class, whether they are to be skilled or unskilled, absolutely must transcend mere work-based training and crucially disseminate critical thinking and real Understanding too!
I have worked in every level of Education from Schools, Further Education Colleges and Universities, and even in teaching unemployed youth computer programming, via Youth Training. And, from that wide experience, it soon became clear that the usual separate approaches did not deliver.
After listening to a very interesting account of the splendid Mondragon System of Worker Cooperatives in Northern Spain, by an actual participant in that system of Worker Coop Enterprises, I was not only able to see the clear advantages over the alternative of privately owned Capitalist enterprises, but also got a clear idea of its limitations. For, in spite of its remarkable successes, such enterprises cannot change the World!
They have to survive, in the interstices, within a worldwide dominant system that is not only economic but actively political-and-belligerently-coercive, and has a frequently-used solution to challenging problems, via not only local, but indeed World Wars of devastating proportions. Indeed, that now-dominant, alternative economic approach too was once itself a challenger to a prior system, and only brought about the transfer, via a series of bloody Revolutions, resulting in the establishment of a very different political system - conducive to its preferred capitalist economics.
It wasn't merely a matter of choice! Every status quo is the result of the victory of one dominating Class over the rest: and to achieve Power politically they have always to have the resources and the alliances with other, also repressed Classes, to have any chance of bringing off the solution they require.
You can no longer find local solutions economically! For, production and consumption are now not only unavoidably social, but already global too, acting upon a truly world scale. And, how that is organised and controlled are unavoidable questions.
Indeed, several important revolutions have occurred to kick out the capitalist owners, and replace them with a Socialist State. After the Second World War, the whole World was dominated politically, by what has been termed the Cold War between the emerging Socialist States and the still dominant Capitalist States. And a series of hot, local wars have been undertaken by the Capitalist Powers to prevent further Socialist Revolutions. Clearly, despite the achievements of the Cooperatives, the building of such enterprises alone cannot change the World in this regard.
Abandoned: Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society Department Store
In the United Kingdom the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS) after being a dominant service to the Working Class has been defeated and dismantled by its capitalist competitors via undercutting prices by super exploitation in Third World countries.
It isn't a "level playing field" at all!
So, I'm afraid all the purely non-political routes are certain to fail. For, once the "powers-that-be" decide that they present a real challenge to their dominance and wealth, they will be dealt with.
So, the nettle must be grasped!
But what kind of Socialism is actually required? Is it like Russia used to be, or China is now, or even North Korea?
NO! For it hasn't worked! Three vital questions just have to be seriously addressed:-
ONE: What kinds of political parties must be built to fight for the Change?
TWO: What must be their objectives to achieve the necessary transformation?
THREE: What kind of State will be the desired result?
Mankind has been trying to address these questions for 200 years, and none of their means, from Democratic Socialist Parties, to even those fighting for violent Revolution have been effective.
Social Democratic Parties have achieved only very temporary gains, while Revolution, necessarily requiring nationwide organisations, and even armies, have inevitably produced powerful, self-maintaining and self-empowering Bureaucracies, while the lot of the mass of people has remained one of powerlessness!
Clearly, these Cooperatives are addressing powerlessness in the workplace, but not yet the other vital political questions.
The informing historical equivalent has to be the Failure of the Trades Union Movements, for in spite of growing to prodigious proportions (even in the USA) they did not address the vital political questions either, and they are now powerless to even do their admitted task of defending jobs or even working conditions.
The political tasks are vital! But do we agree what they are?
Dormitories at an abandoned Apple factory in China
There is a persisting and perplexing problem in attempting to explain the historical trajectory of Capitalism over its fairly short life!
It concerns the swift growth of human populations in the towns and cities, which infers that they must have come for a better life than they had endured previously, and also that they must have, initially at least, experienced one, in order to both stay and grow in such numbers. It therefore appears that work in the factories of the employers was indeed delivering an improvement in living conditions, at the time.
Yet, the most evident state of many of those city populations, was that they always seemed to be barely surviving, and in the direst poverty. Why on earth did leave their existences in the countryside to commit themselves to descend into the hell of such cities? And, why did they not return to their countryside jobs, when life in the city hit rock bottom for them?
The trouble was their old jobs were long gone!
The farmers were mechanising, and no longer needed the vast army of labourers of the past. And some farms found sheep far more profitable than arable farming - again requiring less labour. And, in the Highlands the villages were being cleared to deliver ever more "pastures and playgrounds-for-the-rich". There were no jobs, and also no homes there any more.
It is, therefore, less of a contradiction, when the major driving forces are exposed. But, nevertheless, for along time there seemed to be a shining light which still appeared to deliver the promise of a better life.
In what later became the USA, such situations were rarely as bad: indeed, such workers, who generally were immigrants, escaping from desperate conditions in Europe, entertained an ever rising standard of living, pretty well constantly for over 150 years! What was going on?
Workers in the USA were afforded a better quality of life
The new economic system did both promise a better life, but simultaneously put every single worker onto the unavoidable task of enriching their employers. And, these are contradictory objectives!
Whilever things were going well for the employer, the life of the worker also was better. But any setbacks for the employer always changed things dramatically for the workers. The employer would sack workers, and maybe employ others at lower wages, gradually forcing down the quality of life of all those employed. And, if the company failed and couldn't sell what it made, it would be shut down, throwing all the workers out without any means of subsistence.
Indeed, such failures were common, so there was ever the threat of unemployment to aid employers in keeping wages as low as possible.
Workers at Apple factory which has now been shut down
In addition, this system of Capitalism was inherently unstable, and every few years had Depressions when many were thrown out of work, and Booms when things picked up again - but never in exactly the same forms.
Many firms vanished in the slumps, and new ones were created in the booms, but these ups and downs acted most strongly against workers, so even within a steady situation there would always be unemployed workers, who by their presence as such, were enabling the effective control of those still employed. Any trouble from a worker and he or she could be replaced by one of the unemployed!
Now, though conditions vary at an amazing rate, the contradictory state of the Capitalist Economic System has remained essentially the same - it has accelerated and globalised if anything.
Though workers organised into Trade Unions and even developed their own political parties, these contradictions were never removed, and every change benefiting the ruling Capitalists would be energetically pursued until it too ran out of steam.
Occasionally, there would be a Revolution which dispossessed the Capitalist class, but as the dominant Capitalist system became truly global, it could both effectively and severely limit those "socialist" countries from any real success, and by war, boycotts and eventual assimilation, even those attempts were reversed.
Clearly, unless and until the working classes, on a World scale implement many successful revolutions, they will remain both dispossessed and disposable to their capitalist enemies, ever more powerfully in charge!
Listening to Michael Hudson's on-going analyses of the current Capitalist Crisis, it becomes crystal clear that a rejuvenation of Trades Unions to fight on behalf of Workers' wages would never be enough to dismantle the towering wealth and power of the Capitalist Class.
For, the absolutely crucial task is to take back their wealth completely to use solely for the benefit of the people.
Now, the historical means of achieving this is absolutely clear: and it wasn't and never could be the task of Trades Unions. And yet, the only applicable power of the Working Class has always been the withdrawal of their Labour in strike action. And, strikes are organised by Trades Unions! Thus purely-Trades-Union type activity can never produce that essential transformation of the system, which is, and always has been, through Revolution.
And, even when that happens, and it is carried through to a successful conclusion, as it was in Russia and China, the transfer of that wealth to a State Bureaucracy was not sufficient to secure those gains permanently.
Could you ever achieve such a Revolution by strikes alone, no matter how big? Even General Strikes usually fail to achieve any fundamental change.
To separate the Ruling Class from their wealth involves Force, but, primarily, it also requires the winning of the leadership of the masses by a political party with the Theory and Organisation to achieve it. The Question is, "Are there such parties currently in existence anywhere?"
The answer is, clearly, "NO!"
I watched the "Not One Day More" demonstration though London on the eve of the British General Election. It was truly magnificent, and those loudly voiced demands, by working people, for a Labour government, would indeed be a necessary first step.
But, who was there, among the masses, spelling out what had to happen next? Nobody - we only got slogans! There were different tendencies in evidence. And, they were co-operating in a United Front, but the participating parties seemed to believe that softening their policies was necessary. Anything more radical than shouting for a Labour Victory was clearly seen as "rocking the boat"... NO, they were wrong!
Indeed revolutionary demands within such a magnificent show of Solidarity, would not only be possible, it would demonstrate to those involved alternative ways of going forward TOGETHER, ways that might actually address the root causes of inequality.
As a socialist all my adult life, and a committed and a still-producing Marxist theorist, and finally someone who has been actively involved in the Revolutionary Left for most of that time, I have some important criticisms of what comrades concentrate upon, while often ignoring other absolutely essential areas without which the successful conclusion of our efforts will be impossible.
In truth, the state of socialist priorities is, indeed, a consequence of acting within Capitalism, to win hearts and minds of the Working Class, for many things are considered to be unaddressable in that context - they are questions about what will have to be done both establishing a nascent Socialist State, and thereafter implementng its required structure.
Nevertheless, such questions cannot be left unaddressed. Not even a Revolution can switch Capitalism off, and at a atroke, institute Socialism as-a-readymade, well-understood alternative.
Indeed, originating from a Victorian slum, in Gorton, Manchester almost 80 years ago, I knew that you voted Labour from infancy, but what it then meant was the achievements in Nationalisation of the post-war Atlee-led government. And, the gains made seemed prodigious, and even the basis for a possible Socialist Society: but as history has shown, that was far from the actual case! All the wealth remained in the hands of the Owning Class, as did the Media of all kinds, and every possible hostile activity and undermining was brought into play, both within the country and from outside (due to the debts incurred in fighting the then recent War).
Manchester in the 1950s, Shirley Baker
And, in spite of significant gains by the actions of that Labour Government, who was it that was then charged with implementing it for the benefit of the people? Literally all the doctors involved had been, and were still, opposed to the project, and continued to treat Working Class patients as they had done in the past.
How about this!
My father, an ex-wartime fireman, died, aged 59, of a treatable illness, which was never diagnosed. My maternal grandad died of pneumonia ONE DAY after being sent packing by his GP "as a malingerer". My mother, after two detached retinas, two years apart, was first made totally blind in one eye due to the failure of a new technique, and then lost the sight in the other due to exactly the same reason.
Now, the Tories lyingly blamed the NHS, as it indirectly infers now, at every possibile opportunity, for such tragedies, but it wasn't, and still isn't, true: it was the doctors who treated them, and their low opinion of their patients from the poor!
Oh, and by the way, I too have had very similar inadequate diagnoses and treatment, and have been chronically ill for almost 40 years, having to retire early after working with that disability for 14 years due to the results of a damaging operation.
Perhaps I digress, but my point is surely clear - Social Democracy is not enough! We got a committed Social Democratic government in 1945, but the economic power remained with the rich.
So, what are the implications for what we should do now?
The economic slump of 2008 did not only expose the inadequacies of Capitalism, but unleashed an almighty assault upon the Working Class to pay-the-bill, while, at the same time, attempting to remove every single gain remaining from the nationalisations and social programmes of the 1940s, and the achievements in living standards by the Working Class.
Today, I watched a "debate" between Peter Taafe of the Socialist Party and Michael Crick, a clear enemy of our class - proved throughout his contributions, which were a continuation of his attacks upon that organisation in three previous books, AND, in this "debate"the usual lies repeated heatedly and often, AND in spite of his anti-Labour stance, displaying a clear union with those still-present in the Labour Party of today, who had expelled them in the past.
NOTE: If you're wondering, the writer of this article was also expelled from the Labour Party too, but in 1964, having transformed the campaign in my city, in our electoral efforts to achieve a Labour Government, in which we succeeded! Peter Taafe's expulsion came 20 years later, after major successes for his grouping in Liverpool. By the way, Crick was also involved in "exposing" that "criminal insertion" into the Labour Party then too.
As an aside to this you don't invite agents of the enemy class to a debate, ever!
So, what has to be done? Finally, we get around to my main purpose in writing this essay, "What are the Key Questions now imperative for the Revolutionary Left to address?"
The first is obvious, but strangely absent.
Where are the necessarily constant Marxist Economic Updates, such as Professor Richard Wolff supplies both weekly and monthly on 80 radio stations across America and on YouTube?
Don't you think they are necessary?
Chunkymark isn't really a Marxist, but he finds it absolutely essential to deliver a daily YouTube rant against the Capitalist establishment. And, he is right!
For he's genuinely angry, and so should we be! Politics isn't measured argument: it is heart, anger and commitment, that strikes at the arrogance, greed and hatred of the enemy class - especially NOW! It is a rallying call for recruiting allies that will trust you, and when the time comes will remember.
Indeed, the number-one-priority, intellectually, for Marxists to tackle in Science was this crucial philosophical question. And, in spite of seeking that theory wherever I thought it might be, I didn't succeed.
The switch by Marx from Idealism to Materialism was precisely to unify Philosophy with Science, and he demonstrated how to do it in the volumes of his work, Das Kapital. It took him the rest of his life to complete it, and he fully expected his followers to complete the same sort-of-undertaking on Science. The books on Science by his colleague Frederick Engels, along with his own Mathematical Manuscripts proved his intentions.
It is over a century since Lenin's book, where are the vital following works?
The question was rhetorical, for I know the answer: I have had to do it myself, and like Marx I had to work many decades part-time and the last 10 years full-time to complete it.
And, there are other important omissions,which I will outline in Part II...
