Today's Topics:
1. anarkismo.net: Alternatives from the Ground Up by Lucien van
der Walt (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. US, WSA, ideas and action: Working More Now But Enjoying it
Less? By Tom Wetzel (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Globalization School Input on Anarchism/Syndicalism and (Black) Working Class
Self-Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa ---- This commentary, an input at a
Globalization School debate in Cape Town, engages current labor and Left debates on
building alternatives, drawing on the experiences of the radical wing of the
anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and on anarchism and syndicalism. It argues for a
strategy of bottom-up mobilization based on debate and pluralism, and building structures
of counter-power and a revolutionary counter-culture that can prefigure and create a new
social order. The aim is to foster a class-based movement against exploitation,
domination, and oppression, including national oppression, that can win reforms through
self-activity, unite a range of struggles against oppression, and develop the capacity and
unity needed for deep social change. This should be outside parliament, the political
party system and the state. The outcome, ultimately, would be the replacement of
capitalism, the state, and social and economic inequality, by a universal human community
based on self-management, the democratization of daily life, participatory economic
planning, and libertarian socialism.
Lucien van der Walt, 2016, "Alternatives from the Ground Up: Globalization School Input on
Anarchism/Syndicalism and (Black) Working Class Self-Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South
Africa," "WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society," volume 19, number 2, pp. 251-268.
**This is a lightly edited transcript of Lucien van der Walt's input at the 2010
Globalization School in Cape Town, for the public debate "How Do We Develop an
Alternative?" Co-panelists were Mazibuko Jara (Conference of the Democratic Left, now
national secretary of the United Front), Zico Tamela (South African Communist Party,
SACP), and Lydia Cairncross (Workers Organization for Socialist Action). It was very well
received. Lucien van der Walt is a South African writer and sociologist, long involved in
the working class movement. He is the author of numerous works, and editor of "Anarchism
and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940" (with Steven Hirsch,
preface by Benedict Anderson, 2010/ 2014, Brill). The Globalization School is an annual
event by the Cape Town-based International Labor Research and Information Group (ILRIG),
attracting 150-200 activists from unions and social movements.
LvdW: I think the previous panelists have put forward some pretty powerful arguments. So,
I must start by thanking these comrades. We are addressing the issue of "How Do We Develop
an Alternative?" and, more precisely, at how unions and community movements can develop
this alternative. And by that, of course, we mean an alternative to the existing system,
which traps millions upon millions in misery.
We need to be very careful not to reduce our critique of the current system to a critique
of the system for creating *poverty*, for not creating enough *jobs*, for not building
enough *houses*. We must not forget that, originally, socialism stressed creating better
material conditions for the working class, the peasantry, and the poor more generally (the
"popular classes") only *as a means to an end*, only as means to enable people to have
*free, meaningful lives*.
Our disagreement with liberalism was not on whether people *should* be free; rather, it
was that liberal solutions-free market capitalism and parliamentary democracy-were
completely *inadequate* to the task of enabling ordinary people to have free, meaningful
lives.
THE SOVIET MIRAGE
But this stress on freedom was lost with the rise to power of state-centered Left
traditions, such as social-democracy from the 1890s and Marxist "communism" from the 1920s.
I know when the term "socialism" comes up, many in our movements will speak about the
Soviet Union, or Cuba, as somehow "socialist." A speaker on Monday, for example, said that
the Soviet Union was a "work in progress"-but progressing in the right direction. That
same speaker added that the working class would be "demoralized" if something happened to
Cuba, which has a similar system to that which the Soviet Union had before its collapse,
along with its satellite states in Europe and Asia, from 1989 to 1991.
But what we are really doing if we identify the Soviet or Cuban models with "socialism,"
is saying that it is possible to have a socialist system where the working class does not
have basic trade union rights, is subject to internal passports (or, as we knew them in
South Africa, pass laws); that we can have socialism where the working class and peasantry
are ruled by a small bureaucratic and political and economic elite-a ruling class
minority-that terrorizes its opponents, and uses secret police, forced labor, and ruthless
dictatorship; that we can have socialism where the popular classes are not, in fact, in power.
Well, if that is "socialism," then socialism is completely pointless. And I know someone
will respond: "But comrade, consider the material gains of the Soviet people, the lack of
unemployment, the massive industrialization-and the great health care system in Cuba
today." But basic freedoms and human rights, and working class and peasant power, are not
optional extras! If having jobs and hospitals or steel factories is what (p. 253 starts)
counts in measuring "socialism" then there is nothing that makes socialism superior, in
any way whatsoever, to a range of explicitly capitalist dictatorships.There were and are
jobs and hospitals and steel factories under a range of capitalist, military dictatorships
in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. But we do not call those socialist. Apartheid
itself actively promoted heavy industry, and had less than 10 percent unemployment as well
as continually expanding social services, until the 1970s. But we would never call it
socialist.
Systems like the Soviet Union did not, and could not, deliver freedom and the opportunity
for meaningful lives; they were systems of totalitarian state-capitalism. Freedom was not
on the program. Having a red flag and citing Karl Marx and calling Cabinet Ministers
"People's Commissars" does not make one bit of difference if the basic social relations
are exploitative and hierarchical.
VANGUARD PARTIES? SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTIES?
And that is why I get uncomfortable when comrade Zico Tamela, whose background is in the
SACP, talks in favor of Bolshevik vanguard parties, the seizure of state power and so on.
I agree with the comrade on the need for radical change. And I say that the SACP has
heroic traditions, and we should respect and learn from those traditions.
But not uncritically! The SACP's historic vision of socialism had very little "socialism"
in it: its original reference point, the Soviet Union, was not socialist, but
state-capitalist; and until the 1990s, the SACP ignored the dictatorship, repression, and
the subjugation of the working class, peasantry, and poor that was central to the Soviet
bloc. The SACP's more recent reference point is social-democracy. Although this term is
carefully avoided in SACP texts, the current project is effectively a social-democratic
one: slowly reforming capitalism, through the capitalist state, and expanding the state
bureaucracy.
Neither vision really deals with the key point that socialism should create freedom.
Although social-democrats try to democratize society, they seek the impossible: to give
capitalism a human face, using the state, and evolve it slowly into socialism. This is a
*reformist* project-it seeks change through a series of reforms *only*-and it is a
*failed* project, having collapsed worldwide by the early 1970s.
I am not confident that the SACP has a plan for change that will benefit the working
class. And I also do not want to be ruled by SACP people like Blade Nzimande or Jeremy
Cronin, given the heavy imprint on the party's political culture of the Soviet Union
model, with its stress on a top-down "vanguard" party model.
AFTER 1989: REDISCOVERING THE LIBERTARIAN LEFT
For me, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Soviet model, while it was temporarily
disorientating for the popular classes (especially the large sectors ( p. 254 starts) that
mistakenly saw this model as socialist), also opens up new vistas, new possibilities,
space to rediscover the soul of the socialist project. The end of an illusion is always
disorienting, but illusions need to end.
Militants will remember how hard it was in the 1980s to talk about "socialism" without
talking about the Soviet Union. How, if the Soviet leadership said or did something, the
impulse was to cheer and to ignore all the problems, or to claim the system was basically
revolutionary, despite some "degeneration" or "deformation."
Without the continual presence of the Soviet-type regimes we can start to re-envision-or
should I rather say rediscover?-the more libertarian and genuinely socialist ways of
thinking about socialism, the ways outside of the mainstream Marxist and social-democratic
traditions, and recover the core values of socialism. That Left project can again be
fundamentally delinked from the mirages of the old East bloc, and the failures of Western
social-democracy, again be relocated in radical democratic, libertarian Left traditions
like anarchism and syndicalism.
DEMOCRACY FROM BELOW
Because really, socialism at its best, is also a critique of the *rule* of the many by the
few. Not just a critique of the *exploitation* of the many by the few, not just a demand
for a system in which people are not exploited. Not just a critique of the system for
generating poverty.
It was, and is, also a critique of the *domination* of the many by the few, and of
*multiple* relations of domination and *oppression* across society. It was, and is, about
opposing people being impoverished, dominated, oppressed, not having dignity, about not
having any real power in work, the neighborhood, the school.
Just to give a small example: when we look at the so-called "service delivery protests" in
South Africa, it is easy to assume that these are just protests about getting more water,
electricity, and plumbing, delivered from on high, at the convenience of politicians. But
what people are actually highlighting is the simple, horrible fact that they have to
blockade roads, confront town councilors, even damage property, just to get taps and
toilets. This is an expression of the fact, the harsh truth that the common people exist
in a disempowering system, where only protest, sometimes violent protest, gives the
popular classes a *voice*. Because between protests, the masses *are* voiceless, ruled
from above, and ignored.
And if we look at exploitation as well, what makes this possible? Partly, yes, working
class people have no real choice but to work for wages: owning no productive resources,
they must sell their labor-power. But at the workplace, it is *domination* by the
employers, both private and state employers, through their apparatus of supervision and
punishment, that actually *enables* exploitation by controlling movement, time, and
energy. ( p. 255 starts)
TO LIVE FREE, MEANINGFUL LIVES
If we want to seriously talk about alternatives to capitalism, we need to think about much
more than more jobs and hospitals and steel factories: important as these are, they are
not socialism. We need to think beyond the Marxist regimes and social-democratic and
capitalist models of the twentieth century, rejecting all models that manifestly failed to
meet the most basic criteria of working class and popular class power, dignity, autonomy,
and freedom. We need to think about much more than just changing the political parties in
office.
We need to think of radical, dramatic change-a social rupture, not just a series of modest
reforms in the existing order. It is better to have a bigger cage, but it is still a cage.
*Reforms are valuable, but reformism is a dead end*. It is essential to link reforms to a
larger project of accumulating power and ideas for a revolutionary change in society.
This is why I like the point that my co-panelist comrade Mazibuko Jara of the independent
Left was making, that we need to think about how socialism can change *everyday life*.
That we need to think of socialism as a project that will *empower* the mass of the
people-and therefore, I would say, as something very different to the old Soviet model, as
well as something very different to the social-democratic model, which retains capitalism
and bureaucratizes society.
RESOURCES FOR CHANGE: 1980S SOUTH AFRICA
In rediscovering the progressive, emancipatory, Left and working class project, we can
start by rediscovering other paths that were opened by our own struggle in South Africa.
In the 1990s, we took the path of elections and state power. Our movements, including the
SACP, decided to put the African National Congress (ANC) into parliament-the idea was that
we would then "engage" the ANC, "contest" the ANC, and try to get it to implement
pro-working class policies. This approach has also been pretty much the program of the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a program some have called "radical
reform" or "strategic unionism." The labels sound very impressive, but amount to a
social-democratic project. This project was a key rationale for establishing, in the early
1990s, the formal "Tripartite Alliance" between the ANC, COSATU, and the SACP, which
continues today.
This project has not worked; capitalism and the state and the ANC were impervious to
social-democratic interventions, and the Alliance seems impervious to policy proposals by
the SACP or COSATU. If anything, the Alliance is used by the ANC to control COSATU and the
SACP. The social-democratic project is here, as elsewhere, dead in the water. Only
struggles seem to make the state listen.
The big path that we abandoned in doing this was the path opened up in the 1980s, of the
United Democratic Front (UDF) and the radical "workerist" ( p. 256 starts) Federation of
the South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) at their best. These formations insisted that
rather than be exploited, oppressed nationally, and disempowered, oppressed people should
rather create *democratic organizations autonomous of the state*, through which to run
their own lives and rebel, and *accumulate through these, the might to overthrow the
regime*, and capacities that could *lay the basis for a new society*.
The UDF called this "people's power." FOSATU called this "workers' control." Here,
democracy was not something that happened at elections, or through lobbying parties
through structures like the Alliance, or through proposing policies through corporatist
structures, but something built *right now*, in struggles and organizing. A new South
Africa and a new nation *built from below*, from *outside* the state, and *by, primarily,
the working class and the poor*. Thus, the UDF insisted (Morobe 1987, 40):
"By developing active, mass-based democratic organizations and democratic practices in
these organizations, we are laying the basis for a future democratic South Africa. When we
speak of majority rule, we do not mean that black faces must simply replace white faces in
parliament.
"A democratic solution in South Africa involves all South Africans, and in particular the
working class, having control over all areas of daily existence-from national policy to
housing, from schooling to working conditions, from transport to consumption of food. When
we say that the people shall govern, we mean at all levels and in all spheres, and we
demand that there be real, effective control on a daily basis."
ELECTORAL ILLUSIONS REMAIN
But in the 1990s, we put our faith into elections, into parties. The UDF was closed, its
remnants turned into ANC structures. COSATU was re-geared as an Alliance partner for the
ANC. And we never got anywhere near a situation of "all South Africans, and in particular
the working class, having control over all areas of daily existence."
Now, large sectors of the working class and the poor are waking up and seeing that the ANC
cannot be fixed. But most, including most on the Left, have not recognized that the *whole
system* is the problem. Most do not see the basic fallacy of using elections and lobbying
political parties-they reject the ANC, but put their hopes in a new or a different party,
like a workers' or Left party of some sort.
What gets lost is the simple fact that all successful electoral parties become part of the
capitalist state-and therefore, enemies of the people. If the ANC of Nelson Mandela-which
rose on the back of the massive struggles and movements of the 1980s and which was watched
with awe by the eyes of the whole world-failed to be different, why would any other party
succeed?
The ANC is not the problem. *The system is the problem*. And it cannot be fixed. (p. 257
starts)
RULING CLASS-NOT CAPITALIST CLASS
But why do I say the state is *always* anti-working class?
When we talk about the ruling class, we often seem to think that the ruling class is a
bunch of rich white capitalists in Constantia in Cape Town or in Sandton near
Johannesburg, the owners of private capital. And yes, they are part of the ruling class!
But while it is correct to highlight the power of the (economic) elite that sits atop the
private corporations, a focus on these completely fails to take into account the state (or
political) elite that sits atop the state machinery, whose power resides in state
institutions, including the army and the bureaucracy (and the state corporations). There
are the people who run the state: minsters, directors, mayors, parliamentarians,
vice-chancellors, generals. Their power rests not on private economic resources, but in
the organizations they control.
Capitalists are only *one* part of the ruling class. The ruling class is a minority, its
power rests on two institutions that centralize power and wealth so that this minority can
rule the majority, the popular classes. And these two institutions are the corporation and
the state, which share the basic features of top-down rule by and for an elite,
exploitation of workers, the priority of ruling class interests.
These two institutions are interdependent, bound together, by these imperatives: the
ongoing subordination and exploitation of the popular classes. There is a *single ruling
class* that comprises those who own or control the means of production through private
(and state) companies, plus those who own or control the means of administration and
coercion, mainly through the state apparatus.
RESOURCES: LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM, SYNDICALISM
Another set of important resources to be drawn upon in rethinking socialism can be found
in the tradition of anarchism and syndicalism, which is the main expression of libertarian
socialism, of anti-authoritarian socialism.
This is against hierarchy and social and economic inequality. Its critique of capitalism
arises from these positions. It is for participatory and democratic decision-making
wherever possible, including in the workplace, and in the larger economy, through measures
like self-management and participatory planning, as well as in neighborhoods, schools, and
other sites. It is for the democratization of daily life, and about democracy in all
possible areas.
And, because this tradition understands the state as an institution that shares basic
features with corporations, and as fundamentally bound to the corporations at all times,
and as beyond any possibility of capture by the popular classes, its position is
anti-statist. *It does not see the state as the solution, but as part of the nexus of
ruling class power*.
It argues that it is pointless having a revolution if you keep any system of domination,
hierarchy, oppression or exploitation. That is not really a real (p. 258 starts) change in
society: it is a change in the masters, but not freedom for the slaves, the basic system
of people dominating, oppressing, and exploiting each other remaining.
SELF-MANAGEMENT, SELF-GOVERNMENT
Other speakers on the panel have spoken about the need to capture the state, or to stand
Left candidates in elections.
But as I have argued, the state cannot be captured by the popular classes, used by the
working class, because it is a centralized institution of minority class rule,
inextricably allied to the private corporations. This means that any workers' or left-wing
party, aiming at state power, is a dead-end, no matter how well-intentioned, no matter its
size, no matter its program or rules.
And that is why I take the UDF and FOSATU approaches, as well as anarchism/syndicalism, as
key references in thinking about how we build an alternative-not because these are
perfect, but because these stress a different way of doing things, "people's power" and
"workers' control."
Because these aim-at their best-to build popular *self-government outside*, even *against*
the state, and *outside*, even *against* party control, by *popular resistance, building a
future* based on deep-reaching changes in social relations.
And that it's only by creating a new society, from below, through the struggles and
movements of the popular classes that we can move to new social relations. This is
completely different from the dictatorial system that existed, for example, in the Soviet
Union, completely different from the bureaucratic social-democratic welfare state that
existed, for example, in Sweden, completely different from the passive politics of elections.
Let me be clear here that I am not claiming that modest changes in daily life and more
democratic ways of doing things now, suffice to change society. A new society based on
self-management and self-government can only be created through ongoing, escalating class
struggles, and will ultimately require the transfer of means of administration, coercion,
and production into the hands of the popular classes. And that will ultimately involve a
radical rupture in the social order, not a slow process of gradual transition or mass
"exit" from the existing order.
Rather, it involves building organizations of *counter-power*, organizations that
*counter* the power of the ruling class in immediate struggles, but that can eventually
can take power, *displacing* ruling class power, displacing the top-down system and
*replacing* it with a bottom-up system that we build from below. This system of "people's
power" and "workers' control" is built now, day-by-day, block by block, factory by
factory, mine by mine, office by office-and it prefigures, as the UDF and FOSATU
understood, a better future
*Power is not abolished here, it is taken. But not by a party, not by an elite, but by the
great majority of society.*
( p. 259 starts)
BUILDING TOMORROW TODAY
A key principle that I want to extract from these two reference points-the UDF and FOSATU,
and anarchism and syndicalism-is the importance of linking the *methods* of struggle to
the *outcomes* of struggle. The way that people struggle now, is going to shape what they
get in future.
There is no Chinese Wall between how people struggle, and what people get. The one shapes
the other. Fighting through state elections, for example, means organizing to elect elites
to deliver-at their convenience-some changes, from above, through the state. Building
organizations based on authoritarian leadership, demagogy, and manipulation is a direct
route to a Promised Land based on authoritarianism, demagogy, and manipulation.
If we organize democratically, and in a participatory way wherever possible, then we train
ourselves in democratic practices, and we keep power in our own hands; we do not create,
from within our movements, a new elite that will hijack our struggles. The way that
struggle is conducted is extremely important.
*How* we fight shapes what we get: building this future also means building a unified
popular class movement *now*, across the barriers and the borders, rejecting the idea that
different sections of the popular classes are enemies of one another. Like FOSATU, the UDF
insisted that a movement fighting for a society based on justice, including racial
equality and national liberation, must include people on the basis of their willingness to
fight unconditionally for progressive change, rather than exclude people on the basis of
their race or nation, which they cannot choose. The enemy was framed as a particular
social system, rather than as particular races or nations. Thus, the UDF (Mosiuoa Lekota,
quoted in Neocosmos 1996, 88):
"In political struggle ... the means must always be the same as the ends ... How can one
expect a racialistic movement to imbue our society with a nonracial character on the dawn
of our freedom day? A political movement cannot bequeath to society a characteristic it
does not itself possess. To do so is like asking a heathen to convert a person to
Christianity. The principles of that religion are unknown to the heathen let alone the
practice."
This stress on prefigurative thinking means, above all, an end to instrumentalist
approaches. All too often, movements think in terms of how best to get "the masses" to a
march, about how many heads can be counted. But bussing people to events they do not
control is not building an active, self-governing movement. It is about turning people
into spectators, or clients.
There is nothing to be gained from such methods, if the aim is self-emancipation. So, our
movements have to be vigilantly, ruthlessly democratic. Let me stress here that this requires
*formal organization*:
there must be clear procedures, mechanisms of accountability, and decision-making systems
in place. Informal relations and processes are a recipe for cabals and powerful
individuals to take control and manipulate. And while consensus-based decision ( p. 260
starts) making can be useful, it easily turns into a means for stubborn minorities to veto
majorities, effectively controlling decisions. Majority-based decision making is often
more democratic.
LIMITS OF THE 1980S: INTOLERANCE
Which brings us to important lessons that need to be drawn from the failures of South
Africa's 1980s.
On the plus side: the broad working class built radical structures-street committees,
civic/area-based structures, self-defense units, parent-teacher-student
committees-exemplified by UDF affiliates and stressing "people's power" as a method of
organizing, and as a way of transforming society; and a radical union movement-based on
assemblies, committees, and solidarity- exemplified by FOSATU and the early COSATU, and
stressing "workers' control" as a method of organizing, and as a way of transforming society.
On the negative side: all too often, ideas and practices undermined the principles and
potentials of these great efforts. All too often, only one political line was permitted in
the community-based structures: other currents were not allowed to participate, rival
currents denounced as traitors, collaborators, and counter-revolutionaries. Many
structures became "owned" by a party-normally the ANC. This happened throughout the UDF.
By the late 1980s, COSATU was also becoming ANC territory, ANC-only. And ANC was not the
only one that did this; all the nationalist parties had this impulse.
This undermined, weakened, corrupted the bottom-up structures of "people's power" and
"workers' control." Street committees sometimes degenerated into street terror; mass
mobilization and careful education were sometimes replaced by forcing people to join
campaigns; an anti-apartheid approach was often simply a code for blind loyalty to one
party, sometimes violently enforced.
Such practices have cost the popular classes heavily, opening the door to the blind, even
paranoid loyalty to certain political parties that we see today, to the intolerance of
criticism that we see today in the ANC and in COSATU. That is the legacy of the failings
of the 1980s.
FOR DEBATE AND PLURALISM
Instead of this closing down of space, we need to enable *political pluralism* in our
organizations: many views, open debates, and issues decided on their merits, not on
personalities and not through cabals. This builds stronger movements, *and* it is
essential to any project of building a bottom-up, freedom-based alternative, both in the
present and for the future.
Not all views are correct-but let us debate them, not suppress them; let us be tolerant of
difference, willing to listen. Let us also avoid the debating tactics and styles that
close down real discussions, like labelling people, like dismissing theory as "dogma,"
like using jargon. (p. 261 starts). And let us realize that a future society, governed
from the bottom-up, also has to ensure political pluralism, and avoid the temptation to
close debate and contestation in the name of "saving" the revolution.
If revolution-this what the radical rupture of which I spoke means, a class-based
revolution-is to occur, it is about replacing domination, exploitation, and hierarchy with
a radically democratic social order: self-management, self-government, collective
property, classlessness, and statelessness.But since the aim is maximize freedom, efforts
to save the new society by *closing* down freedom will kill the revolution from
within-just as surely as any external counter-revolutionary threat. This is the genesis of
Soviet Union-type regimes: genuine revolutions were killed from within, by self-declared
vanguards claiming to "save" the revolution.
LINKING DIFFERENT STRUGGLES
Another principle that can be drawn from FOSATU, the UDF, and anarchism/syndicalism, is
that most of the struggles that are being fought by different parts of the popular
classes-whether around health issues, or gender equality, or job loss, or even municipal
demarcation for that matter-are largely responses to a *common system*; they are
*different fronts* in the class struggle. A great many of the problems we face have roots
in a *common system*. And those that cannot be reduced to that system, are intensified,
worsened, by that system.
The UDF, for example, was able to link the fight against racist, oppressive laws to fights
around wages, rents, and education, and capitalism, framing the main enemy as apartheid.
FOSATU, for example, linked struggles for union rights to fights over control of
production and efforts to mobilize working class neighborhoods, framing the main enemy as
racist capitalism.
The enemy is not corrupt individuals, or a particular party, or individual, or group, but
a *class system* centered on a ruling class. Now if there is one main enemy, it is
possible then to think of building a common working and popular class front, a
*revolutionary front of the popular classes*.
WHY A CLASS-BASED APPROACH?
What FOSATU (with its stress on working class power) understood better than the UDF (which
aimed at a multiclass nationalist front, including the "progressive" bourgeoisie) was that
*only the popular classes can bring about the deep, radical changes needed to ensure the
complete class and national emancipation of the majority*.
Why a class-based movement, and a revolutionary front of the popular classes?
Because only oppressed classes, which do not exploit, have the numbers, power and interest
in creating a new, classless, stateless, society. Exploiting classes cannot end
exploitation; ruling classes cannot end class rule. So making (p. 262) alliances with
sections of the ruling class, even "progressive" sections, as the UDF did, means accepting
class society.
Class provides a basis to unify people across the divisions like race, culture,
nationality, and gender, around common interests. It enables the struggle of the popular
classes against an oppressive system that generates multiple oppressions and
inequities-not a struggle against individuals or against specific racial or ethnic groups.
And without unity along a class axis, society fractures easily into all-sided conflicts,
from which no progressive outcomes are possible. The cases of Germany in the 1930s and
Rwanda in the 1990s show what horrors such fracturing can generate.
So, I like the point that comrade Zico was making about revisiting about the option,
raised in COSATU and in the SACP, of forming a broad *working class* front, rather than a
multi-class *national*[popular]front.
REVOLUTIONARY NATIONAL LIBERATION, ANTI-COLONIALISM
Also, so long as class systems remain, not only will most people remain exploited and
dominated as members of the popular classes, but the class system will generate-or at
least, worsen-other forms of oppression.
This means that even issues like racial and national oppression are difficult to resolve
within class societies. As an example: the apartheid legacy, which is central to South
Africa's ongoing national question, cannot be resolved without a massive redistribution of
wealth and power to the black working class. But this massive redistribution requires
massive class struggles. The majority of the South African working class-black African,
Colored, and Indian-is not just oppressed as an exploited and dominated class. *It is
still oppressed on national (or if you prefer, racial) grounds*.
The apartheid system, and its segregationist and colonial predecessors, rested on the
exploitation of the whole working class, white workers included, but its political economy
centered on *cheap black labor*, what some call the "colonial wage." Capitalist relations
of production were intertwined with colonial relations of domination, and involved a
battery of racist measures, extra-economic coercion, and urban and rural underdevelopment
on racial lines, plus poisonous doctrines of white supremacy, which still scar our land.
And while today, we have a post-apartheid society, with a growing black elite, it is
*still* a capitalist society. And that capitalist society still rests upon the ongoing
national oppression of the black African, Colored, and Indian working class, on cheap
black labor, *still* involves the continued power of the old apartheid-era "white monopoly
capital" private corporations, and is *still* present in everyday life in the form of a
deep apartheid legacy of fractured cities, low-grade education, electricity and other
services in townships and rural areas, and racist thinking.
(p. 263 starts) And such a situation simply *cannot* be ended by a few reforms. It
requires radical change, and *only* a working class movement-specifically, one centered on
the black African working class-can make that radical change. Because that means a fight
against the ruling class, both black and white, since the *whole* ruling class[black and
white]rests on, benefits from, the system of cheap black labor.
PRIORITIZING THE OPPRESSED
So, let us be clear here: building a class-based movement, a revolutionary front of the
popular classes, does *not*-as some critics suggest-mean *ignoring* issues that cannot be
neatly reduced to class, like racial or national oppression. It simply means addressing
these issues on a *class-struggle* basis, and linking them in the largest possible class
front against *all* oppression.
Unions must be a key part of any class-based movement, any revolutionary front of the
popular classes, as they have numbers and power-and above all, access to the workplaces, a
crucial site of struggle. But the class front is more than a union front: it needs to
bring together movements and struggles in a range of areas and struggles. And, as I have
said, it also needs to bring together people with a range of views, meaning that it must
have space for a range of ideas, for debates, and for tolerance.
It is possible and necessary to build a united movement, linking working class/poor
communities, labor movements, and other sites of struggle, among them those of working
class students. To build a common movement that fights on a class basis for the *general
interests* of the popular classes, that at the same time gives a high priority to the
*specific problems* faced by the *most oppressed* sections of the popular classes. A
common movement that *prevents elite classes* from hijacking the struggles, and that is
based on *anti-authoritarian, class-struggle principles*.
Let us take women's oppression. I have been a member of the National Health and Allied
Workers Union (NEHAWU) in the past, and I remember in my union branch, 80 percent of the
members were women but 80 percent of the leaders were men. And this was partly because of
the specific problems women workers faced in society-a gender-based wage gap,
discrimination, the dual burden of waged work and housework, gender-based violence, and so
on-and also because of the gender stereotypes that comrades, women and men, brought into
the union.
Now those are the sorts of things we have to challenge. *How* we build the movement, as I
say, is very important. We cannot build a society where women are equals if we leave the
fight against women's oppression for later. It has to be waged now, as core to building
and a revolutionary class politics.
AGAINST LABOR ARISTOCRACY AND "PRIVILEGE" THEORIES
This comes up, of course, against the claim pushed from a range of positions-including
many nationalists and feminists, and some "identity politics" (p. 264 starts)
currents-that insists that some groups in the working and popular classes benefit from the
double or triple oppression that others face.
The *opposite* is generally true, as the divisions in the popular classes harm *all*
sections, creating antagonisms, undermining conditions, and weakening organizations.
(Leaving aside the special case of apartheid's white working class).
Black immigrant workers in South Africa face severe oppression *as immigrants*, but who
*benefits* from this? Not local workers, whose wages are undercut, but employers who get
cheaper labor, and politicians who get easy scapegoats. Even if every immigrant was
deported, mass unemployment would remain-a truth hidden by blame-the-"foreigner" thinking.
South African workers are not "privileged" in being free of this anti-immigrant
oppression, they are harmed by it; and it is not a "privileged" position to not suffer
every possible form of oppression and humiliation.
The solution is *not* to unite the popular classes on a crude "economistic" basis that
ignores the specific, additional oppressions some sectors face. Rather, it is to build a
*principled unity* that understands that the principle "An Injury to One is an Injury to
All," means *opposing all forms of special/additional oppression*, whether based on race,
nation, gender, or whatever. But *through a common and united class-based movement*.
LIMITS OF THE 1980S: IDEOLOGICAL
Obviously elements of the approach I have outlined were absolutely central to the UDF and
FOSATU. But just as obviously, the UDF and FOSATU never walked the path that they
themselves opened, to its logical end point: a radical rupture and new social order, based
on bottom-up democracy and a system of common property, without a state and without classes.
Why? It comes down to political ideas. The battle for change involves a battle of ideas.
No revolutionary ideas? No revolution.
UDF structures, FOSATU structures, at their best, had the basic *structures* of a
counter-power that, if more fully developed, expanded, and extended, could have helped
displace and replace ruling class power. But *ideologically and politically*, they were
eventually *flooded* by ideas, especially the ideas of the ANC and SACP, which prevented
such outcomes. This included the ANC's top-down tendencies, its intolerance of rivals, its
politics of Messianic leadership, and its focus on getting state power. But even before
the big revival of ANC and SACP influence in the 1980s, the ideas in the UDF and FOSATU
were too *confused* to carry out a project of counter-power.
And this got us to where we are today. ANC ideas had a very good side- stressing
non-racialism, anti-apartheid, rebellion, and social justice-along with a very bad side-a
national alliance of *all* classes against apartheid, rather than class struggle; the aim
of creating a reformed capitalism, rather than deep change; and the use of the state,
rather than a direct transfer of power to the masses.(p. 265 starts)
And this led directly to what we have today: despite real gains in basic rights and
welfare, and the abolition of apartheid laws, South Africa's transition remains limited
and frustrating, the legacy of the past remains everywhere in the present. The black
elite, frustrated and humiliated under apartheid, segregation and colonialism, has largely
achieved its national liberation. The black working class *has not*-and its fight for
*complete national liberation* is being beaten back by the *whole* ruling class, black and
white.
CHANGE THE MIND, CHANGE THE WORLD
So, changing the world requires building organs of struggle and developing these into
*organs of counter-power*. But building counter-power has to be accompanied by a
revolutionary shift in what people believe, that is, it involves building a mass-based
*revolutionary counter-idea or counter-culture*.
The idea is the thing. Unless we have what Mikhail Bakunin called a "new vision," a "new
faith," we will fail, as the UDF
and FOSATU failed. Here, comrade Mazibuko's point about South Africa being a socially
conservative society, despite its high levels of protests, is very important. Many people
believe that the existing system is, in its essentials, fine, and that the system works,
except that it's abused by foreigners, or crooks, or politicians like current ANC head
Jacob Zuma, or minorities, or young women on welfare etc. The idea of a bottom-up society
is far from the minds of most people.
The South African state has maybe 159,000 police and 70,000 soldiers. Public order police
are less than 7,000. At least 35 million South Africans are working class, but the working
class-despite its vast numbers-does not move to a big struggle for decisive change. This
pattern of containment is not a military issue.
What keeps the people down is *the soldier in the head*-who says we cannot emancipate
ourselves, that we cannot possibly run society, that we cannot possibly have something
different, better.
And that is why I am talking about the need to complement the battle for *counter-power*
with the battle to build a revolutionary *counter-culture*, together countering the ruling
class's control at the ideological, cultural, and organizational levels.
THE NEED FOR AN ORGANIZED TENDENCY
Now, a political formation, based on clear ideas, a clear strategy, and disciplined unity,
which aims to promote counter-power and revolutionary counter-culture is, in my view,
*essential* to this project.
It can play a key role in conscientising people, in mobilizing, in organizing, in fighting
the battle of ideas-but it must never be substituted for the self-activity of the popular
classes, never assume direct power over the popular classes; it should act as a current
within the masses, and aim at the leadership of the revolutionary Idea; and it must never
enter the state. (p. 266 starts)
It can play a key role, if it aims to build counter-power and counter-culture, and
facilitates and assists this building, if it fights to *democratically win the battle of
ideas as a tendency within a pluralistic working class movement*, if it aims *at getting
its ideas to be the leading ideas* to be implemented by the masses.
But a conventional political party? No thanks. These treat the movements of resistance as
wings of the party, these place control in their own hands, these build within themselves
new hierarchies and new elites, these aim to use the state, these enter into the state.
They cannot achieve the goals of counter-power and counter-culture-in fact, they undermine
them.
REFORMS FROM BELOW, NOT REFORMISM
As I stressed before, the state cannot be an instrument for working class power and
freedom. The state institution, by its basic nature and its basic imperatives, must always
place ruling class interests first.
Politically, this means that movements of counter-power and revolutionary counter-culture
need to be movements *outside* of, and *against*, the state itself, not movements to
launch parties, to lobby parliament, to tweak policies, but movements of struggle,
bulwarks of the popular classes facing off against both state and capital-and aiming to
replace them with something better-themselves!
This does *not* mean refusing to fight for reforms, it means fighting for reforms
*through* counter-power. *And this means rejecting reformism but fighting for reforms in
ways that build counter power/counter culture*.
States do sometimes make progressive reforms, but these reforms arise under the pressure
of the struggles of the popular classes. Just as wage gains are primarily produced by
campaigns and strikes, so are progressive changes in laws and policies.
*The reforms are concessions forced upon the ruling class*, the product of popular class
power, imposed upon the ruling class through *struggles*. They are not the consequence of
which party, leader, or faction is in state office at a given point. They have nothing to
do with elections, policy lobbying, or corporatism.
Counter-power is, in fact, *built through fights for small reforms*. And even though these
fights are for small things, these struggles also provide a basis from which to fight for
bigger things, by building capacities, momentum, and confidence. So small strikes, small
struggles are important, and lay the basis for big struggles. If people cannot win fights
to keep the lights on, they cannot possibly win fights for deeper, more systemic, change.
And it's also in daily battles that people become most open to the radical ideas expressed
in a revolutionary counter-culture.
"POLICY-FROM-BELOW"
This does *not* mean economism: as I said earlier, it's essential to fight of a range of
fronts, and to fight all forms of oppression.
This does *not* mean only dealing with narrow and immediate issues either, ignoring larger
economic and social policy issues. (p. 267 starts) We have spent a great deal of time,
especially in our unions, trying to propose alternative policies to the state, the ANC,
the Alliance.
But these policies center on trying to tweak the existing system, and so, accept its
framework. They try to control and fix capitalism-a system we do not control, and cannot
fix-and rely on the state-an institution we do not control, and cannot control.
And these efforts have involved a top-down mode of politics where efforts are centered on
making proposals at NEDLAC (National Economic Development and Labor Council), a
corporatist body, or lobbying parliament, or the ANC's National General Council. And they
have involved developing very technical policies that most people in the unions and
elsewhere do not understand- and, more importantly, played no part in designing.
And pretty much all of these policies have been completely ignored, so it's all been
pointless anyway.
Let me rather suggest that a movement of counter-power can engage in economic and social
policy, but through tactics that I will call *policy-from-below*. Instead of policy as a
technocratic exercise, we should use conflicts around policies proposed or developed by
the state as a means of *movement-building*, of *campaigning*. This involves building
campaigns in which our policies are developed *through mass movements and discussions*;
not developed by a few experts at COSATU House or in a university or an NGO.
Let's say the state is talking about cutting the Child Support Grant, the monthly cash
transfer to poor parents. It is *not* the movements' job to come up with an alternative
state Budget so that the state can fund the grant more *effectively*. It is not the
movements' job to develop an alternative set of welfare and economic policies for the
state, within the existing system, as if the problem is *not* also the state, not the
*system*, but just bad policies.
Rather, from this perspective, it is the movements' job to find the level of Child Support
Grants that the working class *wants*, and to do this through participatory processes and
discussions; and to use these discussions to raise larger issues around how society works,
the distribution of wealth and power that favors the ruling class, the political economy;
to educate the masses around these issues; to use these processes to build our
organizations, to struggle for what we want. And to mobilize for the demands developed,
and *impose* these on the state and capital through struggle.
The stress here is on direct action, mass mobilization, self-emancipation, and building
counter-power and revolutionary counter-culture.
FROM RESISTANCE TO RECONSTRUCTION
Building counter-power/counter-culture requires a clear strategy for moving from
resistance to reconstruction. This includes generalizing immediate and sometimes localized
defensive struggles into larger battles, linking fights around wages and conditions to
drives to standardize incomes and conditions and (p. 268 starts) universalize rights,
unifying the popular classes including by fighting all forms of oppression, and
accumulating capacities that will enable counter-power to take direct control over means
of production, coercion, and administration- not just in one country, let me stress, but
*internationally*.
The approach to struggle and policy-making that matches this strategy is *militant
abstentionism*, that is, an insistence on our autonomy from the ruling class and our
refusal to co-manage the bosses' system. It does not aim to come up with any solutions for
capitalism or the state, like alternative "people's budgets" to the government, or
industrial policy proposals through corporatism. In terms of workplace relations, it means
building a union movement takes *no* responsibility whatsoever for capitalism or the
state-that, instead, fights them.
IN CLOSING: TOMORROW IS BUILT TODAY
A new social order is the real solution to the multiple crises that wrack humanity and its
planet. It will not emerge spontaneously, or from disconnected local struggles and
experiments. It can build on the best of FOSATU and the UDF, but it needs to infuse ideas
and insights from anarchism and syndicalism, and build a revolutionary class front.
It's not an easy or quick approach, but there are no shortcuts. We need to engage in forms
of protest and organizing and debate and ideas that empower, that break the commodity
form, that break the power of the bosses in the factories, that break the power of
politicians and elections, that enable national liberation, and that build the framework
of a new world in the shell of the old.
**Lucien van der Walt is at Rhodes University, South Africa. He has published widely on
labour and left history and theory, and political economy, and on anarchism and
syndicalism. He is actively involved in union and working class education and movements.
REFERENCES
Morobe, M. 1987. Towards a People's Democracy: The UDF View. "Review of African Political
Economy" 40:81- 8.
Neocosmos, M. 1996. From People's Politics to State Politics: Aspects of National
Liberation in South Africa, 1984-1994. "Politeia" 15:73-119.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30893
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Message: 2
A timeless article written for the Milwaukee libertarian socialist newspaper "Impulse" (#
4, June 1979) ---- In a recent issue of Harvard Business Review there is a report on
discontent among American workers, which had been privately prepared for a number of
corporations by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), an outfit that helps employers get
more work out of their employees. According to the report, their findings were based on
studies conducted since the fifties among approximately 150,000 managerial, clerical, and
hourly employees in 159 firms in 18 different industries. The study found that workers
today are much more unhappy and bored with their jobs, than at any time in the past twenty
years. ---- Here are some of their findings: ---- Only 21 percent of "hourly" workers say
that the company is a better place to work than it was when they started there, Only 17
percent of clerical and hourly workers say that the company "does a good or very good job
of being fair in its dealings with them," compared to 33 percent of hourly workers and 67
percent of clericals in the late fifties, Only 36 percent say that the "company treats
them with respect" Only 21 percent say that the "company does a good or very good job of
doing something about the employee's problems and complaints."
These percentages have continually fallen over the last 20 years, the study shows. "With
the exception of their pay, non-management employees are dissatisfied with almost every
aspect of their working life," the study concludes. And they also point out: "Worker
dissatisfaction is even more significant when put in the context of the general public's
growing dismay with what is perceived to be concentrated economic power."
What is the reality behind these statistics?
The satisfaction that a person feels with their work partly depends on how much control
that person has. When a person has more freedom, can use more initiative and skill, and do
more varied tasks, the job is more interesting. Control is also related to safety. For a
decade the coal miners, for example, have struggled to gain rights for their safety
committees and the right to walk off of jobs they consider unsafe. This is a question of
control.
Loss of Job Control an Issue in Shipyard Strike
Job satisfaction and worker's control over work - these two things are related. This is
shown by a look at the issues that led to the recent organizing effort among the 17,000
workers at the Newport News Shipbuilding Co. in Virginia. The workers at the shipyard were
in the news earlier this year when they were on strike for two months for union recognition.
When the shipyard was bought by the Tenneco conglomerate, the company moved to re-organize
the work to gain a tighter, more centralized control over the operation of the yard. The
result: loss of job control for workers, a feeling of being "driven," and rising discontent.
To gain more control over the workforce, Tenneco tripled the number of supervisors. Says
Bob Elkins, a machinist, recently on strike: "They're operating with so many managers that
they're not getting the work. If they cut back their foremen, they'd get a third more work
done. Now that you've got more management, you've got more buddy-buddy decisions. A
supervisor takes care of his friends."
Also, Tenneco centralized control over workplace operations in a single department, which
has control over the shipyard and supercedes supervisor's authority in making day-to-day
decisions. Foremen were turned into pushers, lacking any flexibility in dealing with
people but required to get out production or else.
By centralizing control and introducing more autocratic management, companies are making
people more dissatisfied, as the ORC study points out: "If organizational realities, such
as more and more hierarchical levels, increased impersonalization, and decreased
individual control over one's work continues as they have in the past, companies will be
fostering even more alienation on behalf of their employees."
Elkins felt that a source of problems was the Tenneco bosses' removal of control over work
from the skilled workers. Instead of having machines run by machinists with years of
training, the trend is towards automated "Numerical Control" (NC) machines guided by
pre-programmed tapes and run by operators trained in a few months.
Instead of having the operation of a metalworking machine - the speeds, cuts, feeds, etc.
- controlled manually by a skilled machinist, the idea of automated NC machines is to have
all of the required operations pre-programmed on to a tape or punch-card, as determined by
the engineering and planning part of management. The NC machine is then supposed to
automatically produce the part, with no discretion or initiative left to the operator. The
industry has hoped that these machines could then be run by unskilled machine tenders - at
a lower rate of pay than machinists.
The machinists at Newport News are now under direct supervisory control for all their
activities and they are required to follow detailed step-by-step instructions on the
"idiot sheets" sent down by the planning department.
"They take it out of the machinists' hands, and tell him how to do it," Elkins explained.
"It's actually a hindrance. You used to look at the drawing and make the piece. Now you
got to read through each instruction and ask the superintendent each step. Then you change
it to how it should have been done in the first place. When they tell you everything to
do, it slows you down. They've taken all the challenge out of it. I just go in to draw my
money. That's the way with everyone in the shipyard. They treat you like a child, you act
like a child, and Tenneco treats us like children. It shows up later in high costs, low
quality, and dissatisfaction among people. For the experience and knowledge I have they
don't give any recognition. You don't get paid for thinking now. They don't want you to
think."
"Numerical Control" for Control Over Workforce
The NC machines that Bob Elkins had to deal with illustrate a long-term trend. Throughout
this century there has been a tendency of corporations to re-organize industry by breaking
down work down into small steps, with as many of these steps as possible requiring little
or no skill. A single person is then assigned to do just one simple task over and over.
Instead of teams of workers making a whole car, for example, you have auto assembly lines
where each person does just one thing repeatedly. The idea is to remove thinking and
initiative and decision-making out of the hands of the workforce as much as possible,
concentrating it in the hands of management. An executive of General Electric candidly
explained G.E.'s enthusiasm for NC machines: "Look, with[non-NC systems]the control
remains with the machinist - control of feeds, speeds, number of cuts, output; with NC
there is a shift of control to management. Management is no longer dependent on the
operator and can thus optimize the use of their machines. With NC, control over the
process is placed firmly in the hands of management - and why shouldn't we have it?"
There isn't any reason in the technology itself why the people who design and edit the
programs have to different people from the people who run the machines. It was just a
question of management splitting up these two parts of the process to gain more control.
They wanted to take all of the thinking and decision-making in the process and put it in
their own hands.
Check out the cash registers at McDonald's. There is a tab for each food item, not
numbers. Management doesn't even want to be dependent on a person's ability to count. Also
they want to make sure the workers don't under-charge somebody. The bosses want to leave
as little room for decisions or initiative on the part of the workforce as possible.
Is it any wonder the ORC report finds growing job dissatisfaction?
Centralizing control over production doesn't happen due to the personal quirks of certain
management persons. If workers have more control, they might organize work in ways more
suitable to themselves and it would be harder to impose a speed up - a situation that
might reduce the owner's profits in the long run. Capitalist corporations centralize
control to squeeze as much production as possible out of their investment. If a particular
person in management isn't willing to do this, he or she won't last long.
Cheapening Labor
Control is only one goal that companies have in breaking down work into unskilled routines
that a person is assigned to doing over and over; it also lowers labor costs because
unskilled labor costs less since it is more plentiful.
The re-organization of work in the Standard gas station chain in the western states shows
how this works. Your scribe worked in that chain for six years in the sixties and, at that
time, the re-organization had not yet taken place. Each employee did all the varied tasks
in running the station - from pumping gas to doing lube jobs to replacing U-joints.
Everyone was put through an initial training program to teach us how to do the various
tasks. One thing that kept the job from being a total bore was the variety. The "inside"
tasks, working on the cars, involved somewhat more skill and occasionally presented a
challenge - dealing with the peculiarities of some weird model or finding out what was
wrong or whatever. Everyone had an opportunity to do this work because the tasks were rotated.
But Standard changed the operation by dividing the workforce into two groups: a group of
"inside" workers, doing the more interesting work, and a group of pump block attendants,
who were confined to pumping gas. The "inside" people were paid $4.70 an hour. Since
everyone had formerly done the work, this would have been the rate of pay of the whole
workforce on the old system. But the pumpblock group were paid only $2.70 an hour, since
this was unskilled work. In other words, half the workforce got a $2 per hour pay cut -
and that means more profits for Standard. But, as some of my former workmates told me, the
new system was hated. Who'd prefer to be confined in the low-paid, dead-end, boring job of
filling tanks and sniffing gas fumes all day?
"Business Unionism" Inadequate
But the American labor movement has rarely challenged the way management develops
technology or organizes work because conventional American "business unionism" has had the
attitude that you shouldn't challenge the way management runs the shop. As a result, the
unions tend to limit their concern to wages, fringes, and the like. But, as one NC
operator has argued: "The introduction of automation means that our skills are being
downgraded and instead of having the prospect of moving up to a more interesting job, we
now have the prospect of unemployment or a dead-end job.[But]there are alternatives that
the union can explore. We have to establish the position that the fruits of technological
change can be divided up - some to the workers, not all to management, as is the case
today. We must demand that the machinist rise with the complexity of the machine. Thus,
rather than dividing his job up, the machinist should be trained to program and repair his
new equipment - a task well within the grasp of most people in the industry. Demands such
as these strike at the heart of most management prerogative clauses which are in many
collective bargaining contracts. Thus, to deal with automation effectively, one has to
strike at another prime ingredient of business unionism: the idea of ‘let management run
the business.' The introduction of NC equipment makes it imperative that we fight such ideas."
Norwegian Union Fights for Control Over Technology
The possibilities of worker control can be seen from a look at the "trade union
participation project" of the Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union at the
government-owned weapons factory in Kongsberg. The Kongsberg plant recently introduced the
latest type of NC machines, Computerized Numerical Control (CNC). CNC machines come with a
built-in mini-computer, made feasible by the introduction of micro-processors. These
computer units allow info from a number of tapes to be stored in the machine and allow
editing and changes in the tapes right on the shop floor. If a machine operated by tape
has to be corrected by the manual intervention of the machinists - as is often the case -
the computer automatically "corrects" the tape for future use, and on some models programs
for complicated contours on metal parts can be made right at the machine on a keyboard
console. This new technology makes it possible for workers on the shop floor to regain
control over the work. The machine operators could not only edit tapes but make their own
programs from scratch.
However, this potential hasn't yet been realized here in the USA. At the big General
Electric plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, for example, the computers on the new CNC machines
remain locked and only management is allowed to edit tapes. Managers simply don't want the
workers to gain more control over the operation.
But at the Kongsberg plant the machinists normally do all of the editing of the programs,
according to their own ideas of safety, efficiency, quality and convenience. They add or
subtract operations, or alter the whole sequence, to suit themselves. All of the machine
operators are trained in programming, and there is a cooperative spirit between the
programmers and the machinists. As one programmer said: "The operator knows best; he's the
one who has to actually make the part and is more intimately familiar with the particular
safety and convenience factors; also he usually knows best how to optimize the program for
his machine." This situation came about, not because Kongsberg has a more "enlightened"
management, but because as the fruit of a struggle waged by the union.
When the Iron and Metal Workers Union was first faced with the problem of new
computer-based technology, they hired a computer outfit, without collaboration with
management, to do research for them. After explaining the new technology to some of the
unionists, a number of pamphlets were produced, written by and for shop stewards, and a
new position was set up in the union - the "data shop steward." The data steward is
responsible for keeping up with technical developments and looking over all new management
proposals with a critical eye. Another union person is also assigned to keep an eye on the
data steward, to make sure he doesn't become too much of a "technical man," that is, out
of touch with rank and file feelings.
The whole purpose of this "union participation project" is not to carry out some "job
enrichment" scheme introduced by the higher-ups, nor is it based on some idea of
"harmonious cooperation" with management. The purpose is to struggle as effectively as
possible for control over technology and information. Whenever the bosses try to introduce
a new computer-based production scheme, the union assumes - from past experience - that it
will contain some scheme for gaining more management control, and it is the business of
the data shop steward and the union to identify any aspects of the proposal that might
restrict the workers' freedom or control in the shop or lead to more management monitoring
of their work. Once these aspects are identified, the union organizes a fight to force a
"redesign" of the new system to get rid of the aspects that aren't in the workers interest.
However, even in the Norwegian situation, the initiative and resources for the design and
introduction of technology still remain in the hands of management. Ultimately, the
character of the technology that is developed will depend on who controls it and what
goals they have. The anti-nuclear power movement has impressed on us the idea that there
are many different alternative technologies, such as different ways of producing
electricity or home-heating.
Workers' Self-Management for a Pro-Worker Technology
It is just a myth to believe that the present trend in the organization of work and
workplace technology - with the job dissatisfaction and industrial injuries and illnesses
it creates - is "inevitable." There is no reason that production has to be broken down
into unskilled routines, with one person doing the same thing over and over. There are
many different possible ways in which industrial technology could be developed and some
are going to be better suited than others to the health, freedom, and satisfaction of the
workforce. But until the workers have in their own hands the complete power to manage
industry, technology will be developed in ways that aren't in the interests of working
people. If the distinction between "labor" and "management" were gotten rid of and the
rank and file in the shops managed production and made decisions democratically on the
basis of the principle of "one person, one vote," then people could see to it that
technological change serves the goals of the workers, not the goals of corporate or
bureaucratic bosses.
Since job dissatisfaction seems to depend on the amount of freedom and control people have
on the job, a real solution to the problem of people finding work boring, alienating and
unhealthy lies in workers having the power to manage industry themselves.
"Nationalization" of industry wouldn't be a solution to the problem because a government
management would be also centralize control and squeeze out production, without regard to
the interests of the workforce. If technical expertise is needed on some question, the
workforce can seek out technical advice. But bosses aren't needed.
http://ideasandaction.info/2018/03/working-enjoying-less/
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