Wage control and working class independence: the record of British Stalinism

Wage control and working class independence: the record In the crisis the British state has set about the task of cutting deviation is determined by the accumulation process, as we.

of British Stalinism workers' wages. The imposition of wage restraint by statutory incomes policy has been followed by the establishment of the Social Contract - a voluntary agreement between the Government and the trade unions to limit pay rises. Today capital's offensive against the working class is centrally organised by the state.' As phase has succeeded phase, the working class has struggled to maintain its standard of living.

In these conditions the fight against declining real wages assumes special significance, for it provides the working class with the experience from which it can begin to understand the class nature of the bourgeois state.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CP) claims a militant tradition of defending the working class against Government wage restraint. Each time the Government has attempted to control wages in the post-war period the CP has its opposition. It spoke out against the measures voiced imposed by Cripps in.1947 and against the plans put forward by Selwyn Lloyd in 1962. It rejected the incomes policies of Wilson and George Brown between 1964 and 1970; subsequently it campaigned against Heath's statutory policy. Since 1974 the publications of the CP have denounced the voluntary wage agreements between the Labour Government and the trade unions. Bury the Social Contract was the tough-sounding title of the pamphlet written in 1977 by CP industrial organiser Bert The CP's reputation for opposition to the Social Contract commands respect among many workers. To see whether this reputation is justified we need to survey the CP's record in the post-war period. But first we must understand how wages are determined in the process of capital accumulation.

I WAGES AND CAPITAL ACCUMU-

LATION

Capitalist production rests on two fundamentally antagonistic classes. The capitalist class possesses the means of production, the working class owns the commodity labour-power. The worker must sell this commodity to the capitalist in order to obtain the means of purchasing the necessities of life.? The buy labour-power in order to extract surplus-value from the worker.

1. The value of labour-power The value of a commodity is determined by the labourtime socially necessary for its production. This is true also for the commodity labour-power. Its value is equal to the value of the necessaries of life consumed by the worker in order to produce and reproduce his ability to work for the capitalist.

However, this value is different from the value created by the labourer when the capitalist consumes his labour-power in the process of production — the capitalist can extract unpaid labour in the form of surplus-value from hiring workers.

Wages are the money expression of labour-power. They are the price of labour-power. Wages can deviate from the value of labour-power, but the extent of this shall indicate below. It must be borne in mind, however, that the value of labour-power declines continually throughout the accumulation process. While 'real wages' may rise, or the price of labour-power may rise above its value, the value represented by the wage still falls. 2. Wages Capital accumulation necessitates expanding the scale of production through the investment of surplus-value in new quantities of labour-power and means of production. It is this process which dictates the need to maximise the production of surplus-value. This is the aim and object of capitalist If the intensity of labour and the size of the workforce are constant, the amount of surplus-value extracted from the working class can be increased in two ways. The worker can be forced to work longer by the extension of the working day: this is the production of absolute surplus-value. But because this method is limited by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, capital is compelled to shorten that part of the working das during which the worker produces commodities of a value equivalent to the value of his means of subsistence. This, the production of relative surplus-value, requires that the means of production are|revolutionised through technical innovation.

However the production of relative surplus-value also comes up against barriers, barriers inherent in the capitalist accumulation process. The production of relative surplus-value demands mounting investments in means of production (constant capital) relative to labour-power (variable capital).

The organic composition of capital therefore rises. The amount of surplus-value each worker produces increases, but fewer and fewer workers are employed by a given amount of capital. The surplus-value is measured over an ever greater mass of constant capital and the rate of profit tends to fall.* Falling profitability brings capital accumulation to a halt. The condition for further investment is the restoration of capitalist profitability.

Profitability can be restored only by a more ruthless plunder of the working class than takes place with the relative surplus-value. Capitalism increasingly towards the extraction of absolute surplus-value, the intensification of labour and the depression of wages below the value of labour-power.* Capitalist production can only continue by denying the working class the wages required to purchase the customary necessities of life.

The movement of wages is determined by the process of accumulation. In a period of boom capital can grant wage rises to the working class. At a time of crisis capital tries to force down wages to restore conditions for profitable accumulation.

These tendencies are reinforced by the changing size of the reserve army of labour. When capitalist production expands, unemployment falls and the changed conditions in the labour market allow the working class to benefit from its increased.

productivity through wage rises. During a crisis the existence of a pool of unemployed workers makes it easier for capital to reduce wages below the value of labour-power.

28

movement of wages is mediated by the class struggle. The 1. The state and the war effort and cohesion of the employers and the state and the resistance of millions of workers had been sacrificed. Like the other of the trade union and political organisations of the working parties of the official communist movement, the British CP the working class. They came into existence does tringh internationally were preoccupied with the defence of bourgeois 'collective bargaining' with employers. The demand that this democracy. Pursued by the Comintern after 1934, the Popular process should be free from the interference of the state is Front strategy relied on collaboration of the communists with However, trade unions are limited in their struggles by the patriotism. In Britain the CP supported the alliarice of the Their aim is to prevent the working class with the British bourgeoisie against Germany - 3. The class struggle There is no simple mechanism by which wages rise or fall as capitalism goes through booms and slumps. The extent of the capacity of workers to take advantage of a boom depends on the political and organisational strength of the movement. The outcome of the bourgeois offensive on working class living standards in a crisis is determined by the strength Trade unions are the traditional defensive organisations of and foreign policy.

improve the wages and conditions of fundamental to trade unionism. It is the embryo of independent working class politics. wage-labour/capital relation.

reduction of wages below the value of labour-power* — a goal which leaves the barrier to a general improvement in living standards, capital, intact. In 1865, Marx advised the international labour movement not to fight for higher wages at the cost of neglecting its fundamental task, the overthrow of capitalist production: Workers 'ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady.

They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the neverceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, " Abolition of the wages system!'

The demand for free collective bargaining does not itself challenge capitalist social relations. It is generally consistent with a reformist strategy. At a time of crisis, however, capital must drive down the wages of the working class. In the current recession it is the state which leads the bourgeois offensive by imposing wage restraint, with or without the consent of the labour movement. In these circumstances the demand for free collective bargaining comes into sharp conflict with the needs of capital accumulation advanced by the bourgeois state.

Sooner or later, reformists come to accept falling wages and rising unemployment, because to do otherwise would involve them in a direct challenge to the state. In practice this means that reformism cannot sustain trade union struggles for the simple reason that they contradict the needs of capital. At a time of crisis reformists seek to hold back trade union struggles, pleading with workers to postpone their wage claims.

The crisis shows the need for the struggles of the working class to go beyond trade unionism to confront the bourgeois state. This is essential if living standards are to be defended and the possibility created of destroying capitalist social relations.

When reformists drop their support bargaining the immediate interests of the working class can advanced by giving that demand a decisive revolutionary direction. 29 -

I THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND

POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION

The international working class emerged from the Second World War defeated. Its political leaders had proved unable to face up to the challenge of the period and as a result the lives had given in to capital on every major question of domestic In the years leading up to the war the communist parties bourgeois parties to defend 'democratic' capitalism against fascism. During the war this strategy turned into open and against the German working class.

1 Whether the regulation of wages is performed by the state or by the individual capitalist depends on the stage which capital accumulation has reached. In the imperialist epoch, when capital seeks refuge from its stagnation in forms which contradict free competition, the state has a tendency, to assume overall control of wages. On the historical development of state intervention in general, see F Richards, 'Revisionism, imperialism and the state: the method of Capital and the dogma of state monopoly capitalism' in this issue Though the tendency towards statutory wage restraint is evident Europe today, it is always Throughout North America and West mediated by the class struggle. Quite often it is opposed by sections of the capitalist class itself, as Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher has shown in her declared support for free collective The necessities of life include an element necessary to ensure the physical survival of the worker and his family (food, clothing, shelter) and an element determined by the custom and practice of the working class in a particular historical period.

3 See RCT, Revolutionary Communist Papers No 3, July 1978, p9.

4 Despite the calls for a 35 hour working week, there has been an increase in the length of the working day in the present crisis.

number of hours worked per week by 'operatives' in manufacturing rose by 3.4 per cent between January 1976 and January 1978; the number of 'operatives' working overtime rose from 27.5 per cent to 33.6 per cent over the same period (Department of Employment Gazette, May 1978, pp626-7). The drive towards increased intensity of labour is indicated by the numerous speed-ups and productivity deals 5 In chapter xvii of Capital, Vol 1, Marx deals with the case in which, 'in consequence of the increased productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power falls'. He points out that 'subsidiary move.

ments may occur, in which the price of labour-power (wages) may possibly not fall as much as its value.

The amount which wages fall 'depends on the relative weight, which the pressure of capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer on the other side, throws into the scale'. K Marx, Capital, Vol 1, Lawrence & Wisharl, 1974, "The value of labour-power constitutes the conscious and explicit foundation of the trade unions, whose importance for the English working class can scarcely be overestimated. The trade unions aim al nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below the level that is traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry.

That is to say, they wish to prevent the price of labour-power from falling below its value'. K Marx, Capital, Vol I, Penguin edition, 7 K Marx, 'Wages, price and profit', in Marx & Engels, Selected Works, Lawrence & Wishart, 1968, pp225-6.

The CP was in favour of re-armament for war until late in 1939.

Following the Hitler-Stalin pact it opposed Britain's involvement in war against Germany. After Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941 it immediately changed its policy to support for the British war effort. It sustained this support for the duration of the war.

The CP was enthusiastic in its support capitalism's war effort. It played an active role in winning the acquiescence of workers to the sacrifices made necessary by war. In the factories it was in the forefront of campaigns to productivity, notably in the Joint Production Committees where workers' representatives met employers to discuss how to implement 'speed-ups on the shop floor - how to intensify labour and increase surplus-value.?

The major intervention of the state in the war economy was necessary to ensure maximum national efficiency for the The CP welcomed increasing state involvement in British capitalism: Economically, under the stress of war, significant developments have taken place in British industry, which, if continued after the war, can quickly lift Britain into the front line rank of industrial efficiency. Under State control, there have slowly emerged more effective forms of co-ordination and planning."° For the CP the role played by the state during the war was a vindication of its theory that the state could be made to plan society in the interests of the working class. If bourgeois democracy could be relied upon to prosecute the war against fascism, then equally the bourgeois state could be the instrument for developing the productive forces and raising working class living standards."

As victory against Germany came within Britain's reach, Towards the end of the war working class militancy intensified. The role of the CP was to scab on many important trade union struggles, since they could only damage Britain's efforts to restore itself as a world power. It was quite prepared to countenance the intervention of the state in outright repression against the proletariat.

Early in 1945, 30 Manchester gas workers were imprisoned under the Emergency Powers Act for striking for higher wages.

When 140 of their fellow workers came out in protest, the Government sent in troops to destroy the sympathy action. The CP accepted the use of the Army and complained: Manchester "sympathy" gas strikers are still on strike despite the release of their 30 colleagues from Strangeways jail last night and despite the fact that they admit the trouble and hardship they are causing the people of Manchester'. ' In effect the CP applauded the state's violent attack on a section of the working class. In any conflict between national capitalist survival and the interests of the working class, the CP took the side of the bourgeois state.'

2. Planning and incomes policy For the CP post-war Britain could avoid the capitalist crisis.

The state had planned the war: now it could plan the peace.

Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the CP, called on the newly elected Labour Government to 'at once state its national plan, both for production as a whole and with regard to wages!* The CP was enraptured with the miracles of organisation worked by the state at Dunkirk and at every other mobilisation of the people during the war. The state's intervention in workers' incomes thus seemed the natural accompaniment to its continued peacetime controls over trade, investment and the mobility of labour. Socialism to the CP meant planning obviously wages would have to be planned like everything else.

Thus the Communist Party, which has the reputation of opposition to wage controls, entered the post-war period as their most enthusiastic advocate What the CP failed to notice was that Attlee's success in the 1945 elections did not represent the seizure of state power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Capital and the law of 'Planning' could value still ruled the British economy.

therefore only be conducted at the expense of the working class.

Nevertheless the CP supported every aspect of the post-war austerity demanded by the Government. But for capital this was not enough. In 1947, the economic crisis forced Labour to introduce a statutory incomes policy.

The CP now swung into opposition to wage restraint." Yet Cripps' wage freeze was rejected not as part of the fight for independent working class politics, but because it did not form part of an overall state plan for the British economy. State regulation of wages was permissible, provided it was linked to government restrictions on prices and profits. At the 1950 Trades Union Congress (TUC), CP member W C Stevens, General Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), moved a resolution from his union opposing incomes policy *until such time as there is a reasonable limitation of profits, a positive planning of our British economy, and prices are subject to such control as will maintain the purchasing power of wages at a level affording to every worker a reasonable standard of living."

For the CP, as for the ETU, 'positive planning of our British economy' remained the essential goal. Three years of falling real wages had not caused it to change course.

1l1 INCOMES POLICY AND THE RISE

OF THE BROAD LEFT

The bourgeoisie had no need of incomes policy during the expansion of capital accumulation in the 'fifties. But by 1962, Tory Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd was firing the opening salvos in what was to become a concerted and prolonged attack on workers' living standards. The response of the CP gave an indication of the role it would resume as boom turned to crisis.

It criticised the Tories not for trying to impose an incomes policy but for the 'one-sidedness' of its proposals." It complained that the 1963 report of the Government's National Incomes Commission spent 'most of the time in enumerating the problems that are still to be solved, before profits restraint can be applied'. ' The CP's 'opposition' to the pay pause in force at the time amounted to this: incomes policies must go hand in hand with restraint on profits, and not before it.

In the run-up to the 1964 election the CP campaigned for a 'new type of policy'. A new Labour government should "attempt to plan the resources and productive power of the country for the needs of the people'. ' New Labour Chancellor George Brown proceeded to attempt to do just that by introducing a 3.5 per cent limit on wage rises. The CP was truly incensed. Some months later it complained that 'no concrete plan ... has yet been put forward (we agree that it is a bit early) by the Labour Government'. 2 But what could be more 'concrete' an example of planning under capitalism than allowing money wages to rise just 3•5 per cent per year - in times which were already inflationary? Indeed it anybody was being abstract it was the CP. As a leading CP analyst of incomes policy reported to the official communist movement, "The Communists and the Left in some trade unions are demanding that the Government, while abandoning the attempt to restrict increases in wages and salaries, should promote a positive wages policy in certain directions'." What a positive wages policy consisted of, how it contrasted to the abandonment of attempts to restrict increases in wages,and in which of the 'certain directions' alluded to it was to be promoted - all of this was purposefully left vague. What was definite was that the CP was not opposed to state intervention in wage bargaining in principle. It resisted the version of incomes policy that the Government put forward. That was all.

In its resistance to Labour's incomes policy the CP reflected the mood of a substantial section of the labour movement. As the Government's offensive on wages moved from voluntary restraint to statutory controls, the scale of trade union resistance increased. This provided the opportunity for the CP to regain the influence in the unions it had lost since the The Broad Left — the CP's alliance with left wing Labour supporters — had considerable success in union elections in the late 'sixties. Its two most spectacular 30

pathisers of the CP to become figures prominence. Hugh Scanion was elected President of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) in 1967 and Jack Jones won the leadership of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) in 1969. These men, later 1o be pillars of Labour's Social Contract, were elected with CP support on a platform of militant resistance to wage restraint.

Resistance to the anti-trade union legislation proposed in the Government's White Paper In place of strife was mobilised by the CP-controlied Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. This body organised unofficial strike actions demonstrations of tens of thousands in London and several provincial cities. In the early stages of the recession workers could use traditional trade union methods to defend living standards without challenging the state directly. It was thus CP to support militant possible for the demonstrations without altering its political commitment to the bourgeois state as the agency of socialist transformation.

However, even in this period the practical consequences of the CP's inability to provide the political were evident foundations for the defence of the working class. In 1966, the CP defended the seamen in their claim for higher wages not because they — like any other group of workers - were fighting to maintain living standards, but because they were a special case. Describing the background to the seamen's strike, J R Campbell made a subtle observation: had agreed to remuneration (quite justifiably, in my opinion) going far beyond the incomes policy norm. So it decided to make up for this breach of incomes polic! ty standing firm as far as the seamen were concerned.

Yet the seamer. had a clear case for being also treated as exceptions.'

The doctors case was justifiable; the seamen's was clear. But what clear!: was not justifiable was support for the whole working class, without exceptions, in its struggle for higher wages. That would have required the CP to lead the working class into battle against the state.

advised leading militants in the seamen's union to call off the Workers do not all struggle at once. When a section of the working class begins a battle, that battle is "sectional'. Whether it remains so depends on the direction revolutionaries are able to give it. But once it is accepted that the state can weigi: up the pros and cons of each particular raised. the road is paved for setbacks and defeats.

Carried into the recession of the 'seventies, the CP's deference to the state becomes more reactionary still.

IV THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND

THE RECESSION

The last few years hate seen a growing recognition of the need to restructure British industry. For the CP this has meant that workers should no longer regard wage increases as their main objective. As early as 1974 the CP argued for radical measures to revitalise the economy: "The root cause of the country's lack of productivity, its appalling trade deficit, its low level of incomes and chronic unemployment is the antiquared state of much of the country's industry. There is no way around this fact. Modernisation is the only answer. 'ta the CP was and remains unable something the bourgeoisie Modernisation and productive investment, though radical measures, require a still more radical restoration of capitalist profitability. For this, capital needs to increase the rate of exploitation, expand the reserve army of the unemployed by forcing through massive redundancies in industry - and drive wages below the value of labour-power. Before the low level of workers' incomes can be reversed, capital has to make the proletariat endure years of harder work, scarcer jobs and 31 grinding poverty. The CP would rather it did not have to do this. It wants to see modernisation, not economic dislocation. And it does not want the dislocation that the seizure of state power by the working class would entail either! The smooth way out is to end wage restraint — or so it says. Higher wages would increase "purchasing power' and enable more goods to be sold as a A great boost would in turn be given to production. In short, higher wages would result in what the CP really does take seriously: modernisation. For the CP the merit of higher wages no longer lies in their 'affording to every worker a reasonable standard of living', as W C Stevens had it in 1950. Their merit is that they are a part (and only a part at that) of the Broad Left's 'alternative economic strategy' for the survival of British industry on the world market, a stracegy which the Government and the state must be compelled to implement." That is what motivates the CP's opposition to 9 A pamphlet produced by the London District Commitree of the CP reported a bright idea for boosting productivity, thought up by a Parly convenor in a north London factory: 'He went to the Soviet Embassy and obtained some of the photographs of German atrocities in Russia. He persuaded the management to have them enlarged to a huge size and posted in the factory. The result was an immediate spurt all-round in production'. Ted Bramley, We are many, CP. c1943, p13 I0 Victory-Peace-Security, Report of the 17th Nacional Congress of the Communist Party, 1944, p22.

11 Thus the CP greeted William Beveridge's Full employment m a tree a sequel to his plan for the reorganisation or social insurance and other welfare services - wholeheartedly. Crises and unemployment, it argued, could 'only be eliminated, complete change to Socialism, by the most drastic interference with the normal working of capitalism... the effective measures which Beveridge proposes, 1o cure unemployment are not measures lo bolster up capitalism, bur measures to interfere with capitalism, to bring the political power of the people to bear in such a way that capital is unable to follow its own laws, and is compelled to serve the people'. Emile Burris, 'Full employment', Labour Monthly, Decem- 12 Daily Worker, 25 January 1945, p4 13 The CP scabbed on major strikes by dockers for higher wages in March, August and October 1945. When the Government dispatched soldiers to smash the August strike at Surrey docks, the Daily Worker, the CP's paper, gave only a short factual account of events, refusing to denounce the strikebreaking. See che Daily Worker, 1 August 1945, 14 Communist policy for Britain, Report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. November 1948, p13.

15 We cannot go into the reasons for the CP's left turn' of 1947 here.

For an analysis of the general evolution of the CP, see F Richards & P Turner, 'Stalinism, the Communist Party and the RCG's new turn', in RCT, Revolutionary Communist Papers No 1, March 1977, and in particular pp32-3 16 Report of 82nd Annual Trades Union Congress, 1950, p467.

17 JR Campbell, 'The Siamese twins — Neddy and Nicky', Labour Monthly, September 1963. p407.

19 Labour Monthly, October 1963, p434.

"The developmeni of incomes policy in Britain', 20 JR Campbell, Marxism Today, March 1965, p73 21 .FR Campbell, World Marxist Review, Vol 8, No 5, May 1965. p32, 22 Many factors had played a part in the earlier decline of the CP.

They include the impact of the Cold War, the invasion of Hungary and the publication of Kruschev's "secret speech' on Stalin. Bans and proscriptions on CP activity in the unions and the consequences of the prosecution of leading CP members of the ETU for ballot-rigging were important domestic facters.

23 | R Campbell, 'Seamen and the state', Labour Monthly, July 'Mini-measures won't solve maxi-problems', Comment, 10 August 1974, pp242-3.

25 For an example of this argument, see 'Who do you think you are kidding Mr Healey', lead article by the editor, Morning Star, 16 July 1977, pl. On the scurrilous role played by CP trade unionists and their defence of British industry, see 'The recession: capitalist offensive and the working class, Revolutionary Communist Papers No 3, pp38-40.

wage restraint today. The CP's implicit support for incomes policy is further reflected in its faith in the Labour Government. As soon as it was issued the CP greeted the Labour Party's 1974 election manifesto as a 'socialist' programme. In the five years of austerity since then, the CP has not found cause to revise its against the Social The CP has, however, come out Contract and in favour of free collective bargaining. But Bert Ramelson has grown older and wiser too - wiser even than he was at the time of the seamen's strike. Again he offers advice:.

"Free collective bargaining is not a free-for-all, with the sky the limit. Trade unions always have been, and are, responsible bodies with their membership having the power, if it uses it, to decide policy.

In déciding what its wage claims should be a trade union takes into consideration a number of factors, including the changes in the cost of living and the economic capacity of the employer to pay. " The trade unions must sagely "take into consideration' the economic capacity of the employer to pay. What could be more innocuous than that? But the capitalist's ability to grant higher wages depends on his profitability. Ramelson recommends not the ruthless defence of the interests of the working class, but the subordination of those interests to the maintenance of profit rates. He recommends a familiar recipe: 'responsible' free collective bargaining.

The disputes in the motor industry towards the end of 1978 showed the dangers of responsible free collective bargaining When the Ford dispute was at its height, Sid Harraway, shop stewards' chairman at the Ford body plant and a longstanding member of the CP, backed the strike by explaining that Ford's 'ability to pay' was 'well demonstrated by its successful and profitable leadership in the market of the British industry' " Harraway argued what the TGWU at Ford was arguing: that the firm was peculiarly profitable, making the strikers' wage demands quite worthy... as a special case. ' Soon after, workers at Vauxhall Motors showed how impressed with this logic they were. At mass meetings, recommended strike action to back a pay claim in excess of But the workers took Labour's five per cent limit.

management's point that Vauxhall was unprofitable and in no position to cover the increase in its wage bill. They voted by huge majorities to stay at work. The trade unions' acceptance of the doctrine of 'responsible' collective bargaining has led to a series of similar reversals.

The CP's reaction to the TUC in September 1978 shows that it continues to accept the legitimacy of state intervention in the wage-labour/capital relation. When the TUC rejected the Government's five per cent limit on wage rises the CP greeted this as a step in the right direction'." It was indeed a step in the direction of the policy of the CP. The Congress rejected the terms of the Government's proposals — but not the underlying principle of incomes policy. The Labour Party-TUC Liaison Committee document Into the 'eighties which recommended some form of permanent incomes policy, was endorsed by the Congress. The TUC's acceptance of the right of the state to intervene in wage bargaining in perpetuity was in turn implicitly endorsed by the CP. Four years of wage-cutting have not diminished the of another Labour enthusiasm of the CP for the return Government. In early December 1978 it grew excited by what it found in the first draft of the Labour Party's manifesto for the Morning Star reporter Martin Gostwick concluded that the draft was 'a major programme for advance towards Socialism in the next five years'."° But, as he acknowledged in a brief aside, the draft contained a statement that the Labour Party would 'seek an understanding with the trade unions' on pay. In other words Labour's draft manifesto of Social Contract looked forward to another five years between government and unions. This was the advance towards socialism that it was preparing.

No matter. Within a week, Morning Star editor Tony Chater was also writing about the advance towards socialism.

"Obviously', he argued, 'there must be a close relationship between a Labour government and the trade union movement in the process of moving from here to Socialism'. " In case of any anxiety that a 'close relationship' between government and Chater unions would simply be another Social Contract, reassuringly added that 'this can never mean reducing the trade unionsto an appendage of the government, however left it may be. " Nor could it mean the emasculation of free collective 'far from restricting bargaining. On the contrary, suspending collective bargaining, this all implies an extension of its scope! " Again, any anxiety about the nature of this 'extension' would be unfounded. Collective bargaining, Chater went on: "must continue to deal with wages and hours. There can never be any question of abandoning that....

•But having said that, collective bargaining during the transition to Socialism needs to go beyond wages and hours.

'It needs to extend the area of its concern, raising the workers' demands about what should be done on wider questions related to forward planning. This would include such matters as investment policy, the location of new plants, development of the production range, and so on. 'In short, collective bargaining needs to stake a claim in the arena usually regarded as reserved for the management. "34 By the phrase 'collective bargaining' most trade unionists understand bargaining about wages and hours. So why does Chater say that trade unionists er gaged in collective bargaining must never abandon the issues of wages and hours? Because Chater's call to 'go beyond' collective bargaining 'extends' collective bargaining out of existence. It means that workers must get into the management arena. They must concern themselves with management problems. But what is the main problem that exercises Michael Edwardes, Arnold Weinstock and managers throughout Britain? The need to reduce wage costs. This is the arena Chater wants workers to plunge into.

The CP's extension of collective bargaining means its extinction. Again Chater is slightly worried about working class reaction to his "broadening' of the concept of collective bargaining. He continues: It might be argued that all this amounts to saying that the unions would be accepting the incomes policy or social contract, since in the demands they advanced they would be taking into account a whole range of questions - including the overall political programme of the government. 'But this is playing with words.'

Quite so. As Chater plays with the meaning of free collective bargaining, the CP toys with the livelihoods of thousands of workers. That is what its reputation for opposing the Social Contract represents. That is what its militant tradition defending the working class against government wage restraint amounts to. We have shown that though the CP has differed with post-war governments over incomes policy, all it has differed over has been the terms on which incomes policy has been introduced. The form of the CP's 'opposition' to wage restraint has changed with changing material conditions. Nevertheless in content the CP has consistently accepted the need for the bourgeois state to intervene in wage bargaining. The CP has objected to the state's unwillingness to plan profits as well as pay; to its unfair dismissal of the seamen's "special case' for a wage rise; and to its refusal to regenerate British industry by raising wages and boosting demand. But the CP's objections to wage control reveal only its loyalty to the capitalist class.

Contract have given and the Social The recession unprecedented strength to that loyalty. When the CP last advocated a national plan for wages, it did so in the 32

left-reformist heyday of Labourism that ensued just after the Seán MacStiofáin: more attacks on workers for being 'divisive'. But it is the One of the most shameful features of the politics of the British Ramelson, Bury the Social Contract — the case for an the anti-imperialist movement.

27 Sid Harraway, 'Fords: why we are striking', Morning Star, 26 Counties in 1968 republicanism was little more than 28 See The Ford wage claim 1978, TGWU, p3. Socialist Worker went Ireland had failed since the Partition of 1921. But when the Today, under the most crisis-ridden and reactionary Labour Government since the war, the CP's practical activity reinforces incomes policy. The CP may support a particular wages struggle — if it is a 'special case'. But while it only backs those strikes which conform to its framework of national responsibility, the CP condemns others as 'sectional'. When toolroom workers at British Leyland went on strike in defence of wage differentials in 1977, the Morning Star condemned their actions on the grounds that they could only lead to division'. 36 As the crisis deepens the CP will make more and Communist Party, the unswerving advocate of 'Left Unity', which now divides and debilitates the working class movement.

Keith Tompson alternative policy, CP, 1977, p34.

September 1978, p2. further. The Ford Motor Company was in no trouble, nor was British business generally. "They can all afford it!' was the euphoric realisation prompted by the strike and emblazoned on banner headlines. See Socialist Worker, 30 September 1978, pl.

29 Comment, 30 September 1978, p322.

30 Lead article, Morning Star, 9 December 1978, pl.

'Incomes policy and the fight for Socialism', Morning Star, 15 December 1978, p2.

32 Nor can it ever mean reducing the CP to an appendage of the Labour Party — or so Chater tells us, calling for 'a much bigger Communist Party alongside the other political forces of the left'. Ibid.

36 Morning Star, editorial, 12 March 1977, pl.

Books received Suzanne de Brunhoff, The state, capital and economic policy, Pluto Press, London, 1978, 152pp, £2.95, paper.

Fernando Claudin, Eurocommunism and socialism, NLB, London, 1978, 165pp, £5.50.

Jack Dromey and Graham Taylor, Grunwick: the workers' story, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1978, 199pp. £2.95, John Harrison, Marxist economics for socialists — a critique of reformism, Pluto Press, London, 1978, 165pp, £2.40, paper.

John Hemingway, Conflict and democracy; studies in trade union government, Oxford University Press, 1978, 180pp, Ernest Mandel, From Stalinism to Eurocommunism, NLB, London, 1978, 220pp, £2.95, paper.

Robert Miles and Annie Phizacklea, Racism and political action in Britain, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979, John Molyneux, Marxism and the party, Pluto Press, London, 1978, 188pp, £2.95, paper.

Roger Moore, Emergence of the Labour Party 1880-1924, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1978, 208pp, £3.50, paper.

Nicos Poulantzas, State, power, socialism, NLB, London, 33