Capital & Class. - 1990. - Issue 40 issue 40

Len Goldman

Commentary on recent events in the German Democratic Republic

M

The recent demonstrations in Leipzig have for the first time put the German Democratic Republic (GDR) on to the front pages of the Western press since the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 . Media coverage of the events has revelled in the apparent 'downfall of socialism' . However, there has been little reference to the historical background leading up to the current dramatic changes . This article looks at the long and short-term factors influencing recent political developments and considers some of the responses to these events in the GDR and West Germany .

Long-term factors Founding of the German Democratic Republic 7

ca

The GDR was born out of the defeat of Nazi Germany, and its somewhat unwilling midwife was Josef Stalin . The war was over . Germany was in ruins and occupied by the wartime Allies . The Cold War had begun .

Capital & Class

8

Churchill spoke at Fulton of the Iron Curtain, deliberately resurrecting a Goebbels expression . The us finished the war with eight times as much productive capital as it had pre-war . It could finance its friends . And what better friend than a revived capitalist Germany? Had not Hitler been supported by powerful forces in the West because he seemed the best guarantee of a bulwark against Communism? An American-backed economic miracle in West Germany would fulfil a multiplicity of purposes - especially political ones . The Soviet Union finished the war in almost the opposite position . Vast ruined areas and few easily available resources for reconstruction . Over 20 million had died . The Soviet Union was not only unable (and indeed unwilling) to subsidise its potential German ally in the zone but also took reparations from it . Although Stalin put forward the proposal of a united, democratic and neutral Germany, this offer was in fact spurned by the West .' Considerable anti-Nazi feeling and a historical tradition of socialism and communism would have probably have given such a Germany a decidedly left-leaning government . Despite the rejection from the West of a united, neutral Germany, the GDR persisted in striving for a reunited Germany right up to the mid-fifties . Instead the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was founded in 1949 . Within a few months of this the German Democratic Republic was established from the former Soviet Zone . The GDR was to be an antifascist, democratic state, based on traditions of humanism . Moreover, the name chosen for this new country was to reflect its democratic credentials . It should not be forgotten that the GDR 'revolution' did not come from an uprising against the Nazis but from their defeat by the Red Army . It was the Soviet occupation forces who created the conditions for the

establishment of socialism . Thus the Soviet Union, under Stalin, dominated the process . This was a basic constraint, although Walter Ulbricht, the first Head of State and Party Secretary of the new GDR, did win a certain limited freedom . We should also remember that this 'revolution' had been hard earned . According to Merson there was an active and courageous anti-Nazi underground struggle, which succeeded in saving many lives (particularly of Jews) in Germany . 2 In the current climate of euphoria in the West over the supposed downfall of Communism, we should remind ourselves that leaders such as Erich Honecker were prominent in the struggle against fascism at a time when some present-day democrats were neutral or even fawning over Hitler . Who were then the leaders of this new German state? Their core members belonged to the National Committee for a Free Germany, formed in Moscow during the war . It was composed of leading anti-Nazi activists who had fled to the Soviet Union . These were mainly Communists . But there were also army officers like von Paulus, who had come over to the other side after capture . According to Jonothan Steele they were not 'simple opportunists' but undertook dangerous missions behind German lines to encourage troops to mutiny . 3 All were condemned in absentia by Hitler . But it was clear that neither the experienced revolutionaries nor the anti-Hitler soldiers were necessarily going to be capable rulers and administrators once they were pitchforked into government . Indeed, their oppositional instincts and the bitter hardships they had had to endure under the fascists were probably obstacles to rational policies and practice in their almost reversed situation . Moreover, some of their most capable leaders, such as Ernst Thaelmann, had been murdered by the Nazis . Perhaps this explains why de-Nazification was so

Commentary on recent events in the GDR thorough in the East . Every teacher who had

However, Germany had technical and

been a Nazi had to find alternative employ-

industrial traditions as well as a very strong

ment . This stands in stark contrast to West

socialist and trade-union movement . Defeat

Germany where a Nazi perpetrator of atroci-

had robbed fascism of a great deal of its

ties in Poland, Oberlaender, became Ade-

credibility, even amongst its former sup-

nauer's right-hand man . This new German state was determined

porters. So the prospects were not all gloomy .

that there should be no return to fascist

Germany went ahead by leaps and bounds .

dictatorship . This implied that the political

This had a powerful 'shop-window' effect on

forces behind fascism should never be allowed

GDR citizens . West Berlin, in the heart of

to return to power . The Nazis had been

the GDR, played a special part in this process

backed by powerful financial and industrial

and was deliberately used to fan the flames

forces, by army leaders and some minor

of envy . It was also used as a base for

aristocrats . To achieve this, there was first,

espionage, sabotage and the economic under-

in the immediate post-War period, a 'People's

mining of its neighbour . General Gehlen,

Democracy', embracing the widest possible

chief of Nazi Intelligence, became leader of

anti-fascist forces in the rebuilding process .

the West German Intelligence Service, which

Within a few years socialism was proclaimed

has played a continuing role in undermining

as the goal . A coalition government was

the GDR .

With American financial help, West

formed, embracing the Socialist Unity Patty,

The GDR's economic development, how-

that is, united Communist and Social Demo-

ever, was constrained by an effective Western

crats, and four other parties plus a number

blockade . Hallstein, a West German state

of other groups from 'civil society' in its

secretary and later president of the Common Market Commission, declared in 1955 that

Gramscian sense .

the FRG would break off relations with any

Constraints on the Development of the GDR

state that recognised the GDR . No capitalist

The difficulties of building socialism against

state did so for fifteen years . According to Steele, 'Throughout the 1960s the ban had

this historical background appear, perhaps

considerable effect in the 3rd World', and

with hindsight, obvious . Many had been

he added that, 'the Hallstein Doctrine was

corrupted by Nazism . The country was

the diplomatic arm of a West German

occupied by the Soviet Union, seen as the

policy of trying to prevent the Communists

main enemy of Hitler . Many able people had fled to the West, some taking valuable

in the GDR from consolidating their rule' . 4 At the same time the introduction of

know-how with them . The

faced

Western currency into West Berlin (quite

an economically, financially and militarily

illegally it may be argued) provided a golden

powerful enemy in the West . Moreover, the

opportunity for the economic and financial

eastern areas of Germany had always been

sabotage of the GDR . Wettmarks were ex-

the poorest, even when they included the

changed for Eastmarks in the 'Schwindel-

Silesian hard coal region which is now part

stuben' (the 'swindling dens'), as they were

of Poland . In addition, the agricultural

known in the GDR, at inflated rates, usually

GDR

potential of the country was not very promis-

5 to 1 . Individuals, including Allied military

ing . Given this background it is not surpris-

personnel, would change a few hundred

ing that the West German post-war econ-

marks whilst firms would change many

omic miracle served as a powerful magnet to

thousands . With this money they crossed

Germans in the East .

into East Berlin over the open border . In the

9

Capital & Class

10 East they purchased numerous goods, some at subsidised prices . These could then be

in constructing socialism . This rigid political control, though patchy and not too efficient,

resold in West Berlin . Enormous profits

was also extended to the artistic, creative

could thus be made . Western sources have lost billions of

and spiritual spheres . The exodus westwards as well as the

The GDR's economic problems were not

continuing economic sabotage led to a crisis . Berlin became a flash-point from which one

only affected by the Western blockade and

dangerous situation led to another . In 1961

economic sabotage, but also by its economic

NATO troops were put on alert and the GDR

orientation . Although the GDR explicitly

built the Wall . The emotional impact of

eschewed a Soviet model, its economic system

this was enormous . Families were divided .

bore striking similarities . Central planning

The historical entity of a once unified capital

along with an emphasis on heavy industry

city had been brutally torn asunder . This

contributed to a shortage of consumer goods . Although certain foodstuffs such as caviar,

means of defence required tough measures

salmon and tinned fruits were available from

some shootings and killings . The building

the Soviet Union and other East European

of the Wall deepened the already simmering

countries, there was always a dearth of fresh

discontent and created bitter feelings . Never-

fruit and vegetables . For many years oranges

theless, a minor economic miracle occurred

and bananas were virtually unobtainable .

under the protection afforded by the Wall .

estimated that the GDR Marks in this way .

Even industrial products and clothing were frequently difficult to obtain .

to prevent illegal crossings, resulting in

Although the shortages in the economy have bred popular dissatisfaction, which has

The dearth of consumer goods brought

been further fuelled by the images of pros-

with it the ubiquitous queues . This was

perity in the West, a balanced account of

aggravated by the shortage of labour, which

the GDR economy must, however, make

in turn was becoming more acute as dissatisfied citizens headed for the 'golden' West .

some mention of the numerous achievements

By 1960 around 2 million had left .

mentioned . A new chemical industry was

Discontent with the economy openly sur-

that have been made, despite all the obstacles built up based on brown coal alone . New

faced for the first time in 1953 . Building

methods of textile production were invented .

workers in Berlin went on strike against the new norms imposed upon them . Although

The automobile industry was developed,

this had the appearance of an organised

though the Trabant model is now scorned upon . Although there was still some ration-

uprising, Steele argues that there was little

ing in the early 60s, basic goods were never

evidence to support this . Nor indeed could

unobtainable . Prices were subsidised and

it be attributed to 'the enemy' in West Berlin, which the GDR was wont to do .

stable . Similarly, rent, utilities and fares

Nevertheless, Steele alludes to the involvement of a West Berlin 'Fighting Group

hand, luxury articles were hard to come by . An East German citizen could thus expect

Against Humanity', which was staffed by ss

to wait ten years to buy a car . Furthermore,

men and receiving American funds . Ever

the quality of goods was often inferior to those in the West .

mindful of the enemy and the dangers inherent in being on the front line between

were all kept at low prices . On the other

East and West, the Socialist Unity Party

In the social sphere the GDR also has made numerous achievements . Every child has a

insisted on its role as leading party, guiding

right to a place in a creche and a nursery

the other parties and groups allied with it

school . 95 % of all 3 to 6 year-olds attend

Commentary on recent events in the

GDR

nursery schools . This is followed by ten

More immediately, the results of the local

years' compulsory schooling at a Polytechnic

election of May 1989 triggered a wave of

Comprehensive. Those who go on to take

anger. The figures of 95 % in support of the

the pre-university exams are guaranteed a

existing regime were treated with deep

place at university . All school-leavers are guaranteed a job with an apprenticeship .

suspicion by the people . Then came the mass exodus to West Germany via Hun-

There is no unemployment, though there

gary, which again was not initially reported

may be some underemployment . All citizens

in the East German press . Gorbachev's visit

are entitled to a home . Since 1970 the GDR which will have re-housed all those in

in the autumn of 1989 was a further catalyst for change . However, his warning not to leave reforms too late went unheeded by the

substandard housing . Newly-weds receive

leadership .

has carried out a 20-year housing programme,

an 8,000 Mark (£2,700) loan at low interest

The failure of the leadership to address

rates . Health, dental and optical services are

any of these issues at the 40th anniversary

completely free . Culture, sport and holidays

celebrations further fuelled the mounting

at trade-union holiday centres are heavily

discontent . This was quickly followed by large-scale demonstrations in Leipzig,

subsidised .

demanding change in the GDR .

At this

point, the division within the Socialist Short-term factors

United Party and even within the leadership began to surface openly . Honecker was

Despite these achievements, popular dis-

ousted and was quickly followed by Krenz .

satisfaction with the economy came to a

The exposure of corruption in early Decem-

head again in the 1980s . Several factors led to an acceleration of events . Firstly, there

ber led to the resignation of the entire Party leadership . Modrow and Gysi were left to

was frustration with the unwillingness of

pick up the pieces, with almost half of the

the GDR leadership to reform . The people

Party's members gone . An election was

supported the reformist programme of Gor-

declared for May 6th, though the partici-

bachev and wished for similar changes in the

pation of civil' groups was still undecided .

GDR . This desire for change was strongly felt

The end of January saw the formation of

even amongst members of the Socialist

a national unity coalition government . The Party had already changed its name to

Unity Party . There was also increasing frustration at the failure of the GDR press to report on the dramatic events in nearby

Socialist Unity Party-Party of Democratic Socialism (sED-PDS) . New Forum had by

Poland and Hungary . Secondly, the econ-

then split on the reunification issue and the

omy showed signs of worsening in the 80s .

'social market economy', with the majority being in favour of both .

This too was ignored in the media . Thirdly, the continuing restrictions on travel were an

Although the demonstrations still con-

additional source of frustration . Although

tinue, the issues discussed have changed .

the relaxation of travel restrictions to the

Whereas in November an opinion poll con-

West in the mid-1980s eased the growing social tensions somewhat, it at the same

ducted by the West German magazine the 'Mirror' (der Spiegel) showed over 70% of

time increased the frustration of those who

GDR

could not benefit from this . In addition, those legally applying to go to the West encountered harassment .

citizens opposed to reunification, recent estimates show the majority in favour . A picture in the Guardian showing a demonstrator in Leipzig holding a flag

11

Capital & Class

12 with 'Germany my Fatherland' written across a map of pre-war Germany suggests diverse interpretations of the extent of reunification . The mood of the demonstrators also hardened when the new government was at pains to dismantle the unpopular security organs . New groups and parties have emerged, most notably, New Forum and the Socialist Democratic Party . These are broad, oppositional groups, united mainly by their opposition rather than any common programme . The initial refusal of the government to recognise them merely increased their popular support . The Social Democratic Party now claims one million members . By late January there were around 50 parties and groups, some emerging out of divisions within the Socialist Unity Party . A roundtable discussion took place involving the government and some of the more influential groups . These groups too have changed their positions on the issue of reunification . Initially opposed to the idea, New Forum and the Socialist Democratic Party now favour reunification . The majority of East Germans are, however, determined to oppose the newlyforming Nazi groups, who were in fact the first to demand reunification . These are now strengthening their links with their counterterparts, the 'Republicans' in the West, who have stated their intention to send large amounts of material to the GDR. The recent election gains of the Republicans, who espouse an anti-semitic and militaristic ideology, in West Germany is indeed an ominous prospect for a potentially united Germany . 5 The major parties from West Germany are also playing an increasingly interventionist role in the current political process in the GDR, reflecting a deep-rooted disregard for the sovereignty of the GDR . The pace of events since November has been breathtakingly fast, if not frightening . Democrats of all persuasions can take heart

from the downfall of a rigid bureaucracy which caused hardship to many . Moreover, the need for economic reform was becoming increasingly urgent . In the current climate in the GDR the task of conceiving an alternative, reformed socialism will not be easy . Responses to the events What then has been the response of East German citizens? Party members are either confused or angry at being 'betrayed' or have left and gone over to other groups . They feel bitter because they devoted their lives to building 'socialism' but are now reviled for their party membership . Moreover, they feel let down by their leaders . Non-Party members find surprisingly little to gloat over . They are angry with developments that they have always criticised . Some no doubt look forward to the prospect of sharing West Germany's prosperity . Some are primarily interested in visiting their relatives . There is no doubt that the substantial relaxation of border controls has been one of the most important gains for the people of what has been called the 'Quiet Revolution' . Some are beginning to express concern over the possible increases in rents, prices and holidays . Intellectuals have taken a prominent role in this revolution . Eckhard Schall, the sonin-law of the famous German playwright Bertold Brecht, and Christa Wolf, a wellknown East German writer, were among the speakers taking part in the early mass demonstrations . Kurt Masur, conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, took on the role of a diplomat . Their demands were for the introduction of a multi-party system, for taking the people seriously, for the abolition of the security services and for a loosening of control over writers and artists . The situation seemed at times to be bordering on chaos . Stefan Heym, a well-

Commentary on recent events in the GDR known East German writer, warned that the 'democratic revolution' could turn into a 'nightmare' . He had seen 'faces filled with hatred' which reminded him of the months preceding Hitler's rise to power . He was joined in his warnings by the Church . Not all of the discussion has taken place in the streets . A close reading of the Party newspaper 'Neues Deutschland' (New Germany) reveals that thousands have attended indoor meetings in places such as the Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig . These have provided opportunities for people's grievances to be heard and discussions on crucial issues such as the economy and the security service to take place . Fears were also expressed early on that the rapid developments would lead to the abandonment of socialism rather than its substitution by a more democratic form . The events in the GDR have affected not only its citizens but also the people in neighbouring West Germany . Whilst at first the East German 'economic refugees' were welcomed, the continuing inflow has become increasingly worrisome . Housing and employment are primary concerns . The privileged new arrivals are likely to meet resentment from the already unemployed and homeless in West Germany . Whereas at the beginning of the mass exodus, every GDR doctor who 'went over' was guaranteed a job, pressure from unemployed West German doctors may make this harder to implement . For political reasons the West German Christian Democratic Union fears any move to block the influx whilst the Social Democratic Party has advocated a cut in benefits to stem the flow . The Communist Party of West Germany has also been hit by the dramatic changes in the GDR . As it received substantial financial support from the Socialist Union Party, the withdrawal of these funds will deliver a severe financial blow to their activities . Nevertheless, reformers within the Com-

munist party have been demanding more 13 vociferously a fundamental rethink along similar lines to its British counterpart . The tumultuous changes in the GDR also have implications for the rest of Europe . In early January the prospect of the GDR becoming a member of the EEC was already on the agenda . At the same time West Germany was allaying fears expressed by other European states that the reunification of Germany could lead to the reemergence of an omnipotent Germany by pledging not to call into question Germany's present frontiers . The Foreign Minister, Genscher, declared that Germany 'could become the motor for overcoming the divisions of Europe' . However, he did not favour a neutral Germany . It would be naive to imagine that Europe and Germany could go back to square one . All that has happened since the end of the Weimar Republic has made that impossible . If the GDR were to become one of the German 'Laender' (provinces), it is likely that the absorption process would be difficult, lengthy and problematic . If pushed through, it could lead to major confrontations . Not all GDR citizens would sit back and accept the changes, some of which would cause much discontent . There is, for example, the issue of'Berufsverbot' (the ban on state jobs for Communists and peace workers) in the FRG . The crucial question is whether the GDR can embark upon a new democratic, socialist path . The benefits of the socialist social policies enjoyed by GDR citizens have been brushed aside with media attention focused on the defects of the system . The hope must be that a Left government in the GDR will retain a commitment to these policies as well as to the realisation of democratic norms . But, will West German finance and industry permit this? Or indeed the IMF? Current discussions suggest that they will not .



Capital & Class 14

Notes 1 . Steele, Jonothan, Inside East Germany : The State that Came in from the Cold, (Eurizen Books, New York, 1977) . 2 . Merson, Allan, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany (Lawrence and Wishart, 1985) . 3 . Steele . 4 . ibid . 5 . In the elections in 1989 the Republicans received a quarter of a million of votes . In Bavaria alone they netted 300,000 . They are also now represented in the West Berlin senate.

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C

s

Reality and Choice, Sri Lanka : Is there a way out? Serendip, the old Arab name for the island of Sri Lanka contributed the word 'serendipity' to the English language . Today the nation is a battleground . An ethnic civil war from 1983 to 1987 has been followed by a fierce armed confrontation between the Indian army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LrrE), the largest Tamil militant group . Since 1987 if not earlier, the south has been the scene of a bloody conflict between the Sri Lanka army and the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (jvp) . In June 1989 the jvP decided to make a bid for power and the whole political scene escalated . The number of political killings in the south have averaged between 20 and 30 a day, hundreds of post-offices, government buildings, tea factories and other symbols of state 15 and stability have been burnt to the ground, curfews and hartals disrupt normal life and the government has been reduced to a regime of crisis . In November, Rohana Wijeweera, the jvP leader, was shot by the army soon after his capture, and with the

Capital & Class 16

simultaneous arrest and shooting of several

conceptually abstract way within the con-

other Jvp leaders, events have taken another

fines of a short article . However, an analysis

twist . To understand the real unfolding

of the post-independence history of Sri

behind this complex world of fast changing

Lanka, especially its ethnic conflict and

events it is necessary to go back to the roots

acute political conflicts, relying on a basic-

and to understand their history, their evolu-

ally marxist approach, but one uninhibited

tion, and the changing material premises .

by spurious reductionism, will be useful not

It is common belief that the predicament

only for an appreciation of the prospects for

of Sri Lanka, including the ethnic conflict,

that country, but also as a contribution to a

can be traced to the failure of the 'old left'

more general theoretical understanding .

and the reformism ('historic betrayals') of its leaders . However, the complex of events

Some history

which are now unravelling in tragic proportions suggests that this would be no more

Ceylon emerged as an independent country

than a piece of reductionism, if allowed to stand at that . To be more meaningful it needs to be situated in the context of a

in 1948 after a cumulative 450 years of

sustained analysis which seeks to establish a

viously, the northern part of the country was

substantial

ethno-

for two millennia sometimes an independent

political understanding . This is not to miti-

Tamil kingdom and sometimes a vassal state

gate their failures, but to locate it within

of different South Indian Dravidian king-

the sweep of larger social forces and material changes . A similar approach is probably

doms . Only very briefly and very infre-

justified in many other cases and countries

of the island in a single (Sinhalese) kingdom

as well .

- more interludes of occupation than uni-

socio-economic

and

Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule, each of nearly equal duration . Pre-

quently was the north united with the rest

A second reductionism, this time one

fication . For centuries, then, there existed a

that most people on the left ate now wary

separate entity, with its separate material

of, is the reduction of ethnic conflict to

premises (territory, economy and class/caste

some version of a refracted or distorted manifestation of the class struggle ; the

structure) and linguistic and cultural com-

'because of the economic failure of capital-

ally into much of the eastern part of the

ism', or the 'because the ruling class instigates the masses to racial or religious dissen-

country and, in time, the Tamils came to

sion so as to stabilise its own power', models

as their traditional homelands .

position . This Tamil region spread gradu-

regard the Northern and Eastern Provinces

of analysis . That these conflicts occur in an

It was only British rule that truly unified

arena of economic crisis, class contradiction

Ceylon ; the establishment of a unified admini-

and generalised social turmoil, that ethnic

stration and legal system and the develop-

conflict interacts with those others in some

ment of a single currency, market and trans-

deeply structural way, all this is irrefutable .

portation system were the explicit manifes-

However, ethnicity is not reducible to

tations . The deeper driving force, however,

them . How then do we 'think' of ethnicity?

was the inauguration of the plantation econ-

How do we relate it to the fundamental

omy in the central highlands (tea) and the

postulates and categories of historical materi-

south western regions (rubber), which trans-

alism?

formed the economy, and to a degree, the

It would not be possible to do justice to

demography, of the island . Ports, transport,

this theme in a theoretically adequate and

engineering works and new economic activi-

Sri Lanka

ties blossomed . Indigenous classes sprang

trekked down to embrace the ancillary econ- 17

up to service these needs and some secondary

omy . The colonial administration, for its

capital accumulation followed . In emulation

part, favoured the Tamils and mistrusted

of the mighty plantations, local landed

the majority . A small but highly visible

classes diversified into their own smaller estates - mainly coconut and mixed produce . The cities grew, especially the capital

Tamil middle and lower middle class was clouding the Sinhalese landscape in the fertile and prosperous south .

city of Colombo, accompanied by schools,

Truthfully, the material basis of national

Western mores, and employment in the state and service sectors .

unity between the Sinhalese and Tamil people at the time British colonialism

These ancillary activities brought about some linkages between the material lives of

departed was not much more than this . The

the Sinhalese and Tamil people . It may be

professional jealousy . Naturally, this ethnic

worth clarifying, for the sake of readers less

cleavage would bypass class lines because the

stage had been set for ethnic rivalry and

familiar with the country, that the Tamils

identification of these actors with two separ-

who were brought as indentured labour from about 1820 onwards to work on the

ate societies remained intact . The material distinction between these two 'homelands'

plantations, are comparatively recent emigres

was still profound, and their cultural and

from South India . They have remained a

linguistic composition was distinct . The determinants of the consciousness of the

separate community, quite distinct from the Tamils of the north and east, although they

upper and middle classes were inconsonant .

speak the same language, with a different accent, and profess the same religion . Until

In the meantime, the majority of the Sinhal-

recently, the plantation workers were even

led their separate lives in each of their

referred to as 'Indian Tamils' while the

separate 'homelands' .

ese and Tamil people, mainly a peasantry,

northern and eastern ones were called Independence, economics and ethnicity

'Ceylon Tamils .' The

geographical

axis

of

material

development under British rule was from

Although

the plantations to Colombo, together with the isolated growth of a few provincial

the independence movement against the British Raj had been led by the left, especially the Lanka Sama Samaja Party

capital cities and towns . Many Tamils

(Lssp), and although the period from 1945-9

moved into this ancillary economy to escape

was marked by a rising crescendo of political

from the poverty of natural resources and the

militancy, Britain succeeded in handing

aridity of the land in the north . During the

over power, in 1948, to an alliance consisting

first

Tamil

of the comprador bourgeoisie, the landed

bourgeoisie, based in Colombo, entered

half of this

classes and a Westernised elite . Their politi-

commerce and purchased city property and

cal vehicle mainly the United National

small estates in the fertile south . Their kith

Party (uNr) and to a lesser degree its coali-

and kin schooled and competed with their Sinhalese counterparts in the professions -

tion partner the Tamil Congress (TC) . This was a weak ruling class - weak in the power

law, medicine and so on . Lower down the

of its productive forces and weak because it

social ladder, clerks, teachers, post-masters, book-keepers and money-

was culturally alienated from the people . There was a semblance of unity between the

lenders, together with their retinue of

Sinhalese and Tamil incumbents but, numeri-

wives, children, cousins and in-laws, all

cally, this elite was too small to withstand

shop-keepers,

century, a

Capital & Class

18

the stress of events still to come . Economic policy, post-1948, was plainly comprador ; retainerism, servicing the plantation economy, commerce, import, a minimal state sector and some secondary accumulation of local capital . However, the effect of a strong left movement combined with the small size of the island and relatively good communications was crucial . High levels of welfarism had to be built into society by measures such as universal suffrage, universal free education, free health services, subsidised rice and guaranteed prices for certain agricultural products . There was a penetration of the village by left and radical nationalist ideology - indeed quite large parts of the country are semi-urban rather than rural . Slowly rising standards of living, thanks to welfarism linked to good export prices for plantation crops, helped broader sections of society to raise their heads a little and take a better look around . The 1956 movement, associated with Mr S .W .R .D . Bandaranaike and his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (sup), epitomises the fruition of these processes of social evolution which had been at work in the womb of the Sinhalese village . It was a radical Sinhalese nationalist movement ; indigenous and rooted in the vernacular school teacher and Buddhist monk ; anti-elitist and anti- the privileges of the Western elite . It was incipient national bourgeois, since it carried with it the small business man, and the Sinhalese trader . It was intrinsic Sinhalese and its rallying cry 'Sinhala Only' ; the 'Sinhala' was radical nationalist, the 'Only', anti-Tamil . In the April 1956 general elections the SLFP, in alliance with smaller left party (vLSSP) with a decidedly Sinhalese flavour, and in a no-contest pact with the Lssp and the Communist Party (cp), swept to power . There was a sharp turn to populism in politics and the rural and urban pettybourgeoisie fondly looked forward to a new era . The 'age of the common man' was a

catch phrase of the times . Even genuine land reform appeared to be a possibility, but the government, after a split in which the vLssP was expelled, settled for a watered down version . There were conflicts within the government about how far populism could be taken, leading in 1959 to the assassination of SWRD Bandaranaike by the rightwing of his own party, a power struggle, and the succession of his widow Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike to SLFP leadership as a compromise candidate . The Federal Party (FP), which had been formed as a breakaway from the Tc when the latter collaborated with the UNP in stripping the plantation Tamils of their Ceylon citizenship in 1948-9 (the first major act of overt state racism in the country), was the Tamil equivalent of the SLFP . In consonance with the more traditional and hide-bound nature of Jaffna society, the FP was led by far more conservative elements than its sup counterparts . In the 1956 elections the FP did as well in the Tamil electorates as the SLFP did in the Sinhalese ones . However, the revival of Tamil nationalism and the expressions of a Tamil cultural renaissance were muted in comparison with what was happening in the Sinhalese areas . Minorities usually cringe in the face of majority revivalism . Two points are absolutely central to an understanding of the evolution of Sri Lankan society and politics subsequent to 1956 . Firstly, the rise of nationalist movements like the 1956 Sinhala-Buddhist renaissance, even if within them they contain many progressive and populist currents, are inevitably divisive . To put it another way, all petty-bourgeois nationalist-revivalist ideologies are, by their very nature, inherently and necessarily divisive . Their very soul is the reference to a specific language, religion or race, and therefore the precise and diametrical opposite of intrinsically integrative, pan-ethnic ideologies, for example,

Sri Lanka

marxism . The beginning of the alienation of the Sinhalese and Tamil people from each other, in the modern political sense, can therefore be empirically located, and methodologically understood, from the turn of events that Sri Lanka's history took in 1956 . The second important point is that the state was made the instrument for carrying through the 1956-programme . This had an economic content to it and an ethnic content . The former is identified with the statist-protectionist economic road that the country travelled from 1956 to 1977 and the consolidation and growth of the national bourgeois class - the small business man became big, thanks to credit, state sponsorship, protection and flunkeyism . The state became a participant in economic activity, state industries were established, some key sectors were nationalised and planning was instituted . This was the hey day of the mixed-economy' . By 1964, however, the popularity of sup populism was beginning to flag - reality was falling short of the expectations of the masses . Mrs Bandaranaike, in order to secure her left flank, made an overture to the Lssp and the CP . After heated inner-party struggles, both organisations decided by significant majorities to join her government . The era of 'coalition politics', called 'popular frontism' elsewhere, had commenced in Sri Lanka . What drove the Lssp and cP into popular front politics? The cP, in line with Moscow's thinking at the time, had long stood for collaboration with the 'progressive wing of the national bourgeoisie', so what needs to be understood is the attitude of the much larger and more important LssP . The unfolding of the events described in the foregoing paragraphs and the inexorable development of petty-bourgeois politics was more complex than the Lssp had foreseen at the time of independence and was deeply disappointing to its expectations . The SUP had, it appeared, usurped a victory tha e

rightly belonged to the LssP which had led the struggles of the previous three decades . The proletariat, or at least large sections of it, instead of standing at the helm and leading the peasantry and the national minorities, appeared to be falling in line behind the radical petty bourgeoisie . The left, therefore, succumbed to coalition politics and saw the mixed economy as a stepping stone to socialism, and collaboration as a means of altering the nature of the state . In so doing it also became, albeit halfheartedly, a fellow traveller of Sinhala chauvinism . The populist era which ended in 1977 when J . R . Jayawardena's UNP swept back to power may be summarised as follows : (a) The mixed economy had bankrupted itself; shorttages and queues symbolised the coalition government. (b) The class basis of state power had become an alliance between sections of the bourgeoisie and Sinhala chauvinism and the state itself an instrument of Sinhala-Buddhism, the hegemonic national ideology . The Tamils, inevitably, were alienated from the state . (c) The traditional left had been sidelined and a new force, the JvP, had emerged as a factor in politics . An account of the genealogy of the JvP may be in place . Wijeweera split from the cP in the late 1960s in a Maoist direction and captivated large sections of both educated and unemployed youth who were' disillusioned with the coalition politics of the Lssp and cp . The programme put together elements of Guevaraism in relation to methods of struggle, rudimentary socialism as an economic platform and narrow Sinhala nationalism as an ideology . The JvP led the bizarre 1971 youth uprising, called the 'Insurgency' in Sri Lanka, against Mrs Bandaranaike's regime . The putsch was crushed and the leadership incarcerated . During the imprisonment much soul searching and a realignment of tactics is believed

19

Capital & Class

20 to have taken place . The anti-Tamil, antiplantation worker attitudes, and the errors of ultra-leftism, are said to have been reexamined . The leadership was freed from prison by Jayawardena after the 1977 elections in a political ploy . This did not pay off as the movement soon proved to be intransigent . It was again proscribed in 1983, in the aftermath of the communal riots, and gradudually returned to terrorism and the armed struggle as the sole methods of politics . Thanks to its radical Sinhalese youth base the jvP succeeded in consolidating itself in the principal areas of extreme rural poverty and stood at the helm of a potential rural rebellion by 1987 . The lndo-Sri Lanka Accord and the associated concessions to the Tamils naturally provoked a Sinhalese backlash in a country nurtured for decades on chauvinism . The )vi, a radical Sinhalese petty-bourgeois movement, succumbed to these pressures despite its marxist rhetoric . The subsequent crescendo of jvP terror conjured up visions of Pol Potian communofascism . But, we are running ahead - first a discussion of the post-1977 decade is it order .

The post-1977 decade This decade may be summed up in three key phrases ; an IMF-type open economy, constitutional bonapartism and a civil war against the Tamils . The prescriptions of the new economic policy, which have been tried out in several Third World countries in liaison with the IMF, are fairly well known, so we can turn directly to examine only their consequences in Sri Lanka . The initial reaction of the bourgeoisie to economic liberalisation was euphoric . The mass of the population too responded to the appearance of imported consumer goods in the shop windows as a welcome change from

'Mrs Bandaranaike's queues' . There was some foreign investment . A respectable growth rate of around 6-8% was sustained in the initial years although this was an unbalanced growth, mainly in the tourist, service, commercial and construction industries . A class of very rich people emerged . They prospered through the construction industry and tourism, invested in some light industry in the Free Trade Zone, and cashed in on trade and commerce thanks to the lifting of import controls . Some simply robbed, as corruption grew to hitherto unheard of proportions . The most serious consequence of the unbalanced development of the period has been the absolute impoverishment of the poorest, especially rural, sections of the population . The IMF-type neocapitalist econnomic strategy is such that the more backward rural areas are automatically excluded from the growth scenario . This sector cannot participate, there is no role for the rural poor . The theory that neocapitalist led growth will gradually draw the more backward regions along with it has been belied by experience . There is no objective economic rationale to this belief . Furthermore as the economic rationality of the new market philosophy dismantles the welfare state and takes back the rations and handouts which alleviated poverty in the populist period, impoverishment bites harder . This is so not only in the poorer districts of the country such as the deep south, the Vanni and the more backward Kandyan villages, but also for the poorest third of the population, the landless rural proletariat for example, in other areas as well . These chickens are now coming home to roost as the prospect of a rural rebellion raises its head . The other consequence is the huge foreign debt that has been accumulated . This is partly because the returns on the massive

Sri Lanka

investments in the Mahaveli river power,

trade unions battered, the judiciary intimi- 21

irrigation and land settlements complex of

dated and the press turned into spineless

projects have been inadequate to pay the

sycophants . However, one irritant was not

debt servicing charges . This is due both to

brought to heel, and in the long run, this

the failure of the strategy of export-led

proved to be the Achilles heel, the undoing

growth (foreign investment not materialis-

of the whole grand strategy . Because the

ing on anything like the expected scale) and

ethnic standoff had been built up over

also to the civil war .

decades, because the alienation of the

Jayawardena's political strategy, given

Tamils from the Sinhala state was immense,

parliamentary

because Tamil youth groups had evolved

majority, was to attempt to set up an

into small but armed militant movements,

authoritarian state by legal and constitutional

the resistance of the Tamils could not be

means . A new constitution was promul-

broken . The regime now used the only

gated in 1978 establishing an extremely

method that it understood, repression, to

powerful, bonapartist, executive presidency,

attempt to crush the Tamils, but instead of

and greatly devaluing the role of parlia-

capitulating, embittered Tamil youth esca-

ment . The ability of MP's to function as a

lated the conflict into a civil war .

the

UNP's

overwhelming

vehicle of populist pressure was undermined . Tough anti-trade union legislation was enacted as disciplining labour was seen

The civil war

to be absolutely essential if foreign investors were to be attracted . These laws were

The communal pogroms of 1983 were by far

applied with an iron fist when, for example, some 80,000 workers were dismissed for

the worst that Sri Lanka has ever experi-

taking part in a general strike against this

government and security apparatus com-

legislation, in defiance of government warn-

plicity was evident ; it was the scale of the

ings . Scores of other strikes were broken up

violence that was horrendous . Bursting out

by` chain wielding gangs of UNP goons in complicity with the police .

in the midst of a military conflict between

The opposition political parties were

enced . This was not the first time that

Tamil guerrilla groups and the army, ostensibly as punishment for the killing of

harassed in various ways . The SUP was infiltrated and squabbles provoked . The

23 soldiers in a single incident, large scale

Nava Sama Samaja Part (NSSP), the cP and

spontaneous communal hatred . The latter,

the jvi were proscribed in a first class

of course, the bequest of Sinhala chauvinism

Reichstag-burning exercise, when UNP led

to the nation!

goon squads, at the active instigation of the army and police, launched a campaign of

planned riots rode on the back of a wave of

In the aftermath of the 1983 communal riots, most of the Tamil youth groups,

communal rioting, looting and burning in

which had been growing slowly since the

1983 .

mid-1970s, moved to South India, along

Mrs Bandaranaike was hauled before a

with the tide of refugees, and established

tribunal on what can only be called an

their headquarters and training camps there .

exercise in political vendetta and her politi-

They found succour from the South Indian

cal rights proscribed for seven years by a

population, funding from numerous sources

pliant bench .

including expatriate Tamils in Europe and

To a degree the authoritarian strategy worked . The opposition was cowed, the

the us, and secured arms, funds and military training from the state and federal

Capital & Class

22 governments of India . A whole new ball game had started ; Sinhala chauvinism had, even if by proxy, taken on the Indian state . In the Tamil camp, gone were the days of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) - the new name of the FP - when parsimonious gentlemen carrying petitions indulged in politics . Leadership of Tamil politics passed into the hands of militant armed liberation organisations, especially the Tigers, as the LTTE was commonly known, and the two left groups, Eelam Liberation Organization (ERos) and Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) . With Indian support, these organisations would fight the Sri Lankan army to a standstill in most of the north and east and confine it to its barracks in the key Jaffna peninsula by mid-1987 . India's involvement in the conflict began with Jayawardena's foreign policy orientation which was an irritant to the perceived security interests of India . Sri Lanka had been flirting with the us, Pakistan and Israel . There was uncertainty regarding a possible us naval base in Trincomalee . Indian strategic interests in Sri Lanka are based on the doctrine of denial - India does not need Trincomalee or a military presence in Sri Lanka, but neither will she allow any other power to establish a presence on her southern flank . The issue was also causing havoc in South Indian politics and the success of Tamil secessionism in Sri Lanka portended grave dangers for the unity of India . India's deepening involvement took a more dramatic form with the June 1987 air drop of provision to Tamil civilians, in violation of Sri Lankan sovereignty, during the Vadamarachi campaign . This was a last ditch effort to retake Jaffna. The Sri Lankan army may have succeeded in taking the Jaffna peninsula, but it would not have been able to hold it, not even briefly . Colombo's writ in the Tamil areas was finished . Never-

theless, the armed thrust itself, and the enormous hardships suffered by the civilian Tamil population, brought Indian involvement a step further . With the air drop, and the rest of the world ignoring Colombo's plea for solidarity, the politics of the previous three decades came to a dramatic end .

The Indo - Sri Lanka accord of July 1987 The Accord marked a rupture in the alliance between the sections of the pettybourgeoisie wedded to the ideology of Sinhalese chauvinism and the ruling classes . This arrangement had underwritten state power thus far . Jayawardena and the elite layers of society betrayed this unholy bond because its cost had become too high - an unwinnable civil war and a regional imbroglio involving India . The sudden manner of its announcement, without any consultation with the Sinhalese, or for that matter the Tamil people, and the about-turn in politics that it signalled, only served to heighten the Sinhalese chauvinist sense of betrayal . A people who, for decades, had fed on crass racism, were suddenly being asked to come to their senses . But even false consciousness does not die so easily . The basic provisions of the Accord are an attempt at a political settlement with the Tamils . The constitutional arrangements, such as the establishment of a unified Northern-Eastern Provincial Council and the recognition of the Tamil language, form a reasonable initial basis from which to work towards a settlement of the ethnic conflict . A reasonable devolution of power, if it had been written into the subsequent fine print when the detailed legislation was drafted, would have consolidated this process . Given a chance, the Accord could have, and certainly it is very desirable that it should have, worked . However, politically, up to now the

Sri Lanka Accord has not been given a chance, although undoubtedly the tenuous peace that still prevails in the ethnic arena is thanks to the fact that a Provincial Council, however imperfect, has been established and functions - or to be more accurate, still survives - in the Tamil 'homeland .' Although the Accord has not been set aside there is no doubt that it has arrived at a serious impasse and it is important to understand why a reasonable initial basis for a settlement of issue between the Sinhalese and Tamil people has run into so much trouble . The reason cannot be reduced to some lesser cause, such as bad timing or the lack of dexterity on the part of the leaders, or even to the complications caused by the deployment of the Indian army . Certainly these contributed to the turmoil, but the fundamental factor is the deep rootedness of divisive ethnic consciousness in the people themselves . This article has taken as its theme an examination of the processes through which racism, to use a common word, has become a central element in national ideology and in the structuring of state and society . This was no accidental event but organically linked to processes of material and social change over decades . It cannot be reversed except by a prolonged and protracted struggle .

After the accord Instead of a war between the Sinhalese and the Tamils we now have a 'war' between Sinhalese and Sinhalese and another one between Tamils and Tamils . Epigrammatically at least, this describes the situation in the first two years after July 1987 . This is an enormous step forward for ethnic relations in Sri Lanka . Until and unless the Sinhalese people sort out among themselves the question of how they are going to relate to the Tamils, they will never sort out their relationship with the Tamils .

Sinhala chauvinism has to be defeated in its own 23 backyard first, and only then can the question of an equal and democratic relationship with the Tamil people become a serious issue on the national political agenda . The silver lining on the clouds today is the determination with which the left parties, especially the NSSP and suvtP (a left break-away from the SUP) have faced up to this task and, in addition, the courageous stand taken by several democratic grass roots movements . If this left can grow to credible proportions of power, and if a unification between these movements and EROS and EPRLF can be achieved, Sri Lanka may find a way out . There is still, however, some considerable way to go before these two conditions become a real possibility . The need to settle accounts with narrow Tamil nationalism is also important, but since minority politics is always secondary and follows the principal turn of events in the majority, the southern arena is the decisive one . Sections of the Tamil militant movement (EPRLF and to a degree EROS) are indeed engaged in a conflict with narrow Tamil nationalism . Politically this narrowness is most visibly represented by one of the political factions within the LTTE . The outcome of this conflict is uncertain as the Indian army withdraws, but it remains true that the re-emergence of Tamil chauvinism as the leading force in Tamil politics is unlikely, except in the context of the victory of Sinhala chauvinism in the south . The victory of Sinhala chauvinism, however, appears to be unlikely . It is true that Jayawardena underestimated its strength when it struck back at the regime and at the UNP with great force after the Accord . The SUP capitulated to a degree and even sections of the left were not entirely immune for a period . However, it is becoming clear that the state and the leading elements of the bourgeois class who want some kind of a settlement of the Tamil

Capital & Class

24 question and a deal with India, are successfully beating down these forces . Even the

future government too will have to contend with this uneasy situation .

jvp is shifting its ground to focus more on

The opposition in parliament is calling for

a rural rebellion than on a purely chauvinist and anti-Indian cry .

Premadasa's resignation, a national government and rewriting of the constitution .

It may be arguable whether what is hap-

None of this tinkering addresses the real

pening in the south is an incipient rural

issues . The real issues are a new socio

rebellion or whether this is only a sustained

economic programme concerned with rural

attack on the state by a strong and well

poverty and urban stagnation and a political

armed political organisation maximising the

programme which consolidates the basic

use of terror . What is not in doubt is that

settlement with the Tamil people . The

the government has subverted its own legit-

desperate

imacy in its ten years in office devoted to subverting democracy in Sri Lanka .

requires that the jvp ends its campaign of

The jvp has attempted to link together chauvinism, rural discontent and political

barracks so that some respect for democratic

terror in a bid for state power . Terror allows

not appear to be any actor on the political

an organisation to make an impact far out

stage (national government, left alliance or

of proportion to its actual political influence

military Bonapart), strong enough to do all

- this is a fact of politics today . Also, in the modern world, for technological reasons,

this . If the country continues to break apart

the state cannot easily overcome terror . The

equation with India, despite the much tele-

state's monopoly of force can no longer be easily asserted as in the past . Initially, jvp terror was confined to political opponents -

vised troop withdrawals of the moment .

first the UNP, then the left parties . Attacks on Police Stations and army depots were for

fronts, against .)vi terror linked to chauvin-

the sake of collecting arms . Since August 1989, however, as the prospects of taking

of the state on the other, and although there is some support from the Lssp and the cP,

power began to falter, the jvP, in desper-

the cards are stacked against them . The left

condition of the

population

terror and that the army be returned to norms may be restored . However, there does

it could actually complicate the political

Although the NssP and the sLMP,

are

engaged in a commendable war on two ism on one side, and against the repression

ation, engaged the army more and more,

in Sri Lanka has not regained that minimal

and finally took the suicidal step of killing

critical mass necessary for credibility in state power politics . Secondly, the legacy of

family members of soldiers and policemen . The retaliation has been ferocious . The

ethnic divisiveness in the consciousness of

armed forces, and vigilante groups functioning under its protection, have taken to

people has not been repudiated on a sufficiently large scale to make a meaningful

revenge on a massive scale . Very large num-

and organic alliance of this left with EROS

bers of youth are secretly executed simply

and EPRLF a reality . The complexity of the relationship with India confounds the issue

on suspicion . The political consequence of the JvP's 'revolutionary' campaign has,

further, partly because the Indian left,

therefore, been simply to play straight into

obsessed with its own back and front yards,

the hands of repression . The military, for

has little appreciation of its international

the first time in Sri Lanka, has emerged as

responsibilities in relation to the Sri Lankan

an independent political force, and any

revolution .

M e%! Patrick Bond

C s MU

The student loan crisis in the US : proposed solutions 'blame the victims' As young people in Britain are for the first time forced to arrange loans to finance their education, they might consider the plight of their fellow students across the Atlantic . For years, us students have had to borrow money from banks in order to attend private and public universities . The government guaranteed the banks that they would be repaid for these loans in the event the students failed to pay . But with massive levels of student debt outstanding, the government is now reconsidering its commitment to financing certain kinds of higher education . According to concerned student leaders in the us, the skyrocketing rate of student loan defaults has created a dangerous and misguided anti-student environment at the highest levels of federal education policymaking . With the cost of defaults reaching nearly $2 billion a year, a series of 'default management plans' have been offered by the

CO

Department of Education over the past two years, and the halls of Congress regularly echo with cries that students are cheats .

25

Capital & Class

26

In early June, Education Secretary Lauro F . Cavasos issued a modification of his notorious predecessor William Bennett's student loan proposal, which would have effectively ended loans for students at the nation's historically black colleges and universities . Unveiling the plan, Cavasos used sharp rhetoric : 'Today we are taking decisive action against those who cheat our citizens, those who promise to educate, but deliver only a debt .' The good news for students is that Cavasos' plan is more moderate than Bennett's, in that it focuses more on corruption by educational institutions, provides a longer period for schools to bring down their alumni default rate and offers less drastic penalties . But according to Raynard Davis, Executive Director of the District of Columbia Student Coalition Against Apartheid and Racism (DC SCAR), 'The policies advocated by Mr . Cavasos are still pernicious . They blame the victims and operate in contradiction to equal opportunity in higher education .' Davis suggests that under the new plan, it will still be working class black and Latino students who will ultimately pay the bills for what he calls 'minor league corporate parasites out to milk the government and the students at the same time .' Claiming that far more targeted steps are needed, Davis and other leading student advocates are not convinced by Cavasos' anti-corruption rhetoric . 'Widespread corruption in the system and not by individual students has been ignored by policy-makers and the media for too long,' Davis complains . As an example, Davis cites the story of Vice President Dan Quayle's costly foray into the student loan business, which received little attention beyond the back pages of the Wall Street Journal.

A friend of Danforth Quayle In one of the more extraordinary examples of government largesse for business swindlers, an Indianapolis educational entrepreneur named Gary Eyler benefited from contacts with the then-Senator Quayle to the tune of $130 million in appropriations from student loan funds . Eyler's educational institutions - Continental Training Services, Inc . and Superior Training Services, Inc . - promised truck driving training and other technical skills to more than 100,000 students (95% of whom received federally-guaranteed loans), but completely failed to deliver. With no education available at these institutions, most of the students rapidly dropped out and went into default . This arrangement suited Eyler fine, since the Department of Education was covering the costs . The students, meanwhile, received no refund on their bill and are now ineligible for any future credit. In spite of such extraordinary sums going into default, the government failed to investigate the scandal for several years . Belatedly, a $350 million lawsuit by the Justice Department last September put Eyler out of business . How did Eyler get away with it? Evidence suggests that his elected representative in Washington was doing a good job of constituent service, Senator Quayle, an Indiana Republican, wrote a letter of recommendation for Eyler in 1986 so that he could gain access to Indiana state loan guarantees . Eyler, the journal reported back, gave Quayle more than $10,000 in campaign contributions and entertained the senator in a jet plane at reelection time in 1986, contrary to Federal Election Commission rules . Though in retrospect Quayle condemned vocational training college fraud, Davis of DC SCAR says student activists across the country will not forget that the vice-

us student loan crisis president's own education in Indiana also was marred by alleged influence-peddling .

a 60% default rate . The Cavasos plan would 27 give them five years to reduce their rate to

'In the early 1970s,' Davis notes, 'Quayle

40%, which may be impossible given other

took advantage of what was ostensibly an

national economic trends . If the 40% level is not reached, students of those institutions

equal opportunity programme

to gain

admittance to Indiana University Law

will be denied new loans .

School, shortly after his days as a draft-

To illustrate, in Washington, Dc, Mary-

dodging, National Guard supporter of the

land and Virginia, the Department of Edu-

Vietnam War ended peacefully . And if you

cation listed 26 schools with more than a

look at the recent history of the Education

40 % default rate, of which 22 are vocational colleges . Of the nine institutions with a

Department, which Quayle had oversight on as a senator, we've got every reason to distrust the entire right-wing administration .'

60 % or higher default rate, only one is not a vocational college .

Black education threatened

higher than 20 % in alumni defaults - must

The next tier of schools - those with submit a default management plan to the While Quayle and Eyler were trading favours, Bennett and his Department of

Education Department and their state's education agency . Further federal proposals will

Education staff were busy creating their

result in demanding tests administered in

default plan . Bruce Carnes, Bennett's chief

order to block further educational oppor-

policy assistant, devised a means by which

tunities to many young people who were

schools with higher than a 20% default rate

forced to drop out of secondary school .

would be denied access to future govern-

Davis says that with these moves, the govern-

ment loan guarantees, a move that would

ment will cast a chill over education for dis-

have immediately shut down every histori-

advantaged students at legitimate vocational

cally black institution in the us .

colleges, junior colleges and black institutions .

Carnes' commentary on the plan's impli-

Wall Street

'What's really needed,' Davis argues, 'is

in early 1988 : 'It's possible that

a system that would monitor the schools

cations was recorded by the

Journal

(black colleges') student bodies contain a

through an accreditation process, weed out

high level of thieves .' When Davis, other

those charlatans that engage in what can be

student leaders and Department of Education employees met with Carnes to protest

considered 'unfair trade practices,' and move

about the remark, he claimed he was mis-

order to replace these stifling loan burdens with grants . It's just silly to regulate educa-

quoted . The journal, however, refused to

some money out of the defence budget in

print either a correction or Carnes' letter to the editor .

tion through financial markets .'

While black institutions do have a higher alumni default rate - a function, Davis

Students vs . the banks

argues, of endemic racism in society which makes it difficult for young blacks to find

Davis says he is especially concerned about incidents like the recent lawsuit filed

professional jobs - the real abuses of the

against San Francisco-based Bank of Amer-

student loan system occur in vocational

ica by a number of other banks dissatisfied

trading colleges like those set up by Eyler .

by the intensity of its loan collection efforts .

Such for-profit vocational colleges represent

In 1988, the Department of Education

two thirds of the 190 institutions that have

made the bank liable for loans it allegedly

Capital & Class

28

did not try hard enough to collect . Other banks that were partners in student loan syndications with the us' second-largest bank also lost money . 'What this shows is that the banks themselves are involved in the scams,' Davis says . 'It means that we students must approach the banks directly and demand that they sever their links to the Gary Eylers of the world and refocus on appropriate marketing of loans to inner-city youth, longer pay-back periods and below-market interest rates .' Davis cited successful efforts of his activist group with Richmond, Virginia-based Crestar Bank, which is still the target of a studentcommunity-labour campaign demanding fair banking practices . Students are not the only sector of society struggling with a debt crisis . Davis says he hopes that students across the us can learn from community groups, farmers, consumer advocates, progressive Third World leaders and trade unionists who have had to confront the problems of rising indebtedness in

the economy . Organising around the issue is vital, Davis says, because the alternatives are austerity of the kind Cavasos proposes or the even more race- and class-biased student loan legislation offered by the well-known conservative Senator Sam Nunn . A severe version of the bill would make loans available only to those completing two years of community service . Fred Azcarate, outgoing president of the United States Students Association, calls the plan 'Nunnsense' and promises that students will fight it. But in the meantime, students may quickly begin to feel the bite of unpayable debt they didn't benefit from . From student loan swindles to the $157 billion savings and loan bailout to the $2 .2 trillion federal debt, the bills for an older generation's profligacy are coming due, and if current trends are any indication, the current generation of students and youth had better get used to paying them back .

John Tomaney The reality of workplace flexibility

Evidence from Japan, West Germany and the UK shows that

• This paper takes a look at current changes in the organisation of work and production in the manufacturing sectors of the advanced capitalist countries . Specifically it examines the detailed, empirical evidence for change and asks what some of the implications of these might be for workers . Among sections of the Left in Britain there is a belief that rapid technological change is transforming work (and society as a whole) in new and unprecedented ways . A good example of this view is contained in the Communist Party document Manifesto for New Times, which states :

there is no generalisable trend toward technology driven flexible craft work . Insofar as it exists, workplace flexibility does not guarantee the benefits for labour implied by some of

At the industrial heart of the new times will be production based on a shift to information technology and

its proponents .

microelectronics . New technology allows more intensive automation and its extension from large to smaller

strategies have

companies, pulling together the shopfloor and the office, the design loft and the showroom . It allows production

weaken worker

to be both more flexible, automated and integrated . . . Work is being reorganised around new technology . Trad-

management pre-

ditional demarcation lines between blue and white collar

intensify work .

Rather flexibility been used to constraints on rogatives and to

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worker, skilled and unskilled are being torn down in the wake of massive redundancies in manufacturing . In future, work in manufacturing will be about flexible team working within much smaller, more skilled workforces (Communist Party, 1989 : 6-7) . This paper seeks to examine the evidence for such claims and to test the assumptions of the theory which underlies them . The cp position, through the work of Murray (1985, 1988), has been much influenced by research which suggests that industrial production in capitalist societies is being transformed in the direction of 'flexible specialisation' and is associated with the work of Charles Sabel and Michael Piore (Sabel, 1982, Piore and Sabel, 1984) and to a lesser extent with that of Horst Kern and Michael Schumann (1984, 1987, 1989) . In the section below, the flexible specialisation thesis is outlined, and in the following sections the empirical evidence for the kinds of changes suggested by the thesis is assessed through an examination of work and production organisation in Japan, West Germany and the UK . A final section attempts to draw some theoretical and political conclusions .

Flexible specialisation in the workplace: Theory and evidence

Theory Piore and Sabel (1984) ascribe current changes in production and work organisation to limits inherent in the post-war model of industrial development . This 'paradigm' is referred to as 'mass production' which is seen as superseding a 19th century 'craft' paradigm . The mass production paradigm was concerned with the production of standardised commodities for stable mass markets . It is in the disintegration of these mass markets that the crisis of mass production is located . The new market segmentation and volatility places a new imperative on enterprises to move toward a more 'flexible' system of production which can cope with rapidly changing demands . This means that whereas work under the mass production paradigm was characterised by an intense division of labour, the separation of conception and execution, the substitution of unskilled labour for skilled labour and special purpose for universal machines ; the quest for specialisation prompts a more flexible organisation based on collaboration between

Workplace flexibility designers and reskilled craftworkers to make a wide variety of goods with general purpose machines . In the first instance, these tendencies are identified in areas containing autonomous 'industrial districts' - loose alliances of small firms of which the Third Italy is the most cited example (Sabel, 1982 : 22027 ; Piore and Sabel, 1984 : 226-29) . The tendency toward flexible specialisation is also identified within some 'mass production' industries, such as motor vehicles (e .g . Katz and Sabel, 1985); and at the level of the national economy in the case of Japan (Piore and Sabel, 1984 : 156-62) . The competitive success of these areas and enterprises is linked to the presence of tendencies toward 'upskilling' and the reintegration of tasks . Hence, it is implied, the tendency toward flexible specialisation is largely progressive in its implications for workers . While operating at a different theoretical level, Kern and Schumann (1984, 1987, 1989) arrive at conclusions which are remarkably convergent with those of Piore and Sabel . Kern and Schumann are not engaged in constructing a theory of the transition from one mode of industrial development to another but rather report empirically observed trends from their studies in one country, West Germany . They argue that the capitalist pursuit of higher productivity of human labour with the aim of improved capital utilisation remains unchanged . However, the means by which this was achieved is altered . They maintain that whereas under previous forms of production, labour was viewed solely as a cost of production and obstacle to efficiency, enterprises within the core sectors of the West German economy now regard labour more strategically . They identify labour processes in industries such as cars, machine tools and chemicals where the reintegration of tasks is occurring with a consequent demand for highly qualified and highly skilled labour . In some cases they identify the emergence of teamworking . They associate such developments largely (though not exclusively) with the presence of new technologies . In a manner similar to Piore and Sabel they argue : Higher productivity cannot be attained under the present conditions without a more considerate, 'enlightened' treatment of labour - that is something that capital too must learn (Kern and Schumann, 1987 : 162) .

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They go so far as to argue :

The end of the division of labour : that is what development in an important part of industrial production could lead to under the influence of the new production concepts (Kern and Schumann, 1987 : 163, emphasis added) . According to Hirst and Zeitlin (1988, 1989) the notion of flexible specialisation has much usefulness in explaining the relative competitive performance of UK manufacturing performance . They argue that despite the improved productivity witnessed in UK manufacturing since the early 1980s, Britain still performs relatively badly in world markets (as is evidenced by a whole range of economic indicators) . This poor performance is attributed to the persistence of mass production methods and mentalities . They suggest : Most accounts of the competitive success of countries like Japan and West Germany assume that they are simply more efficient in using these [mass production] methods . But a closer look at manufacturing in these countries suggests that they have responded to the changed international environment by an alternative which reverses the principles of mass production : flexible specialisation involves the combination of general-purpose capital equipment and skilled, adaptable workers to produce a wide and changing range of semi-customised goods (1989 : 168) . In policy terms, therefore, the aim appears to be to encourage the development of the types of flexible production processes and institutional supports which are said to characterise the successful enterprises and social formations present in Germany, Japan and so on (see also Murray, 1985) . In relation to the main concern of this paper, the nature of the 'new' workplace flexibility, a number of important issues are raised . Given that the principles of production and work organisation in countries such as West Germany and Japan are to be emulated, it is worth subjecting the principles under which they operate to some critical analysis . Also, given the political implications of Piore and Sabel and Kern and Schumann for the strategies of workers and their organisations, it is important to ask what are the actual implications of these forms of work organisation . In an attempt to address these



Workplace flexibility

questions and before turning to an examination of the UK evidence, a critical analysis of the nature of workplace flexibility in Japan and West Germany is advanced .

Flexible specialisation in Japan : a worker's nirvana? Piore and Sabel's account of production and work organisation in Japan is unremarkable in so far as it propagates what is now a fairly orthodox view about the nature of capital-labour relations in that country . The implication is that Japanese work organisation is essentially progressive and largely beneficial for workers . Piore and Sabel contend that following the defeat of Japanese militarism in 1945, an alliance of the us occupiers, the reconstituted Japanese state and the zaibatsu (enterprise confederations) combined to prevent the left-wing trade unions from forming a powerful national labour movement . Instead the us : allowed a system of flexible shopfloor control to emerge through collective bargaining in export-oriented plants (Piore and Sabel, 1984 : 160) . They argue that the zaibatsu system of inter-firm organisation was based on a particular form of production and work organisation where the distinction between the conception and execution of tasks was 'deliberately blurred' through teamworking and where foremen were regarded as the work teams' 'representatives' to management . In turn these developments were facilitated by the institutionalisation of long term employment guarantees and 'extensive job rotation to familiarize workers with the context of their work and to increase their flexibility' (Piore and Sabel, 1984 : 161) . They conclude : Finally, once the workforce was multiskilled, used to consulting with management, and committed to the firm, it was easy to introduce, in the 1960s, 'quality circles', in which labor-management teams improved the phases of production for which they were responsible (ibid . ) . Thus by the 1970s Japanese production methods are seen as exemplifying 'the re-emergence of the craft paradigm amidst the crisis' (Piore and Sabel 1984 : 205-8) .

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This interpretation of the Japanese 'economic miracle' can be contested on a number of grounds . These are mainly : its selective use of evidence ; its reliance on solely management sources (especially us management consultants) ; and its misrepresentation of key events in Japanese labour history . At best Piore and Sabel offer a partial view of the real nature of work in Japan, but one which is now widely held in the west . Attempts to 'sell' Japanese work methods to unions (often as prelude to inward investment) has led to attempts to present these work methods as involving inherently higher levels of skill and workforce participation (e .g . Wickens, 1987) . Sayer's (1987) attempt to broaden the discussion of the just-in time (JIT) system is a useful starting point in analysing the reality behind the myths . Sayer argues that JIT as a method of industrial organisation should be seen as a search for time economies in the circulation of capital and new ways of extracting surplus value 'based on a sophisticated method of learning by doing' (1987 : 52) . The now familiar aspects of JIT such as reduced set up times, the use of small, simple machines (instead of large, complex ones), careful plant layouts and the reduction of buffer stocks are all seen as contributing to a more rapid throughput and greater capital utilisation . Reductions in buffer stocks reveal waste in the production process - wasted labour, materials and imbalances in the line - and lead to a new emphasis on total quality control . As such it is not technology itself which is significant, but the flexibility and intensity with which it is utilised . According to Sayer, worker participation is essential to this process . Under Japanese production systems, for instance, lines are constructed piecemeal utilising workers' knowledge . There is a tendency under Japanese systems toward multiskilling . Wickens reports an example of this process of continuous improvement (known as kaizen) at Nissan's Sunderland plant : The Nissan body construction shop is now considerably different from the original layout and the vast majority of these changes have been thought up and implemented by the people working in the area (1987 : 46) . Like Piore and Sabel, Sayer emphasises the role of worker participation in production planning and like them he appears to perceive this automatically as evidence of worker approval of the system and 'consent' . But does participation indicate

Workplace flexibility evidence of a consensus between capital and labour? Moreover, what is the real nature of multiskilling under these methods? It is possible to go along with the description of JIT and Japanese work methods as involving an element of worker participation without seeing these as having fundamentally beneficial consequences for workers . More critical accounts see 'cooperation' as part of the system of exploitation which operates in Japanese manufacturing enterprises . For instance, according to Turnbull, JIT is essentially : a highly developed form of work intensification which belies any notion of job enrichment through teamworking, flexibility and job rotation claimed by the many proponents of JIT (in fact, job rotation, teamworking, flexibility and the like are the very tools of work intensification under the JIT system) (1987 : 8) . Turnbull sees the JIT system as an organic whole in which the securing of time economies in the circuit of capital and increasing the productivity of labour are inextricably linked . The link lies in the fact that by increasing the rate of throughput of the factory the total productivity of the plant can be raised . The reduction of buffers and total quality control are the first step on the road to JIT : but JIT aims to eliminate all costs surrounding the production process . . . of equal importance are the unproductive and wasteful elements of the worker's labour such as waiting time, downtime and excessive set up times (Turnbull, 1987 : 9) . Turnbull argues that JIT does alter several of the principles of the classic assembly line by moving to 'single unit' production . Under this system worker's move between several machines in conjunction with work moving through the factory . As well as saving on direct labour, this process is more efficient as a means of maintaining the productive flow than simply speeding a conventional line which often only led to the problems of bottlenecks . However, the emphasis is on multiple-machine minding and as such Turnbull's account casts a new light on notions of multiskilling as inherent in Japanese work methods . The chief process here is one of intensification . 'Participation' can, therefore, be seen as coerced rather than a voluntary consensus . Total quality control and quality

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circles ensnare workers themselves into this system of intensification . In practice, and contrary to a widespread myth, quality circles are less concerned with product than with process innovations, principally the elimination of wasteful activities . According to Abernathy et al (1983) : One of the principal thrusts of quality circles in Japan is to achieve a full 60 minutes of work each hour by each worker (quoted by Dohse et al ., 1985 : 128) . At Nissan's UK manufacturing facility in Tyne and Wear, a system of `neighbourhood checks' are used to enforce total quality control . In essence these involve groups down the line reporting on poor work performance by groups upstream (Garrahan et al ., 1989) . In Japan, line foremen and even quality circle members can receive training in method study techniques . The elimination of buffers (described earlier) and the principle of making visible all waste, especially wasteful labour, places extraordinary pressure on workers to comply in the rationalisation production . As Abernathy et al . (1983) put it : The determination to make all problems visible is not an unmixed blessing . It offers the hope of thoroughly efficient operations by substantially raising the social costs and consequences of failure . Reducing inventory levels places increasing pressure on managers and workers alike to remove whatever problems remain . . . by ratcheting up the level of stress at which the workforce is expected to perform . . . it is wonderful how a little fear and danger can clear the mind (quoted in Shaiken et al., 1986 : 176) .

In addition, Japanese managers aim for total time flexibility (in Japan this can mean unlimited unpaid overtime) and functional flexibility (the will and capacity to undertake a wide variety of tasks) on the part of workers in order to cope with unforeseen . For instance, Komatsu, the Japanese earth moving equipment manufacturer at Birtley, Tyne and Wear, included in its single union agreement with the AEU provision for : Complete labour flexibility, interchangeability and mobility . . . in order to maximise productivity and correct imbalances in the production flow (quoted in IDS, 1988 : 24) .

Workplace flexibility

In sum, Japanese methods of work organisation can be seen primarily as a means of work intensification based upon the elimination of wasted time in production . The intensity, and even brutality, of this system has been described by Satoshi Kamata (1980) in his 'insider's account' of life in a Toyota plant in the 1970s . Flexibility in this account means the ability to move uncomplainingly from one deskilled task to another at a moment's notice and to meet production shortfalls through an open ended commitment to exhausting levels of overtime . Such an analysis leads Dohse et al . (1985) to characterise these methods as variants of Taylorism or Fordism (see also Garrahan et al ., 1989) . The us management consultant Schonberger goes so far as to say that 'the Japanese out-Taylor us all' (quoted by Dohse et al., 1985 : 127) . For Dohse et al ., (1985) Japanese management techniques are a solution to the capitalist problem of workers' refusal to place their knowledge of production in the service of rationalisation . Notwithstanding these arguments Wilkinson and Oliver plausibly suggest that, in theory : while JIT heightens the visibility of worker behaviour and increases the internal substitutability of labour, its high pervasiveness, high immediacy and low external substituttability means that overall the power capacity of workers will be enhanced (1989 : 52). The refusal to work overtime or to be flexible about tea breaks or task mobility could have ramifications throughout the production process . Yet this appears not to occur in Japan . Wilkinson and Oliver attribute this to 'goal homogeneity' on the part of capital and labour in Japan . This is achieved through ensuring worker dependence to the company through workplace welfare provision and the system of lifetime employment (nenko) . According to Wilkinson and Oliver : The result, at least since the 1950s, has been relatively few strikes or other industrial action, and a dedicated, loyal and flexible workforce - exactly the conditions necessary for a JiT production system to operate (Wilkinson and Oliver, 1989 : 55) . However, the recourse to explanations which emphasise worker loyalty and dedication, although common in writing

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on Japan, seem particularly unsatisfying . Ultimately such explanations rely on ethnocentric accounts of the Japanese system . The key factor glossed over by Wilkinson and Oliver and, significantly by Piore and Sabel is the absence of independent trade unions in Japan . It is this absence which allows the complete functional flexibility necessary for Japanese production methods to operate . The failure to address the historic defeats inflicted on militant Japanese workers organisation in the period before and after the Second World War and the widespread implantation of company unionism (Moore, 1983 ; Cusumano, 1984 ; Ichiyo, 1984 ; Dohse et al., 1985, Jurgens, 1989) leaves their account suffering from a serious deficiency . The 'harmonious industrial relations', which they describe, were won by capital in struggle against labour . It is the consequences of these defeats with which the Japanese working class live today . Workplace flexibility in West Germany : the end of the division of labour? The thesis that current trends in workplace restructuring indicate the beginning of the end of the division of labour in core manufacturing industries is based upon the premise that while the aim of capitalist rationalisation remains unchanged - i .e ., an attempt to raise labour productivity with the aim of improved capital utilisation - the means by which this end is achieved is changing (Kern and Schumann, 1984, 1987, 1989 ; Lane, 1988) . The thesis maintains that under 'mass production', workers are regarded as obstacles to production to be substituted by capital as far as possible . With the emergence of more flexible forms of production technology a new attitude to labour is becoming dominant, based upon the active participation of labour in production . High levels of automation (through robotisation, etc .) are seen as eliminating unskilled work and changing the content of the labour which remains . As Kern and Schumann put it : The new worker is a sort of scout - sensitive to breakdown with quick reactions and the ability to improvise and take preventative action (1987 : 162-3) . This is leading to the acquisition of new, more cognitive skills and higher levels of training on the part of shopfloor

Workplace flexibility workers and blurring of blue and white collar functions . Therefore, a new imperative to co-operate is placed on both capital and labour . Also increased skill levels and more fulfilling job design are seen as necessary for the high levels productivity made possible by the new technology . The evidence of Kern and Schumann is drawn from three principal sectors : motor vehicles, machine tools and chemicals . Outside of these sectors the evidence for flexibility is seen as less clear cut and in contrast to Piore and Sabel they acknowledge the existence of growing social division within the labour market . Nevertheless the political implications of this thesis are clear : German management have adopted a consistent strategy of flexible specialisation which, on balance, constitutes a progressive move from the point of view of labour (Lane, 1988 : 167) . The West German car industry is seen as the exemplar of these trends . Within Volkswagen for example, a trend toward task integration and a holistic conception of work has been identified . Production jobs, it is argued, have been merged with some maintenance and quality control tasks and a general increase in skill levels is observed . Shopfloor work is seen as evolving toward a new 'production mechanic' grade . In general, jobs are seen as 'enriched', even if workers do complain about increased levels of stress . The most developed form of task integration and holistic conceptions of work is 'semi-autonomous' teamworking which heralds the end of the division of labour . Similar arguments have been advanced for other parts of the car industry such as Audi (Heizmann, 1984) and in the machine tool sector skilled labour is apparently no longer seen as a 'necessary evil' but as a 'positive planning concept' (Kern and Schumann, 1987) . The case of the car industry is particularly instructive because in much of the flexible specialisation literature it is seen as a harbinger, prefiguring changes in the wider economy . In this respect the work of Kern and Schumann forms part of new consensus which sees such developments as offering solutions to the widespread problems of labour unrest, sabotage, absenteeism and alienation which characterised assembly line work in the past (e .g . Katz and Sabel, 1985, Kochan,

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Katz and McKersie, 1986, on the United States) . Such interpretations, however, need to be treated with extreme caution . However, a broad range of studies of the widespread introduction of new technology, particularly in West German and Austrian car plants, do not support the idea that such changes are accompanied by significant upskilling . Windolfs (1984) case studies of three plants departmental boundaries in the sense of a division of labour and areas of responsibility . The team concept has this as a starting point . The concept leads to production teams, that means that all those directly participating are in 'one boat' and all can do all of the work tasks within the area of responsibility of the team - quality, production, volume and capacity utilisation . The joining together of previously separated individual areas of responsibility in a team opens up the possibilities for reducing the sum of time lost . Or, expressed differently to achieve the highest possible ratio of time worked within the working time of the individual employee . The ideal leads automatically to the formation of a team based on different areas of responsibility (quoted in Jurgens et al ., 1988 : 269, emphasis added . The essence of the description is conveyed in Figure 1) . Such developments complement innovations such as preventative maintenance and machine monitoring which improve asset utilisation . Moreover, in the management conception, 'semi-autonomous group working' can still be controlled by the application of tight centrally imposed time standards . In an early, but farsighted study of group working at Renault, Coriat (1980) discovered a similar process occurring at various plants . According to management figures staggering productivity gains were made by applying traditional forms of rationalisation to the activities of groups rather than individual workers . For instance, at Renault's Choisy le roi engine plant, on the introduction of 'modular assembly' productivity was almost doubled . Like the West German studies, Coriat's paper illustrates that by assigning tasks on a group basis and expanding the roles and responsibilities therein, Renault were able to achieve a reduction in idle time and the conversion of time thus saved

Workplace flexibility into productive time : principally by assigning non-directly productive tasks to production workers . This led to a reduction in transfer and waiting times . Coriat argues that the pace of work is still ultimately determined by management not by workers as the optimistic accounts would have it . Jurgens et al., (1988) draw a similar conclusion in the case of GM's experiments described above . They note that despite the apparent transfer of responsibilities to groups, management is not giving up its prerogatives of control . At best the new system can be described only as partial 'autonomy' and is controlled by tight time standards and is increasingly subject to electronic monitoring . It represents intensification because, invariably, it means an increase in the number of productive actions in the course of the working day . West German experiments share some common characteristics with (and owe some inspiration to) developments occurring in Sweden since the mid 1970s . However, the Swedish evidence seemingly is less conclusive about the emergence of new production concepts . According to Christian Berggren (1989) the Swedish evidence (from the automotive industry) points to two problems with the Kern and Schumann thesis . Firstly : In their book Ende der Arbeitsteilung they devote a major section to the technical and organisational changes in the automotive industry . Here their favourite instances of new production concepts are the robotized body shops with their novel skilled jobs, such as Strassenfuhrer and Anlagenfuhrer (monitor of complex equipment) . Such positions can be found also in the Swedish body shops . But, it is also quite easy to find counter evidence, instances where robotization of body processing has generated more restricted and fragmented work . Thus, the consequences of automation in one instance may not be generalizable to others (Berggren, 1989 : 173) . Secondly, argues Berggren, Kern and Schumann have little to say about changes occurring in more labour intensive parts of car plants such as final assembly . The Swedish example is instructive because European interest in alternative forms of work organisation could be said to have their origins in Volvo's experimental Kalmar plant in

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the 1970s . There, the assembly line was 'replaced' by a system of automatically guided vehicles (AGV) . The assembly process was segmented with groups of workers building sections of the car in bays, in a method known as 'dock assembly' (see Lindholm and Norstedt 1975 for a contemporary account) . Although cited as an example of the humanisation of work (e .g . Aguren et al ., 1984), the Kalmar experiment was a very limited departure from the orthodox line : the AGV system operated in a highly centralised manner similar to a conventional line . In addition, no organisational changes were introduced to support the development of teams and the level of worker discretion remained unchanged . According to Berggren : At specified predetermined times the carriers started moving, monitored by a central computer, regardless of whether or not assembly workers were finished (thus constituting in practice an indexing line, an intermittently running line) . . . in practice the same pace was maintained throughout the factory (1989 : 181 . On the significance of central monitoring see also Auer, 1985, Gronblad, 1987) . Berggren argues that a tendency toward expanded job cycles means that up to the mid- 1980s the trend was toward 'flexible Taylorism' . For instance, Saab's Trollhatten plant operates on the basis of 'mini-lines' . This involves the segmentation of traditional lines, with each section separated by buffers . Mechanical pacing is retained within sections . Cycle times are only 2-3 minutes . The line is less susceptible to disruption (because of the buffers) and there is reduced final adjustment and repair work (because inspection is carried out in the buffers at the end of each section) . Some job rotation is possible but the new line balancing system means that work intensity increases . Throughout the system central pacing is maintained . Berggren suggests, however, that particularly within the commercial vehicles sector, alternatives to the assembly line are emerging which could be described as new production concepts . At Volvo's LB truck plant non-mechanical work flows have been introduced and are structured for group work with assembly at stationary vehicles . Completed work is transported by carriers which are controlled by the work groups themselves . Cycle times are 30-45 minutes . The

Workplace flexibility

groups themselves are responsible for tasks and training, daily planning, detailed line balancing and choosing group leaders . There is job rotation which includes the position of group leader . Despite these improvements, however, workers at the plant still feel the work is intensive and monotonous . The most advanced Swedish experiments clearly do represent a departure from the principles of Taylorism but the extent to which these methods will prove economically viable from management's viewpoint (and hence generalisable) must remain a matter of conjecture . What is significant about the Swedish situation is the active role of the Swedish metalworkers union in developing a powerful critique of and detailed alternatives to Taylorist work methods . What kind offlexibility?

The previous sections have challenged the idea advanced by some researchers that the trend toward 'flexible specialisation' has broadly progressive implications for labour . The association of new technology, work flexibility and job enhancement permeates the flexible specialisation thesis in all of its variants . While it would be churlish to deny that job enhancement may have occurred in some instances, there is little evidence that this represents a general trend . Many researchers seem to take evidence of job expansion as evidence of reskilling, but simply attaching more responsibilities to production jobs does not equal reskilling . A survey of changes in technology and work organisation in North American car plants, conducted for the Canadian Auto Workers Union was less sanguine about the claims made for job enhancement than are some researchers . (D . Robertson, J . Wareham) It is significant that many of the most advanced Swedish experiments retain centralised forms of pacing and control, which involve microelectronic monitoring rather than the traditional conveyor belt . This is an important point . It seems likely that newly emerging forms of capitalist work relations can involve some 'requalification' on the part of workers (although, as I have suggested, we should be careful about our use of such terms) . However, 'requalification' is often at the cost of intensification of the work process which translates into increased stress levels on the shopfloor . This is a consequence of many contemporary changes precisely because the expansion

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of tasks and the introduction of group working are concerned centrally with the reduction of down-time, waiting-time and other dead periods - the so-called 'balance delay' problem which are said to have characterised production organised around the principle of the assembly line and its variants (see Aglietta, 1979 ; also Berggren, 1989 : 178) . Moreover, the notion that technological change necessitates and is bringing into existence a new social bargain based on the greater involvement and participation of the workforce in production needs to be challenged . While it does appear that in some instances West German, and more particularly Swedish workers, have gained some benefits from the process of change, these benefits have been won by labour and are not simply the consequence of technical change as some researchers imply . In West Germany and Sweden where workers, arguably, have been successful in winning a share in improved productivity for themselves, it must be acknowledged, traditions of co-determination and institutions of corporatism (i .e . the centrality of labour in political life) have not been subject to the same levels of political attack as have been the case in, say, the UK and us . (In the Japanese case effective trade unions, of course, are non existent .) Indeed, in the West German case unions have been concerned with attacking the basis of the bosses' flexibility scenario through the campaign for a reduction in working hours (e .g . Wainwright, 1987) .

Workplace flexibility in the UK

The purpose of this section is to examine recent changes in the organisation of work and production in the UK . Within the broader context of this paper this is important because in various ways the experiences of countries such as Japan and concepts such as flexible specialisation have been used to explain the performance of the UK economy . For instance, there is a burgeoning literature on the Japanisation' of British industry (e .g . Industrial Relations Journal, 1988 ; Oliver and Wilkinson, 1988) . Similarly, attempts have been made to examine the UK experience in terms of the debate about the transition to flexible specialisation (Hirst and Zeitlin, 1988, 1989 ; Lane, 1988) . For Hirst and Zeitlin, for example, the relatively poor performance of UK manufacturing is due to the failure to introduce and utilise the technology of flexible specialisation and to develop the

Workplace flexibility political institutions which foster and give rise to it (see also Murray, 1985, 1988) . Hirst and Zeitlin, however, offer no analysis of the rapid improvement of UK productivity which has occurred since 1979 . A problem arises here because they are unable to address evidence which suggests that qualitative changes in the organisation of production took place in the UK in the 1980s and to establish its relation to the changes occurring in other capitalist countries . It is the aim of this section to address the concrete evidence for such change and to assess any implications . Despite the controversy which surrounds Thatcherite policy toward manufacturing it is possible to make two firm statements about contemporary workplace change . First is that an undeniable increase in productivity has occurred . Output per worker in manufacturing rose by over 42 per cent between 1979 and 1988 . Secondly, a consensus is emerging that the origins of this productivity do not lie in increased levels of investment but in greater levels of labour productivity (for example : Bean and Symons 1989 ; The Economist, 20 .5 .89 ; OECD, 1988 ; for a brief but useful review of the debate see Wolf, 1988) . This position is summarised in a recent survey of the UK economy by the OECD : Stronger labour productivity growth has not been linked to capital investment, which, in fact, has remained lower relative to GDP than in other recovery periods . Rather it seems linked to changes in work organisation with inflexible and outdated job demarcation giving way to more rational job allocation . This would indicate that a large part of the observed growth rates in the 1980s are in fact successive level changes as opposed to underlying growth rates (OECD, 1988 : 79) . Interpretations of the flexibility issue in the UK have been dominated by the work of Atkinson which suggests a widespread move toward a flexible firm of a multi-skilled core of workers surrounded by a periphery of unskilled, temporary and part-time workers (e .g . Atkinson, 1987) . While the model of the flexible firm has proved influential in policy and journalistic circles, Pollert (1988) has demonstrated convincingly that the evidence for the changes described by Atkinson is limited . However, as Pollert suggests but does not elaborate upon, a rejection of this model does not prelude the possibility

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that real changes are occurring although in reality the changes in workplace organisation appear to be rather less dramatic than some accounts would have us believe . For instance according to one survey of major flexibility agreements : Myths about the advance in flexible working practices have misled many people into thinking that fundamental changes have taken place on a very wide scale . On the contrary, the fundamental changes are extremely narrowly concentrated in particular corners or, very occasionally, particular sectors of industry . And even where these changes have been taking place, they can be incomplete, halting or superficial (IDs, 1986 : 4) . According to IDS, it is the erosion of demarcations - not multiskilling' - which is the key issue for managers . Such a development may seem unimpressive in relation to strategies pursued by competitor countries such as Japan . However, such moves share some characteristics with these strategies . For instance, to the extent that the IDS survey was able to identify the principles underlying changes in work practices in UK manufacturing, the main motive appeared to be the elimination of idle time in production (downtime, waiting time and so on) and increased rates of machine utilisation . These principles are reflected in these comments of the Director-General of the Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) :

We need to make maximum use of plant and machinery by eliminating restrictive practices, by having full flexibility between and within trades and occupations and between supervisor and supervised . . . [and] . . . in order to make better use of plant and equipment our member companies need to be able to adopt flexible working times when required (quoted in Wickens, 1987 : 41) . In the engineering industry these requirements have led to pressure for flexibility between crafts . However, there is no evidence that a 'multi skilled craftworker' is emerging . Negotiations toward the more limited end of a measure of flexibility between trades have been fraught with difficulty . National level talks between the EEF and the CSEU collapsed in 1987 .

Workplace flexibility The result has been a highly uneven pattern of local agreements . Weakened unions and the uncompetitive position of British capital in a period of recession has led to a number of attempts to introduce a measure of flexibility between crafts . For example, the shipbuilding industry has seen agreements which have led the erosion of demarcations eroded at the likes of Swan Hunter (Financial Times, 27 .6 .88), Tyne Shiprepair (IDs, 1988a) as well as the recent far-reaching agreement at Harland and Wolff (Financial Times, 16 .8 .88) . One of the main principles underlying these agreements is highlighted in the most advanced agreements . At Babcock Power, Renfrew - an engineering company making boilers the aim of introducing flexibility between crafts was 'to eliminate non-productive waiting time from direct labour' (IDs, 1986 : 4) . However, the Babcock management stress that for the most part a worker will use 'his primary skill' (ibid .) . Nevertheless waiting time can be reduced when an electrician or a mechanic removes a guard from a machine before repairing, say, a motor, rather than waiting for a fitter . To require more than this from workers would require a deal of training which many firms are not prepared to countenance . (The failings of UK management in this regard are usefully examined in Financial Times, 4 .9 .87 . For a view of the very different West German system see Financial Times, 25 .8 .88) . The findings of IDS are supported by those of Cross who reports the views of managers in fifty companies which had attempted to deal with the demarcation issue . He concludes that : the major factor causing the blurring [of demarcations JTI is economic pressure to reduce lost production through breakdowns, labour costs, and as a result of changes in the technology of the machines (1985 : 69) . IDS (1986) reports that one Yorkshire manufacturing firm introduced a series of measures to increase labour flexibility as a means to reducing machine downtime . A new pay structure yields payments on hours saved in the changeover and repair of machines . As a result, downtime was reduced from around 5-6% to 2 .5% with maintenance engineers usually achieving the maximum available bonus . While the progress toward 'craft flexibility' has been slow there is a more discernible trend toward introducing some

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48

measure of flexibility into production work . In part this can be related to altered work requirements as a result of technical change : for instance a higher level of automation might mean that job cycles are lengthened to allow multi-machine minding of the kind common in Japanese plants . However, while developments such as semi-autonomous group working at Borg Warner's South Wales car component plant (Financial Times, 21 .4 .88 ; Eaton, 1988), or modular batch production at Hewlett-Packard's Bristol plant (Financial Times, 21 .11 .88) and high levels of functional flexibility at Pirelli's automated wire plant at Aberdare (The Guardian, 4 .4 .88), are widely publicised, there is no evidence that they represent the norm in UK industry . Flexibility in production work can draw on the most basic Japanese methods . This appears to represent the most transferable aspect of Japanese work methods as Wickens account of Nissan in north-east England makes clear . There the approach is to expand all jobs 'as much as possible' . For instance, production workers become responsible for cleaning and maintaining their own work area which has the effect of tightening individual work practices : If the man on the line is responsible for keeping it clean, he will be less inclined to make it dirty in the first place (Wickens, 1987 : 45) . The significance of this is that heightened effort levels are increasingly built into the system . One Ford worker described the effects of the 'After Japan' strategy at Dagenham : Flexibility means that every 102 seconds a car comes by, and not only do you have to screw something into the car, but in between you have to tidy up, check your tools, repair things and check you've got enough parts . You do not have a single job any more . If there is no work on the line they move you to where there is work . You are working the whole time (quoted in the Financial Times, 8 .2 .88) . Horizontal job enlargement appears to be the most commonly reported form of workplace 'flexibility' . It is notable that this much is conceded by Atkinson and Meager (1987) . The attachment of minor maintenance tasks and certain quality control functions to production workers, on the other

Workplace flexibility

hand, is invariably presented as enriching jobs by proponents of flexibility such as Wickens (1987) . However, for workers such 'enrichment' often appears as more of the same routine tasks . Turnbull quotes one West Midlands factory worker thus : The jobs are just the same as before, you just do more of them . And there's no big deal to assigning quality control to direct operators - you just stick the components under a feeler gauge several times a day to check things are going OK (1987 : 12) . The advantage for the firm is highlighted by Coriat's (1980) study of Renault's Le Mans plant in the 1970s where self-regulation led to a reduction in rectification work and the abolition of certain categories of maintenance work . This translated into savings in production time . In the UK context, it appears, the principles of scientific management underlie the introduction of information technology, not emancipatory craftwork . Scarbrough and Moran (1985) report that while the Austin Rover (now Rover Group) Metro line at Longbridge is seen as an example of high automation, significant changes have occurred in more labour intensive parts of the plant . In the power train area technological change has occurred in the form of a Machine Monitoring System (MMs) 'an electronic information gathering system' (Scarbrough and Moran, 1985 : 209, see also Scarbrough, 1986) . One production manager summarised the function of the MMS as 'to look for the idle buggers' (ibid . ) . A similar aim can be seen behind the system of remote control and monitoring developed and introduced by British Coal . The system is hierarchical and centralised (Chandler, 1978) and designed to increase capital utilisation (Steel, 1988) . This end is partly achieved by monitoring the activity of face equipment and, by implication, face workers . The aim is to remove delays from the coal getting process . One manager described the (theoretical) advantages of the FIDO (Face Information Digested On-line) system : The system improves communications . The controller knows immediately the face is stopped ; he does not have to rely on a message from underground . Using the status display, and his own knowledge and experience, he can often interpret what is happening on the face . When he

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contacts the face his questions are direct and to the point . People underground are aware of the resources that are available to the controller . They realise he will not be fobbed off with imprecise information, hence their replies to his questions are more accurate (Cleary, 1981 : 288) . The aim of such technology is the greater utilisation of existing mining machinery as BC management have made clear :

50

We must no longer accept our coalfaces operating at perhaps only a third of their potential on each shift . We must increase the proportion of time when the face equipment and the whole infrastructure which serves it, is actually working at full stretch (Sir Robert Haslam quoted in Financial Times, 16 .4 .87) . Whether such systems operate in the ways hoped for by management remains an open question . However, management intentions are revealed as essentially Taylorist, despite the presence of high technology . In sum, the evidence on the UK situation suggests that a number of discernible and significant changes are occurring at the point of production in manufacturing . Hirst and Zeitlin (1989), as proponents of the flexible specialisation thesis have little to say about the nature of the recent UK productivity performance . The UK experience is defined only in negative terms ; that is, as the absence of 'flexible specialisation' . In fact, the piecemeal and halting experiments which characterise workplace flexibility do cohere around the problematic of how to heighten levels of capital utilisation and the conversion of higher levels of work time into directly productive activity .

Conclusions

The foregoing sections have been concerned with establishing two points which have serious consequences for the flexible specialisation thesis . Firstly, it is argued that within the workplace there is no generalisable trend toward the technologically driven flexible craft work suggested by the flexible specialisation theorists . Secondly, it is suggested that workplace flexibility, even in its most advanced forms does not guarantee the benefits for labour implied by its proponents . This concluding section attempts to offer some elements of an alternative theorisation and to address some political impli-

Workplace flexibility cations for the labour movement . The term flexible specialisation has been used to cover such a wide range of experiments and changes in technology, work organisation and political institutions that any precision it might once have had has been lost . The previous sections showed that capitalist enterprises are following many different strategies and that assigning a determining role in such developments to reprogrammable manufacturing technologies is problematic to say the least . One central contention of the exponents of flexible specialisation is that the imperative to which it gives rise is undermining the basis of Taylorist and Fordist methods of production organisation . However, the evidence offered in this paper tends to support a different conclusion . I suggested above that the factor which united the disparate efforts to restructure workplace relations was the attempt to raise the rate of capital utilisation through a reintegration of work tasks . This is particularly important where investments in new, high cost flexible technologies are concerned . However, as the UK example appears to suggest, the restructuring of work practices within the context of the existing capital stock can give rise to significant improvements in productivity . The pursuit of such ends is not new . The pursuit of increased labour control and closer management of time in production is a central capitalist problematic . The rise of the factory system (Marglin, 1974), the emergence of factory discipline (Thompson, 1967) and the transition from manufacture to machinofacture (Marx, 1974) are examples of shifting capitalist strategies in the pursuit of these ends (see Aglietta, 1979) . In the twentieth century the growth of capital intensity in manufacturing spurred Taylor's original efforts to formulate a means of scientific management, principally as a means to increase plant utilisation and productivity through a heightened control over labour (Sohn Rethel, 1978) . For Taylor the use of time and control studies and the assessment of unit times allowed management this new control . This in turn allowed the intense fragmentation of work tasks (based on the separation of conception and execution) and the subsequent speeding of productive operations (Taylor, 1947 ; Braverman, 1974) . Increasingly, and particularly within certain key sectors of manufacturing, such principles came to be embodied

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within the physical plant of the 'Fordist' assembly line (e .g . Sohn Rethel, 1978 ; Aglietta, 1979) . The crisis of this system of work and production organisation lay in the heightened levels of class conflict which occurred at the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, particularly in those industries where such principles were most developed (e .g . Aglietta, 1979 ; Bosquet, 1977 ; Coriat, 1984 ; Holloway, 1987 ; Negri, 1989) . The fragmented work process based around the assembly line was particularly difficult to coordinate and intensify . From management's viewpoint, these problems were exacerbated by the forms of labour organisation adopted by workers in order to retain control over effort levels and the pace of the line (e .g . seniority rules, demarcation lines) . The attack on these principles was necessary in order to overcome the productivity crisis . Flexible work practices ranging from job expansion to teamworking can be seen, therefore, as means to reduce the lost time arising from job demarcation and hierarchical division . It was the response to this real and observable crisis of control and productivity which stimulated the present reorganisation of work practices, not the 'thousand imponderables' and technological autonomy described by Piore and Sabel (1984) . What is striking about current attempts to restructure the relations of production in new ways is the presence of strong continuities with the past as the examples above showed . The focus on new forms of labour control through electronic surveillance, forms of neoTaylorism -via Japanese work methods, or through subjecting group working to time study methods - represent new developments of existing tendencies . The re-integration of some tasks or the introduction of controlled group working can be seen as efforts to reduce the 'porosity' of the working day . Moreover, the existence of relatively inexpensive microelectronic systems means that the work system and productive process can be subject to a higher degree of management regulation . Invariably at the heart of the changes is an intensification of the work process . The pursuit of these concerns have been as characterised as the search for 'a new economy of time and control' in production (Coriat, 1980 ; 1984) . What can also be seen is that within this broad problematic a wide range of strategies can be discerned . These invariably involve the attempt by management to introduce elements of 'flexibility' (task mobil-

Workplace flexibility ity) and can even, within tight limits, involve a degree of work group autonomy . This is the grain of truth in the flexible specialisation thesis . However, there is no evidence of a trend toward a computer assisted craft worker . What is clear is that there are many forms of flexibility confronting workers in the advanced capitalist countries . These include the demand for some polyvalence and task mobility, the weakening of constraints on the employment contract, the deregulation of wages and wage security, and the abandonment of rules restricting management prerogatives . As Boyer points out, far from these leading to emancipatory forms of work organisation, most indicators which measure the development of different forms of flexibility in the OECD countries suggests the opposite : In these times of crisis, flexibility strategies have entailed, under various euphemisms, the downward adjustment of hitherto established conditions of employment of workers (Boyer, 1987 : 115 ;) . In short, there is no evidence that the tendencies of the past one hundred years are being reversed . Rather what we witness is the extension and redevelopment of existing forms of labour control and efficiency maximisation . The description of present restructuring as leading to and somehow requiring a new more equal partnership between capital and labour is central to the flexible specialisation thesis . Clearly in a period of working class retreat such a message can have a powerful appeal to new realists . The rhetoric of flexible specialisation (and its 'post-Fordist' variant) have been used by managements, union bureaucracies and London magazines to urge workforces to accept the reorganisation of work practices or inward investment from firms associated with 'flexible' forms of production . One political expression of flexible specialisation is 'business unionism' wherein the reality and diversity of workplace change is lost behind a barrage of exhortation directed at workforces and requiring them to be more 'co-operative' and 'flexible' (Communist Party, 1989) . The dangers in such a strategy are rapidly becoming apparent (see Foster and Woolfson, 1989) . To the extent that workers in core industries accept the message of the new realists and adopt intensification and flexibility as guarantors

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of job security based on ensuring high productivity and competitiveness, this is leading to the peripheralisation of those groups excluded from this new corporatist agreement . However, this peripheralisation can be used to undermine the centrality of core groups . Ironically, perhaps, this process is highlighted in the recent practices of those countries said to be exemplars of the trend toward flexible specialisation . The decision of Bosch to locate its new car component plant in South Wales is a case in point . A key motivation behind the choice of South Wales is the favourable wage rates prevailing there in comparison to West Germany . In 1987 the average employment cost for a German worker in the component industry was DM33 per hour compared to DM 18 per hour in the UK . Consequently, it is estimated by Bosch that it will produce alternators for 15-20 % less in Wales than it could West Germany (Financial Times, 18 .4 .89) . The level of mobility possessed by capital makes the West German high wage/high productivity coalition look particularly fragile . The new deal between GM and the West German unions which is seen as having far reaching implications for labour practices in that country, illustrates how flexibility is being used to undermine rather than enhance the position of workers in industries such as cars . The deal on working hours for the intensive operation of plant and equipment was already in place in GM's low wage plants in Zaragoza and Antwerp . IG Metall were unable to resist this encroachment on working conditions in the name of flexibility (Financial Times, 8 .3 .89) . The pursuit of low cost, flexible labour also lay behind Ford's decision to relocate production of its Sierra from Dagenham to Genk (Financial Times, 19 .1 .89, 30 .1 .89) . Rather than develop an internationally based strategy to undermine Ford's attempts to play one group of workers off against another, the response of TGWU leaders such as Jack Adams was to urge workers to attain higher levels of productivity in order to persuade Ford to reverse the decision (Financial Times, 27 .1 .89) . The point is a simple one : that flexibility is being established on capital's terms . Flexibility, therefore is part of the problem, not the answer . The significance of the flexible specialisation thesis lies in its attempt to dispense with class struggle - both as a cause of the crisis and as a response to it . As the preceding

Workplace flexibility paragraphs showed,

attempts to establish firm-based co-

operative industrial relations and new institutions of corporatism are irrelevant so long as the power of multinational corporations to relocate at will and to negotiate flexibility from a position of historic strength remain unchallenged . The political programme associated with the flexible specialisation thesis offers no attempt to undermine the centres of capitalist decision making . In reality, where we can point to positive outcomes to restructuring such as in some of the Swedish or West German experiments the key explanatory variable has been the presence of a strong, well informed and articulate trade union movement which often in the face of tough odds has been able to negotiate benefits for its members (see Wainwright, 1987) . What is required are not prescriptive outlines of capital's new agenda but a rigorous analysis of the diversity of contemporary capitalist strategies in the present crisis as a prelude to the construction of a socialist alternative . A strong and independent trade union movement is a prerequisite of this .

I would like to acknowledge the comments and advice of Ash Amin and Ken Ducatel in the preparation of this paper .

55



Capital & Class

56 Figure showing reduction in idle time through team concepts at GM's Aspern plant (Vienna)

Maintenance Inspect-on

Metenal- and Droduct,onscontrol

`' Aoduct~p+

\

~~

114 I `,

"ant enpineenn0

r W~~

~ AATime worked

,,

Idle time

Teem concept

Tine worked

Idle time Reduction in iota, Idle time

Source : V . Haas, 'Team-konzept : Mitarbeiter planen and betreiben ihr Arbeitssystem' . Paper presented to the iAOArbeitsagung 'Weltsbewerbs fahige Arbeitssyteme' 22-23 November, 1983 . Bobingen . Cited in Ulrich Jurgens, Knuth Dohse, Thomas Malsch, 'New production concepts in West German car plants' in S . Tolliday and J . Zeitlin (eds) The Automobile Industry and its Workers London, Polity Press, 1988 .

Workplace flexibility Abernathy, W ., K . Clark, A . Kantrow, (1983)

producing a competitive future for America

Industrial Renaissance:

New York, Basic Books .

ACAS (1988) 'Labour flexibility in Britain : the 1987 ACAS survey'

Occasional paper 41,

London_ Arbitration, Conciliation and

Advice Service . Aglietta, M . (1979)

A theory of capitalist regulation: the us experience,

London, NLB Aguren, S ., C . Bredbacka, R . Hansson, K . Ihregren, K . Karlsson (1984) Volvo,

Kalmar Revisited: Ten years of experience,

Stockholm,

Efficiency and Participation Development Council (sAF, LO, PTK) .

Atkinson, J . (1987) Flexibility or fragmentation? The United Kingdom labour market in the eighties'

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12, 1 .

Atkinson, J ., N . Meager (1987) 'Is flexibility just a flash in the pan?'

Personnel Management,

September .

Auer, P . (1985) 'Industrial relations, work organisation and new technology : the Volvo case' Discussion paper IIM/LMP 85-10, Berlin : Wissenschaftszentrum . Bean, C ., J . Symons (1989) 'Ten years of Mrs T' Centre for Labour Economics, London, London School of Economics . Berggren, C . (1989) '"New production concepts' in final assembly - the Swedish experience' in S . Wood (ed .)

of Work?, London, Unwin Hyman . Bosquet, M . Capitalism in Crisis and Everyday Life,

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Braverman, H . (1974)

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Monthly Review Press . Chandler, K . (1978) 'MINOS - a system for central control at collieries'

tems,

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Cleary, J . (1981) 'FrDo at Bold colliery',

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CPGB .

Coriat, B . (1980) 'The restructuring of the assembly line : a new economy of time and control' Coriat,

B.

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Non!, 10,

November-December . Coriat, B . (1984) 'Labor and capital in the crisis : France 1966-82' in M . Kesselman (ed .)

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Reinhart Kossler and Mammo Muchie American Dreams and Soviet Realities : Socialism and Taylorism A Reply to Chris Nyland' • The evaluation of Scientific Management has been forcefully put back on the agenda of social analysis and political debate by Braverman (1974) and since has remained a prominent issue . A recent contribution (Nyland, 1987) has once again pointed to the linkage between the issue of the organisation of industrial work under capitalism on one hand and the transfer of such forms and methods to Soviet-type societies, a social environment we consider fundamentally different from capitalism, though certainly not 'socialist' . 2 Recent developments have shown with unprecedent clarity the need to distinguish between the concept of socialism and a societal form which has been termed, e .g . by Heller et al ., 'Soviet type societies' . In this evaluation of Soviet experience and the conventional Soviet concept of 'real existing socialism' we see the reasons for some of our basic disagreements with Nyland, who fervently claims the compatibility of Taylorism and socialism . This raises a number of questions fundamental to the content and meaning of 'socialism' and its relation to the development of industrial forces of production under capitalism . Above all, Nyland's argument hinges on basic assumptions on the neutrality of 'science', 'progress' and even 'planning' on a societal

After a brief review of the development of Taylorism in the us, the authors provide an account of the introduction of Taylorism into the Soviet Union under party control. They insist that Taylorism operates to dispossess workers of control in the productive process and cannot 61 therefore, be used for socialist strategies of social and economic transformation .

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62

scale, which he does not elaborate, but which in our view cannot pass unopposed . In the following, we propose to address these issues from the angle of Taylorism's actual performance in two radically different social settings - in the United States, where it originated and whence it was propagated along with various other 'American methods' of industrial management, and in early Soviet attempts to adapt Scientific Management to a project of development with socialist pretentions . The performance of Taylorism in the United States was far removed from the success story Nyland seems to imply ; its transfer to Soviet Russia dovetailed with Jacobine and technicist tendencies inherent in the Bolshevik project of social transformation and industrial development . These very tendencies militate against the notion of socialism, if this be more than merely nationalisation of means of production coupled with a formal centralised planning process . Rather, socialism is about peoples' chances to forge their own (working) lives .

American Dreams : Taylorism as an ideology and the limits of its implementation 3

In assessing the impact of Frederick E . Taylor's experiments in industrial management and of his writings, it is paramount to distinguish between the actual changes of work places and work processes effected by him and his influence and the ideological repercussions originating from the propagation of his views . In the us, the latter was the more important by far . 'As a practical tool of increasing capitalist control, Taylorism was a failure' (Burawoy, 1985, pp . 41-2) ; this very failure pointed, to some extent, to the need of technological change which was to go far beyond the organisational rearrangement of existing machinery that had been the essence of Taylorism . This was to be embodied in the technological and social upheaval wrought by Fordism . Taylor's experiments on and changes of work processes induced, in terms of technology, merely incremental modifications . The achievements of his scientific management lay in the perfection of work tasks already defined by existing machinery (see Nelson, 1980 ; Piore and Sabel, 1984, pp . 45 et seq .) . In this, Taylor was able to build on the specific us thrust of mechanization, abstracting to the utmost from the manual process and thereby negating 'traditional' skills of handicraft production and concurrent methods still prevalent

Socialism and Taylorism in European industry (Giedion, 1948) . While part of this general thrust, Taylor significantly did not add to this specific process of mechanisation in terms of any major technical innovation . The central importance of Taylor lay not in technological innovation, but rather in restructuring the technical division of labour inside the factory . This places him into the context of a larger movement : Taylor's predecessors, the so-called systematisers of work management (cf. Thompson ed ., 1917 ; Haber, 1964) all aimed at improved accountability through the re-organisation of shops according to this rationale . Thus, Captain H . Metcalfe's suggestions for making the office the central source of authority as well as the point of convergence of information from all circumferential points foreshadowed the severance of conception from execution and the separation of powers between those who authorised and those who recorded as advocated by Taylor (1885/86, p . 440-2) . In the systematic form set forth by Taylor during the first decade of this century, 4 the quest for economic efficiency of the capitalist firm forms the central rationale . Bottlenecks were to be removed and authority concentrated with the concomitant domestication of workers . Thus, Scientific Management in this classic form comprised (1), an organisational theory of the factory ; (2), the fragmentation, specialisation and standardisation of work tasks ; and (3), a differentiated piecerate system in contrast to other means of sharing out productivity gains . Taylor conceived the transition from the machine shop culture to the large-scale factory as involving the introduction of a hierarchical and autocratic organisation . This implies strictly centralised authority vested with the functions of planning which had to be wrested from the shop floor (cf . Taylor, 1907, p . 56) . Co-operation at the point of production was to be replaced by functional hierarchy to break whatever power the workgroups could wield in terms of 'systematic soldiering' (Taylor, 1903, p . 32) . This systematic break-up of relations of solidarity, while certainly not a necessary outflow of advanced management strategies (see Littler, 1982, pp . 55 et seq .), forms a necessary corollary to any concept of task fragmentation . By the functional set-up of the works, Taylor hoped to ensure their running smoothly even when the manager and superintendents were away for a prolonged period of time (cf.

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Haber, 1964, p . 25) . Scientific Management thus was conceived as a means to replace human intervention and individual idiosyncrasy by objective, technical structure, albeit still kept going by the intervention of labour power . These lives agents were, however, themselves to be standardised and devoid of the capacity to exercise their will and initiative as far as possible given the technological stage of development . This seeming objectivity carried with it the halo of the scientific . The main thrust of Taylor's organisational theory was to shift power within the factory towards mental labour which in turn was to be enclosed in the planning department, separate from manual processes which were to be reduced to the mere execution of the directives originating in the planning department . Engineers, as the representatives of the salvational powers of science, Taylor conceived as the neutral and objective arbiters between the workers and the 'bosses' ; more precisely, the objective system of Scientific Management itself, put into place by the engineers, was to fulfill that function (cf. Taylor, 1912, pp . 216-19) . It was through these various organisation principles, rather than through 'Taylorism' conceived as some specific 'system' of measures that Taylor was to make his tremendous impact on management practices (cf. Kelly, 1982, pp . 25-8) . All these changes in management practice revolved around highly ideological issues and objectives . Taylor made no bones that what was needed to overcome the perceived sloth of 'bad' management was a 'complete change of mind' both on the side of the workers and of the employer . He thus proposed not only organisational changes but claimed to create, by these means, a community of interest between capital and labour (1912, p . 146) . 'Scientific' methods of management were also to supplant collective bargaining (cf . ibid ., p . 143-53) . Taylor's quest for maximum performance was reflected in his reliance on the virtuoso worker for his experiments . This approach ignored individual fluctuations and variations in personal capability of performing workers . Taking top efficiency as the point of departure fostered the relentless speed-up of work . In combination with the widespread introduction of payment by result, Taylorism amounted to a means of the systematic intensification of the labour process aiming at the quan-

Socialism and Taylorism titative maximum of output rather than a qualitative optimum . The latter rationale, achievement of the best result, which is not necessarily identical with the maximum, clearly would be in the interest of labour . But this was not Taylor's concern . The only promise held out to workers in compensation for their loss of control and competence was the hope of productivity increases in part to be shared out to the work force . A corollary of the organisational changes and of the quest for the maximum was the specialisation and fragmentation of tasks : Again, the engineer, as a supposedly impartial arbiter between capital and labour enforcing matter-of-fact imperatives (cf. Marcuse, 1941), was invested with the power to evolve task specialisation and to find the optimal work path to yield maximum results . The technique of scientific rate fixing evolved at Bethlehem steel mill, revolved around systematic reduction of task into its components ; each componnent was then to be optimised, and the various components were synthesised to afford the 'one best way' of their combination (cf. Thompson, 1917, pp . 77-96) . Techniques for task specialisation also include the rationalisation of production flows through graphical analysis, reorganising factory layout and materials planning as well as spatial techniques for task differentiation . Task reduction was identified by Taylor as the strategic component of his programme . Time and motion studies with selected workers giving their maximum performance became the main methods employed in their pursuit by Taylor and his followers, e .g . Gilbreth (1911) . The- stopwatch and the film camera thus became hallmarks of his methods and seeming guarantees for an 'objective' and scientific approach (cf. Noble, 1977, p . 274) . Although Taylor relied for his analysis on simple tasks such as shoveling or bricklaying, he claimed universal validity for his method . Fragmentation and decomposition of tasks enabled their routinisation and standardisation, which in turn fostered one to one assignment of the worker and the reduced task, reducing the worker to the status of a machine and complementing his loss of control noted earlier . Nor does this exhaust the social consequences and implications of Taylor's programme . To make reorganised workshops effective, workers had to be induced to work harder . Taylor proposed to achieve this by a

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differential wage system . Here also, the key innovation was the 'accurate and scientific study of unit times' which enabled to establish a strict relationship between output and earnings (Taylor, 1911, p . 58) . Labour's compliance to this set-up was to be 'enforced' (see Taylor, 1907, p . 54) by the stick of technical rearrangements fragmenting tasks and decomposing skills and by the carrot of differential piece rates and elaborate, highly differential bonus and premium systems . Industrial co-operation enforced according to Taylor's scheme necessarily turns into the forcible break-up of labour's solidarity . Taylor's claim to solidarity of interest in increased productivity or 'universally friendly co-operation between management and the men' (1911, p . 28) refers to a labour force now consisting of atomised individuals, bound to suspect one another's pay rolls and finding themselves in continuous mutual competition . Taylorism thus was conceived to consolidate and reenforce the division between mental and manual labour and specifically, to counter the traditions of labour solidarity . The halo of neutral science did not prevent workers and their unions from recognising this . We only refer to the opposition and resistance scientific management met in its country of origin (cf . Foner, 1964, pp . 180-2) as well as in Europe, e .g . in the major struggle upon its introduction in the Renault works in 1913 (cf. Heron, 1972, pp . 236-40) . Thus, while not disputing the potential relevance of Taylorism for 'planned' production in the factory as well as in the entire economy as stressed by Nyland, we consider established the clear linkage of his 'science' of rationalisation to the valorisation interest of capital and the anti-working class thrust of the methods associated with it . This, however, should not be taken as an indicator of over-all effectiveness . Taylorism was effective not so much in restructuring actual production processes as in endowing the rising engineering profession with an ideology that endowed them with a collective identity as the executors of the imperatives of 'science' . The rise of the engineering profession is inseparably bound to the rise of corporate capitalism in the us as its 'racing heart' (Noble, 1977, p . xxv) . It arose from an intimate relationship of the early engineers with both management and science (cf. ib ., pp . 41 et seq .) which led them to formulate the very problems they tackled in terms of capitalist valoris-

Socialism and Taylorism ation interests, as Marcuse observed in discussing 'technological rationality' : 'Men, in following their own reason, follow those who put their reason to profitable use' (1941, p . 424) . Scientific Management, especially in the form it acquired by Taylor's heirs and followers, was well suited to respond to the scientific aspirations and practical bend of the emerging engineering profession . But Nyland's correlation of the growth in the rate of profit with the ascendancy of this bundle of management methods is unconvincing . We can agree that labour productivity did increase at a high rate while Scientific Management served as an ideology for us industrialisation . There our agreement ends . It may very well be that a positive correlation between the advent of Scientific Management and growth points to the potential conversion of ideas into material results . But the claim that the historical rise of the us rate of profit is actually owing to Taylorism is unacceptable ; this claim is spurious in particular in the face of the very limited extent to which Taylor's methods have actually been applied, as pointed out above . It is further highly questionable with a view of later problems incurred in drives for industrial reorganisation where, e .g . during the introduction of N/C technology, 'management strategies and objectives' conceived along the lines of Taylorism 'tended invariably to intensify worker hostility and resistance, thus . . . provoking serious challenge to its goals' (Noble, 1984, p . 266) . Successive technological transformation drives and the concomitant institution of corresponding social arrangements at the point of production have increasingly laid bare the political, i .e . social power relations inherent in the organisation and management of industrial production (see Burawoy, 1985) . Thus more than ever, technology appears inseparably linked to the basic social forms, i .e . relations of production and relations 'in' production, that have fostered it in the first place . Taylorism thus was rooted squarely in the framework of the valorisation interests of capital . It militated openly against powerful labour organisations and aimed systematically at eliminating formal as well as informal power positions workers had acquired inside the factory, above all thanks to their knowledge of the production process . This applies also to extending Taylorist methods of organisation and planning beyond the individual firm, eventually to encompass all of

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society, a perspective Nyland seems particularly fond of and which was also on the mind of Lenin when he assessed the gain of rationality inherent in Taylorism but, in his view, still cloaked under the shell of capitalist relations . Despite its clear class bias, its scientific pretensions accorded to Taylorism an aura of a neutral element of objective technical progress, part of which was the engineering profession . In the context of pre-World War I Marxism, shaped by Kautskyan conceptions of social evolution and by the concomitant blind confidence in the inevitable progress towards socialism and communism, 5 this scientific claim was bound to have a certain appeal . This applied not least to the Russian Bolsheviks who had been nurtured in the tradition of the evolutionist and scientistic stances of the Second International . As will be seen in the next section, this attitude endured even after October Revolution which had implied the momentary shedding of evolutionist policies when the Bolsheviks linked up with the actual urban as well as rural mass movements and proclaimed their demands . The recourse to Taylorist methods of industrial management that first has been sanctioned in Soviet Russian by Lenin and Trotsky early in 1918 also showed that earlier views still continued to be operative .

Soviet realities : scientific organization of work under party control

The programmes set forth by Taylor, and much more effectively later on by Henry Ford, aimed not just at technological innovation and enhanced industrial efficiency but, above all, at a thorough reconstruction of the relations of distribution as well as of the `relations in production' (Burawoy, 1985) within the framework of capitalism . They appealed to the Bolsheviks precisely because of their supposedly neutral character and thus were taken as the latest step of progress in the objective development of forces of production . Still, when applied with the non-capitalist environment of Soviet Russia, viz ., the Soviet Union, Taylorism/Fordism underwent substantial reworking, which intensified after the close of the Civil War in 1920 . While Taylor predominated at first, Ford was taken as an important guide in mapping out Soviet industrialisation strategy during the mid-twenties (cf. Bailes, 1981, pp . 432 et seq . ) .

This process of adaptation raises the question of convergencies between Taylorism/Fordism and the Bolshevik

Socialism and Taylorism development project . The central socio-political tenet of both Taylor and Ford was the ultimate harmony of interests between employers and wage labourers . This was not merely ideological : Especially in its Fordist variant, the new arrangement held out some promise for workers for levels of mass consumption, heretofore unheard-of . We therefore have to turn first to the class-politics which marked the adaption of Scientific Management to Soviet conditions .

The Bolsheviks, the working class and Taylor" Supposed harmony of interest finds an important corollary in the basic situation of the post-revolutionary firm as seen by leading Bolsheviks and, above all, by the Stalinist leadership during the industrialisation drive of the twenties and thirties . Even though Lenin had rejected explicitly the supposition of an identity of interest between the Soviet state and the working class right after the Civil War (cf . Desyatyi s'ezd, 1963, p . 308), the assertion of their specific interests by Soviet workers, especially in the form of strikes, was precarious throughout the NEP period and significantly became outlawed altogether once the industrialisation effort of the first Five Year Plans got under way (cf. Plogstedt 1980) . As will be seen presently, even before that, workers' empirical everyday behaviour might be considered to conflict with the objective class-interest of the proletariat, and it may be useful to remind ourselves that Lenin had stressed always the difference between proletarian class consciousness and the 'trade-unionist' consciousness that he conceived of as the outer limit which workers might be able to attain spontaneously, i .e . without the intervention of the vanguard party (cf. Lw 5, pp . 355551, esp . chpt . 4) . The supposed identity of interests between management and work force lead the Soviet leaders into echoing arguments put forth during the 1920s by reformist labour leaders in the West vis-d-vis the Taylorist/Fordist quest of 'rationalisation' (cf. i .a . Suss, 1985, p . 139) . If parts of the labour movement in Western Europe may have had some reason at this time to put their stakes with the promise of consumerism, such a perspective had, in the Soviet case, to be regulated to the faroff future (cf. i .a . Berkhin, ed . 1981, pp . 64 et seq .) It had not been achieved even today, as Gorbachev's vociferous

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demand for 'speeding up' (uskorenie) testifies (cf . 1987, part I passim) . While present both in the Western and in the Soviet application of 'rationalisation', supposed identity of interest between labour and management thus rested on different assumptions as well as realities . When the reception of Scientific Management in Soviet Russia began in earnest (c . 1920), the proletariat which had been the urban class base of the revolution had largely disappeared . The shrinkage of the work force was reversed only during the second year of NEP, in 1922 (Sokolov, 1987, pp . 138 et seq .) . Clearly, this was not just a process involving numbers . Skilled and political experienced workers were thrown at the Civil War fronts and replaced by newcomers ; money wages manifestly were insufficient for living and had to be subsidised by various sidelines and especially by revitalised links to the countryside . All this led Lenin, leading a party claiming to represent the proletariat, to the fateful declaration that 'our industrial proletariat . . . is declassed, is thrown off its class rails and has ceased to exist as a proletariat' (LW 33, p . 46 ; Lenin's emphasis) . Even : ' . . . are our social and economic conditions such that genuine proletarians go to the works and factories? Not by any means . . . Very frequently those going are not proletarians but various casual elements' (LW 33, p . 286, our emphasis) . This is consistent with Lenin's concept of the proletariat as a 'specific class' destined to topple the bourgeoisie (Lw 25, p . 416 ; our emphasis), in contrast to Marx's conception of the proletariat as the general class which was to overcome all kinds of class domination (cf . MEW 1, p . 390) . The 'specific' class with its 'specific' mission was now supplanted by its representative party which was to create an economic and above all industrial basis for the reconstruction of the class itself . This perceived situation translated into a large-scale education programme directed at the 'empirical' workforce in the factories during the early twenties and which was central to Lenin's programme of 'cultural revolution' (see i .a . Claudin-Urondo, 1977) . This analysis re-enforced the industrialist and modernist bias inherent to Bolshevik thinking long before the Revolution, which in turn merged into the broader current of amerikanizm in Russian social thinking, fostering the transplantation of 'American' ways of problem solution to Russia (cf . Rogger, 1981) .

Socialism and Taylorism The stage had been set for a positive reception of Taylor's message before the revolution (cf. Linhart, 1976, pp . 84 et seq .) This tendency was re-enforced in the early years of Soviet power not least by Lenin's advocacy of adapting the most 'advanced' industrial methods of production . This blended with the drive for educating the working class so as to conform to the exigencies of modern industrial work . The October Revolution provided a powerful thrust for concretising thoughts on post-revolutionary society and, at the same time, was a profound lesson in the organisational and political potential of Russian worker and peasant masses . Apparently, Lenin at first attached important political implications to more effective methods of production : above all, additional free time for administration of both factories and the state . In spring 1918, he retraced his steps to conform with earlier tenets . Administrative work was relegated outside working hours to a spare time occupation, and Lenin personally enforced a decision in favour of 'one-man management' (edinonachalie) against the clear majority of the first AllRussian Conference of the Economic Councils (cf . SNKh,

1918, p . 259) . Lenin's emphasis on the chasm opening between the work competence of Russians and the development of productive forces achieved under Western capitalism foreshadowed the later call for 'cultural revolution' ; where he bewails 'the Russian man' as a 'poor worker compared to other nations' (Lw 27, p . 249), the Bolshevik revolution unfolds as a gigantic project of modernisation, the prime task being the modernisation of the work force : 'To learn working - this task Soviet power has to set before the people in all its extent' (ibid .) . This meant, above all, educating the Russian workers in thorough accounting, thrift, hard work, honesty and strictest discipline (cf. ibid ., p . 233) . The rigid division of work between 'hand' and 'head' implied in Taylor's organisational programme relates revealingly to the well-known set-up of the Bolshevik vanguard party made up of intellectuals and explicitly set apart from the working masses . From this derived the centralist structure of the Party (Lenin Lw 7, pp . 262 et seq .) . In both Lenin and Taylor, the rigorous division of tasks between 'head' and 'hand' was intimately linked to strong centralist tendencies . The ready acceptance of Taylorism by

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the Bolsheviks thus is by no means a 'curiosity of history' (Bailes, 1977, p . 376n .) . Rather, Taylorism appealed to crucial, mutually related tenets of Bolshevism, modernism and centralism . The relevance of this appeal increased during periods where the Bolsheviks in power found themselves called upon to map out the reconstruction of the Soviet state and economy without being able to fall back on the assistance of more 'advanced' revolutionary societies that originally had been expected to join the country of the October Revolution . These periods can be identified, as the brief 'respite' early in 1918 and, more importantly, the post-Civil War situation . Even in 1918, debate had addressed Taylorism, while the main bone of contention had been the management of the firm . The quest for edinonachalie brought out most clearly centralist attitudes and set the scene for the line pursued after victory in the Civil War . Edinonachalie now had been boosted by the experience of the Red Army, frequently referred to in justification (cf. Etchin, 1930, p . 13), although it definitely supplanted the collegiate body of 'troika' only during the First Five Year Plan from 1929 onwards (cf . Suss, 1981, pp . 328

et seq .) .

The overriding principle, however, of projecting

machinism onto the level of society, as stated in Lenin's demand to transform 'the whole state economic organism into one single big machine . . . that hundreds of millions of people act according to one single plan' (Lw 27, p . 77), by now had been firmly implanted in Soviet management methods . This quest for educating the workers and the projection of machinism on a societal scale set the scene for the specific reception Taylorism met in the Soviet Union .

The construction of the industrial worker In Soviet Russia, Scientific Management was transformed into the Scientific Organisation of Work (Nauchnaia Organizatsiia Truda, NOT) . Largely standardised today, in the 1920s NOT represented a whole range of approaches, partly conflict-

ing with one another . It forms an important watchword for the reformation of work in

the USSR even today .

NOT

approaches featured a common

dimension of education, markedly different from Taylor's pure technicism . They differed among themselves both in their evaluation of Taylor and in the degree they fostered mass participation and initiative .

Socialism and Taylorism The tendency soon to become dominant, and also most decisive for future development up to the present, was the Central Institute of Work (Tsentral'nyi Institut Truda, TsIT), headed by A . K . Gastev . Even in 1918, Gastev had extolled industrial productivity as the principal aim of Soviet power . He had advocated breaking the 'enormous resistance by the working masses' who in his view were acting 'at present as vermin, not as producers' by training 'social engineers' drawn from qualified workers, but by no means from the chernorabochie, the mass workers . These functionaries were to enforce a number of measures that were anathema to most Russian Communists at the time : primarily, the standardisation of work and piece work . Gastev's programme dovetailed with Lenin's modernising perspective : Russian workers had to be elevated to the level of Western practice in the standardisation of work and thus to be enabled to develop a relationship towards the State as the owner of industry along the lines of Western industrial relations . Further, 'Taylor's system' was to be put into practice in Russia 'on the level of the state' according to the example set by the German economic regime during World War I (ibid . pp . 379-81) . Little later, Gastev elevated this position to an advocacy of 'mechanized collectivism' 8 to which he also gave poetical expression : 'One million people lift the hammer in one and the same moment . Jointly roar our first strokes . But what do the factory hoots sing? - This is the morning hymn of Unity!' (1971, p . 118) . The same idea, clearly akin to Lenin's 'hundreds of millions', is embodied in a TsIT definition of NOT as 'the mutual harmonizing of work, which means it is ideal, practical socialism in the factory' (Festa, 1921, p . 21) . Socialism is seen here purely as a technical operation . Gastev's modernising perspective implied, as did Lenin's, deep skepticism towards the productive potential of the Russian working class . Thus TsIT, called for 'brushing up the work force' by 'a swift method of learning to work' to counteract 'the continuous disqualification of the working class' . In more concrete terms, 'obligations of the worker for a certain productivity and a certain result of his work' were inferred from Socialism ; TsIT therefore advocated 'a careful

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processing of Man' aimed at alleviating the burden of his work and explicitly complementing the mere 'processing of things' (Gol'tsblyat, 1927, pp . 88-90) : 'The methodology of machine work with its analytism, its . . . standardisation must penetrate fully also the live work of the labourer' ; existing lacunae, represented within the mechanised labour process above all by live labour power, were to be eliminated (Gastev, 1921, p . 12) . The TSIT variety of NOT featured the 'social engineer', the central figure of 'the new industrial gospel' of Taylorism and Fordism (Maier, 1970, p . 28) . The quest for the engineering of social processes, based on exact units of measurement and the 'complete mathematization of psycho-physiology and economics' (Gastev, 1921, p . 15) epitomised a mechanist approach in research, training and consultancy (cf . Baumgarten, 1924, p . 14 ; Tatur, 1979, pp . 42 et seq .) . This orientation is emphasised by Gastev's watchwords such as : 'Man - the finest of machines . . . equipped with the most accurate of autoregulators : the brain' (1973, p . 123) . TsITS's task was seen as the most efficient way of programming this machine . As indicated above, the development of teaching methods besides analytical procedures Gastev considered as a decisive advance over Taylor, whose reliance for his experiments on worker virtuosi had resulted in overdrawn norms of exertion . Gastev's approach centred on training workers in time and energy saving movements (cf. ibid ., p . 82 ; Baumgarten, 1924, pp . 22 et seq .) . On the other hand, Gastev pointed out that in the United States and Western Europe 'mechanical arrangements' (mashinnye ustanovky), perfected during the war and applied to mass production, made largely superfluous a 'systematic instruction' of incoming new recruits (1973, pp . 79, 63) . In Russia, in contrast, much more emphasis had to be given to the 'work arrangement' (trudovaia ustanovka) aiming at live workers much less guided and forced in their working behaviour by dead machinery than under Western conditions . Emphasis therefore had to be laid on 'biological machinism' (ibid ., p . 152) . Thus, if Gastev gave a more central place to human abilities and exertions than did Taylor, this was due not so much to a conceptual difference, but rather to the stark technological lag that had been aggravated further by the ravages of Civil War, intervention and the international isolation of the Soviet state .

Socialism and Taylorism In technological terms, this was the content of Lenin's 'cultural revolution' : 'If we shall not create a system of rational, swift mass training, then be it known : We have to expect the production catastrophe, we have to expect the decay of culture!' (ibid ., p . 80) . Thus, workers were to be adapted to machinery in optimal fashion, in keeping with the integral application of means of production developed under industrial capitalism and with the programmatic call for 'overtaking' the industrialised capitalist countries on a road of development of industrial productive forces offering no alternative route . This thinking separated the 'worker as a producer, as a narrow specialist' from 'the worker as the master of his production, the active constructor of socialist industry and of the entire State as a whole' (Reinberg, 1927, p . 93 et seq.) . Work as machinedirected physical exertion was divorced radically from sociocommunicative contexts ; thereby, the very concept of production was depleted of social content . The working class as a historical and political actor was removed from actual production . While workers' political and 'social' activity were still asked for, this was relegated outside the place of production and outside working hours ; in the realm of production, workers were to be subjected to the unquestioned, 'objective' commands of machinery and management (see also Linhart, 1976, pp . 113 et seq ., 165 et seq . ; Suss, 1985, pp . 80 et seq .) . The Ts1T concept dovetailed perfectly with Lenin's view of the proletariat, the party and the working class . T5IT therefore included workers' lifestyle outside working hours as an important determinant of working behaviour in terms of order, punctuality and cleanliness ; the factory as a social context, however, was not a topic of research or a point of reference . The cultivation of working capacity, i .e ., the maximum adaptation of the worker to machine labour, Ts1T strove to achieve by systematic step-by-step training in the optimal execution of simple standard movements and tasks . The exemplary case is the development of various forms of the stroke with the hammer from simple gymnastical exercises ; this then was extended to working with the chisel . Motion studies and the propagation of optimal motion procedures here were complementary to each other (cf. Gastev, 1973, pp . 84102) . Finally, the 'construction' of a stroke or any other single

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working action was to result in reflex action achieved by longterm `drilling' (Baumgarten, 1924, p . 27) . Thus, 'during work a minimum of nervous impulse and even a minimum of energetic effect of any kind may be called for' (Gastev, 1973, p . 132) . The training of work discipline was to be mediated automatically' by the set-up of the learner's environment, 'not by means of subjective, enforcing influence' . There was a clear separation between the working place and a resting seat where the trainee had to pass half-minute pauses between one-minute spells of work (ibid ., pp . 85 et seq .) . Harsh sanctions prevented talking during work or coming late (cf. Baumgarten, 1924, p . 27) . Work rhythm was trained with the help of a metronome . The correct mode of working was epitomised in a code of rules, `How one must work' (Kak nado rabotat') . Besides regularity, evenness, concentration and planning in work as well as of regular and well-defined working pauses, a self-restrained attitude was stressed with regard to success or failure (cf. Gastev 1971, pp . 270 et seq .) . Apart from Western pioneers of Scientific Management, Gastev drew on experiences in training handicapped people ; but above all he referred to military drill and Pavlov's theory of reflexes (cf. ibid ., pp . 69-78) . These points of reference highlight the mechanist character of TsIT methodology and also the connection between military and industrial discipline . In its thrust for a discipline imposed on workers by the objective structure and functioning of machinery, NOT in its dominant version forged by Gastev and TsIT was consistent with Lenin's superimposing a party strictly separated from the class it claimed to represent onto that class, even under the banner of proletarian dictatorship . The relation to Taylor's claims to `science' and 'objectivity' is also obvious here . The 'humanist' bias of the TsIT approach as compared to Taylor thus was above all a consequence both of relative Russian backwardness and of a vision to overcome such backwardness by means of `socialism' for the first time . It was not an expression of a 'socialist' application of Taylorist methods 'severed' somehow from capitalism . The adoption and specific form of transformation of Taylorism from the early years of Soviet power onwards thus was by no means an accident . It was even less, as Nyland argues, the consequence of Taylor's method being to a large extent an objective

Socialism and Taylorism

achievement of the development of productive forces, irrespective of the social setting of their origin and application . Rather, in subjecting workers at their place of work to a supposedly objective power out of their reach, the basic structure propagated by Taylorism was superbly consistent with the concept of the Leninist party and its rule . This may be elaborated somewhat further by a brief look at other endeavours in research about industrial work as well as at concepts of NOT competing with Gastev . Critics of Taylorism and competing concepts

The all but unmitigated advocacy of Taylorism represented by Gastev had met with stern resistance as early as 1918 . In the early twenties research in industrial workprocesses had become extremely popular and quite manifold in Soviet Russia . 10 Their approaches were partly controversial among themselves . The most important line of division among these approaches may be seen between the striving for instruments for testing and forecasting technical aptitude, largely based on experimental psychology and psycho-technics on the one hand ; and on the other, emphasis on improvements in work organisation and the training of effective working behaviour more specifically associated with NoT. Here, Gastev's Ts1T was rather isolated, principally because of its enthusiasm for Taylor and consequent emphasis on rationalising the single work place and training workers in the most simple of movements (cf. Tatur, 1979, p . 51) . The main document of Gastev's adversaries was a platform signed by 'Moscow Communists' and published in the tradeunion paper Trud on 11 January 1923 . 11 The authors pointed out TsIT's failure to address psychophysiological questions and labour protection, which amounted to 'juxtaposition of the interests of production on the one hand and the interests of the proletariat on the other', inadmissible for communists . Stress on 'conditioning' the worker held responsible for neglecting the task of educating him 'as a responsible link of the production process, and the national economy' . To this, the authors added a call for supplementing laboratory work 'by the social experiment' inside the factories . They also stressed the importance of conscientious recruitment of workers and job counselling .

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These critics of Taylorism thus were far from repudiating in principle ; many subscribed to the notion of 'man as a working machine' (Kerzhentsev, 1965, p . 15) . They turned against the wholesale grafting of capitalist forms of organisation onto Soviet conditions, claiming low efficiency of TSIT methods . Further, the 'Moscow Communists' were unwilling to accept the juxtaposition of the 'proletariat' as the class with an historic mission of achieving communism and the empirical Russian working class as an object of education at best and of driving at worst . While not presenting a clear-cut alternative to TSIT mechanicism, this kind of criticism identified important shortcomings and limitations and eventually questioned the entire concept . This applied to the 'narrow basis' of TSIT method, oriented at simple working acts, as well as to its approach of acting from the higher echelons of industrial organisation to effect changes below . This was counterposed to mass mobilisation for developing and propagating NOT (cf. Bailes, 1977, pp . 389 et seq .) . Harmony between 'producers' and 'production' under socialism was defined as an aim to be achieved, not as reality; later, in early summer 1923, 'the interests of the proletariat and its economic aims' were identified as the decisive point of reference for scientific organisation of work, clearly demarcated from capitalist profit guided interest (Tatur, 1979, p . 53) . By identifying the economic expenditure of working effort with respect for the worker as the 'subject of work', Gastev's critics referred to the interest in long-term use of labour power inherent in the wage nexus ; given the scarcity of qualified labour, this could indeed mean coinciding interests on the side of the state as well as of workers . The TSIT position was consistently supported by the trade union leadership (cf. Gol'tsblyat, 1927, p . 88), and it carried the day by and large (cf. Tatur, 1979, pp . 55-63) . In March 1924, the Second All-Union Conference on NOT explicitly sanctioned the intensification of labour as a possibility to develop backward industries besides increased productivity as the specifically socialist method of achieving a greater quantity of products (see also Rezoliutsiia, 1965, pp . 98, 101 .) . NOT

A mass approach aborted

The most famous alternative to

TSIT

was represented by

Socialism and Taylorism

the 'Time League' . Its foremost proponent, P .M . Kerzhentsev, disagreed with TsIT over the evaluation of Western scientific treatment of work and especially of Taylor, while expounding a thoroughly mechanistic notion of men and their work himself. NOT was, however, in the context of the League, conceived as a mass movement, not as a set of measures implemented by teams of experts and institutes . In basic consonance with Gastev, Kerzhentsev identified as the main problems Russian backwardness, the poor repair of machinery, but most importantly, that 'we do not know how to work, we have no system in working' (1965, p . 16) . But he stressed the differences between the USSR and industrialised capitalist countries in terms of fundamentally contrary social relations . Here lay a decisive advantage for the Soviet Union, if NOT were to take into account the interest of workers in regular pauses, instruction and labour protection ; last but not least, 'any improvement in production will directly, if not at once, contribute to improve the condition of the working class' (1965, p . 25) . From this flowed an advocacy of productivity increases by intensification of work which were repudiated by more severe critics of Taylor (cf. e .g . Ermanskii, 1925, pp, 37-46 ; 393 et seq . ) : 'To overcome capitalism, we have to achieve the maximum increase in the productive forces of our Republics . The intensification of work will be one of the means for us to increase labour productivity and by this be able to reach a higher economic level .' (Kerzhentsev, 1965, p . 16) . Kerzhentsev discerned a positive chance and a specific trait of the Soviet situation 'totally overlooked' by 'tens of NOT institutions and institutes' in the possibility of mass mobilisation and broad cultural work (see ibid ., pp . 22, 28) . A mass campaign was initiated to propagate time thrift : 'timely beginning of work, fixing of exact dates and times for meetings, minimizing extra-ordinary dates, minimizing interviews, conversations, discussions, accelerating the speed of work' along with economising 'money, paper, fuel etc .' (ibid ., p . 54) . The 'Time League' (Liga Vremya), founded on 30 July 1923, was a part of the manifold and partly contradictory movement of cultural revolution of the period, an endeavour to foster rationalised ways of behaviour congruent with social and technological progress (cf . ibid ., pp. 83 et seq . ) . The League's membership rose from 4,000 late in 1923 to

79

Capital & Class 80

c .25,000 in 1924 . It was organised in plant cells enjoying considerable financial and political autonomy (cf . ibid ., pp . 83-6 ; Tatur, 1979, pp . 67-9 ; Suss 1985, pp . 119-21) . In stark contrast to Franklin's celebrated 'capitalist credo' of 'time is money' (1961, p . 186), Kerzhentsev stressed the improved chances of producing use value and achieving technological progress as the prize in store for disciplined working and living . But the close connection between both and the criteria of a disciplined way of life are almost the same in Kerzhentsev and Franklin, or, for that matter, in Lenin's utterings of 1918 . A disciplined way of living was linked to personal responsibility by the 'chrono-card' to control members' daily time-budgets (cf . 1965, pp . 65-6) . A time-saving automatism thus acquired was to liberate the 'higher centres of the brain' for more important work : ' . . . the so much dreaded mechanization of Man is but an expression for greater rhythmicity in entire human life' (cf . ibid ., pp . 68

et seq .,

75

et seq . ) . The 'Time-League' was an organisation explicitly outside the state and independent of the party apparatus, to enhance the aim of self-discipline which might have been eroded by the possible conveyance of 'rights through a connection of the League with the state apparatus' (ibid ., p . 87) . Still, the League was to work completely under the control of the party, while claiming a minimal measure of autonomy in terms of self-discipline of its members . Apparently, the League, being a mass organisation with minimal autonomy vis-d-vis the party as a necessary corollary of this concept of self-acting, was perceived as a danger to the party's organisational monopoly and by late 1925 had been absorbed and subsumed, step by step, into the state structure (see Ikonnikov, 1971, pp . 173

et seq .) . Vremya,

Contrary to the incipient mass character of the Liga later Soviet forms of stimulating productivity, above

all Stakhanovism, extolled individual virtuoso brand .

achievement of the

Scientific Management and socialism In assessing the meaning of reception and transformation of Taylorism in the Soviet Union, it serves to remember that elsewhere as well 'American' methods were believed to crack down traditional ways of life and work that were impeding

Socialism and Taylorism progress towards socialism and, thereby, industrialism . The October revolution had put on the order of the day socialist industrialisation rather than socialising industry, as the classics had envisaged . This had relevance, e .g ., for Italy, where Gramsci thought along broadly similar lines as the Bolsheviks, concerning the break-up of the stubborn Mezzogiorno by the assault of Americanism . The Gramscian concept is true to the Bolshevik position also in not questioning the class content of Taylorism as a social technology, a designation that even has to be reenforced when we widen our perspective to the Fordist model of capitalist accumulation . Scientific Management had been conceived explicitly to fill up the pores in the work day of wage labourers that, up to the 1880s and 1890s, still had not been occupied by utmost exertion and afforded some chances of in-between rests as well as a chance to dispose of work rhythms, intensity of application, etc . This inherent interest was enhanced when it came to 'educating' and 'civilizing' a work force that was perceived to be in dire need of it as we have heard Lenin say of Russian workers . In the Soviet context, the positive official evaluation of Taylorism may be seen as a means of wresting from workers chances of shop-floor control they had won in 1917 and had preserved or regained up to the mid-1920s (cf . Suss, 1985) . The option for 'American' rather than 'Continental' methods of management at that time did not only spell modernism but also meant dislodging the shop-floor cadres that had been reconstructed during NEP in favour of an influx of young and pliable recruits . All this called for disciplinary drives, and Taylor held out ready-made tools for that . Even the Time League, while militating in effect against the emerging organisational monopoly of the ruling party, still did not transcend the mechanicism prevalent among all factions of Bolshevism at the time . The primacy of the economy of time it propagated left very little room for the 'realm of freedom' envisaged by Marx beyond the exigencies of industrial labour . The absence of this perspective from even the most heterodox of Soviet experiments in propagating industrial work attitudes underlines the limited scope under which Scientific Organization of Work was conceived . The achievements of Western Scientific Management, while being geared to Soviet conditions in various ways, were nowhere confronted with even the perspective of a socialism that

81

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82

encompasses something more than just more of the same industrial development . Therefore, basic tenets of Taylor and other exponents of Scientific Management such as Gilbreth could be integrated readily into NOT, above all into its mainstream version represented by Gastev and TsIT . It would seem that this was so precisely because of the absence of socialist perspectives, i .e ., of radical transformations not only in terms of state ownership of production, but above all in the sense of people enabling themselves to shape their own (working) lives, enabling this case of technology transfer to function as smoothly as it actually did . Taylorism, conceived as a rationalisation drive for us industry and put to effective use at its grandest scale in the Soviet Union was a legitimate child of capitalism . Even when adapted to a non-capitalist environment, it clearly exhibits its prongs pointed against labour's power stance at the point of production and in society at large . The early Soviet experience is instructive precisely by detailing the congruences between the Bolshevik project of enforced industrial development with its ambiguous class base and Taylorism . As is well known, the large-scale adoption of Taylorist methods and also reference to Fordism during the run-up to the first Five-Year-Plan must not be taken as actual indicators for efficiency . Rather, lack of efficiency remains a characteristic of Soviet industry some 70 years after the transformation of Scientific Management into NOT took its first steps . These problems of efficiency are of a different kind, however, than those addressed by Taylor . Lack of efficiency has not been a hindrance for his methods to be employed as a means of domination at the plant and shop levels . As such, Taylorism would appear as incompatible with a concept of socialism that is to retain any meaning, particularly at the time of the apparent demise of much that has made up the Bolshevik concept of 'socialist' development . The contradictions of this concept and of the Soviet-type societies geared to it have thrown into relief the fact that to have any future, socialism must transcend the boundaries of the framework of industrial productive forces formed under capitalism and planning methods mainly derived from the capitalist enterprise . In other words, socialism will have to transcend the framework of Kautskyanism as well as its Leninist adaptation ;



Socialism and Taylorism

within this framework, also Nyland's evaluation of Taylorism is situated . As we have tried to show, this interpretation is blind to the relations of dominance implied not just in relations of production and exploitation, but also in the form of productive forces and their 'scientifically' legitimated setup . 1.

This has been presented at the staff seminar of the Vakgroep

voor Internationaale Betrekkingen en Volkenrecht, University of Amsterdam on November 14, 1988 . We would like to thank the discussants at the occasion as well as two anonymous reviewers of Capital and Class for their comments . 2.

While not subscribing to all details of analysis, we refer to

more recent evaluations of Soviet type societies by left dissidents from Eastern Europe such as Bahro (1977) and especially Heller et al . 1983). The latter stress, besides the non-capitalist as well as nonsocialist character of the type of society issued from the October Revolution, the importance of industrialism and modernity, comprising both forms of production, with capitalism being the dominant one and the Soviet type clearly a subordinate replica, particularly with respect to the results of technology transfer . 3.

The following draws heavily on Muchie, 1986, pp . 482-92 .

4.

For a good summary of Taylor's experiences and endeavours

and of the origins of 'Taylorism', see Noble, 1977, pp . 264-78 . 5.

We can merely touch on this here ; the still seminal article

by Karl Korsch (1929) and Walter Benjamin's (1974, pp . 698-701) trenchant criticism of the official Marxist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen may be cited as two of the more important points of reference here, above all, revealing the intimate relationship between Bolshevism and pre-war Social Democracy on that score . 6.

The following refers to Kossler, 1990, part III, ch . 2 .

7.

This has been elaborated particularly by di Leo 1972, pp .

10 et seq . ; the present interpretation is also indebted to Linhart, 1976 . 8.

'O tendentsiakh proletarskoi kul'tury' Proletarskaia kul'tura

1919/9-10, pp . 44 et seq ., q u . by Bailes, 1977, p . 378 . 9.

Trod no . 6 (11 January 1923), q u . i n Baumgarten, 1924,

p . 35 . 10 .

For summaries see Baumgarten, 1924, pp . 58-205 ; Tatur,

1979, pp . 40-52 ; a contemporary partisan overview may be found in Kerzhentsev, 1965, pp . 28-35 . 11 .

The following quotes are based on Baumgarten 1924, pp .

33 et seq . ; see also Tatur, 1979, pp . 52 et seq .

83

Notes

Capital & Class Bahro, Rudolf (1977), Die Alternative . Kritik des real existierenden

84

Sozialismus, Koln . Benjamin, Walter (1974), 'Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen', in Gesammelte Schriften vol . 1 .2, Frankfurt am Main . Bailes, Kendall E . (1977), 'Alexei Gastev and the Soviet Controversy over Taylorism', Soviet Studies XXIX . Bailes, (1981), 'The American Connection : Ideology and the Transfer of American Technology to the Soviet Union, 1917-1941', Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (1981) . Ballod, Karl (1919), Der Zukunftsstaat . Produktion and Konsum im Sozialstaat, 2nd ed, Stuttgart . Baumgarten, Franciska ( 1924), Arbeitswissenschaft and Psychotechnik in Russland, Munchen and Berlin . Berkhin, I . B . ed . (1981), Ot kapitalizma k socializmu . Osnovnye problemy istorii perekhodnogo perioda V SSSR 1917-193 7gg . vol . II : Razvernutoe stroitel'stvo socializma V SSSR 1928-1937gg . , Moscow . Braverman, Harry (1974), Labor and Monopoly Capital . The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, New York and London . Brugmann, Uwe (1972), Die russischen Gewerkschaften in Revolution and Burgerkrieg, Frankfurt am Main . Burawoy, Michael (1985), The Politics of Production . Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism, London . Bibliography

Claudin-Urondo, Carmen (1977), Lenin and the Cultural Revolution, Hassocks and Atlantic Highlands, NJ . Desiatyi s'ezd (1963), Desiatyi s'ezd RKP(b) . Stenograficheskii otchet, Moscow (1921) . Festa, A . L . (1921) 'Osnovnye printsipy upravleniia predpriiatami', Organizatsiia truda 1921/ 1 . Franklin, Benjamin (1961), Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), in The Autobiography and Other Writings, New York, pp . 185-7 . Freeman, C . (1989) The Third Kondratieff Wave : Age of Steel, Electrification and Imperialism . Paper prepared for international colloquium on 'The Long Waves of the Economic Conjuncture - The Present State of the International Discussion', Vrije Universiteit, Brussel, 12-14 Jan . 1980 . Ermanskii Ossip A . (J . Ermanski) (1925), Wissenschaftliche Betriebsorganisation and Taylor-System, Berlin . Foner, Philip S . (1964), History of the Labor Movement in the United States . Vol . III : The Politics and Practices of the American Federation of Labor, 1900-1909, New York, NY . Gangl, Manfred (1987), Politische Okonomie and Kritische Theorie : Ein Beitrag zur theoretischen Entwicklung der Frankfurter Schule, Frank-

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Gastev, Aleksei K . (1921), 'Nashi zadachi', Organizatsiia Truda 1921/1, S . 7-17 . Gastev, Aleksei K . (1966), 'Kak nado rabotat' Prakticheskoe vvedenie v nauku organizatsii truda, Moscow . Gastev, Aleksei K . (1971), Poeziia rabochego udara, Moscow . Gastev, Aleksei K . (1973), Trudovye ustanovki, Moscow . pp . 25-156 : Trudovye ustanovki (1924) . pp . 159-258 : Ustandovka proizvodstva metodom TSIT (1927) . Giedion, Sigfried (1948), Mechanization Takes Command, Oxford . Gilbreth, F . B . (1911), Motion Study, New York . Gol'tsblyat, L . (1927), 'TSIT lo-letiiu Oktiabria', Vestnik Truda 1927/ 11 . Gorbachev, Mikhail (1987), Perestroika, New York . Haber, Samuel (1964), Efficiency and Uplift : Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 Chicago . Heller, Agnes, Ferenc Feher, Gyorgy Markus (1983), Der sowjetische Weg. Bedurfnisdiktatur and entrfremdeter Alltag, Hamburg . Heron, Andre (1975), 'Le taylorisme hier et demain',

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moderns vol . 3 1 . Ikonnikov, Sergei N . (1971), Sozdanie i deiatel'nost' ob'edinennych organov TSKK-RKI v 1923-1934 gg ., Moscow . Kautsky, Karl (1911), Die soziale Revolution, 3rd . ed ., Stuttgart . Kelly, John E . (1982) Scientific Management, Job Redesign and Work Performance . London . Kerzhentsev, Platon M . (1965), Borba za vremia, Moscow, 1965 . S . 9-56 : 'NOT -Nauchnaia organizatsiia truda' (1925) S . 57-94 : Boiba za vremia (1923) . Kossler, Reinhart (1990), Arbeitskultur im Industrialisierungs prozess . Studien an englischen and sowjetrussischen Paradigmata . Munster . Korsch, Karl (1929), 'Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung . Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Karl Kautsky', Archiv fur die Geschichte des Sozialismus and der Arbeiterbewegung (GrunbergArchiv) XIV . Lenin, Vladimir I . (LW=Lenin Werke, 40 vol .s, Berlin, GDR, 1961ff, based on the 4th Russian edition) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 5, pp . 355-551), Was tun? Brennende Fragen unserer Bewegung [What is to Be Done? Burning Questions in our Movement) . Lenin, Vladimir (Lw 7, pp . 197-430), Ein Schritt vorwarts, zwei Schritte zuriick (Die Krise in unserer Partei) [One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards (The Crisis in Our Party)) .

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Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 20, pp . 145-7), 'Das Taylorsystem - Die Versklavung des Menschen durch die Maschine' [The Taylor System - the Enslavement of Man by Machinery] (Put' Pravdy 13/3/1914) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 25 pp . 325-77), Die drohende Katastrophe and wie man sie bekampfen soil [The Impending Catastrophe and How it is to Be Met] (Oct . 1917) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 25 pp . 393-507), Staat and Revolution . Die OLehre des Marxismus vom Staat and die Aufgaben des Proletariats in der Revolution [State and Revolution) (September 1917) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 27 pp. 71-96), Ausserordentlicher Siebenter Parteitag der KPR (B), 6-8 Marz 1918 . Politischer Bericht des Zentralkomitees [Extraordinary VII Party Congress of the RKP(b), 6-8 March 1918 . Political Report by the Central Committee) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 27 pp . 225-68, Die nachsten Aufgaben der Sowjetmacht [The next tasks of Soviet Power] (April 1918) . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 33 pp . 40-60), 'Die Neue Okonomische Politik and die Aufgaben der AusschUsse fur politisch-kulturelle Aufklarung' [The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of the Committees for political and cultural enlightenment' . Report to the ii All-Russian Congress of the Committees for political and cultural enlightenment), 17 October 1921 . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 33 pp . 249-95), Politischer Bericht des Zentralkomitees der KPR (B) an den XI Parteitag [Political Report of the Central Committee of the KPR (b) to the XI Party Congress], 27 March 1922 . Lenin, Vladimir I . (Lw 39) Hefte zum Imperialismus [Notebooks on Imperialism] . di Leo, Rita (1972), Die Arbeiter and das sojwetische System, Miinchen (Bari 1970) .

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(1917-1933), Frankfurt am Main and New York . Reinberg, L . (1927), 'Ratsionalizatsiia proizvodstva i ocherednye zadachi podgotovki kvalifitsirovannoi rabochei sily',

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et al ., Puti intensifiUskorenie sotsial'-noekonomicheskogo razvitiia strany i intensifikatsiia proizvodstva . Referativnyi sbornik, Moscow . (1918), Trudy I Vse-Rossiiskago S-ezda Sovetov Narodnago Khoziaistva, 26 maia-4 iiunia 1918g . Stenograficheskii Otchet,

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Rabochii klass i revoliutsionnye izmeneniia v sotsial'noy strukture obschestva, Moscow . Suss, Walter (1981), Der Betrieb in der udssR . Stellung, Organisation and Management 1917-1932, Frankfurt am Main, Bern . Suss, Walter (1985) Die Arbeiterklasse als Maschine . Eine industrie-soziologische Untersuchung zur Sozialgeschichte des aufkommenden Stalinismus, Wiesbaden . Sokolov, A . K . (1987),

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Tatur, Melanie (1979), Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsorganisation' . Arbeitswissenschaften and Arbeitsorganisation in der Sowjet-union 1921-1935, Wiesbaden . Taylor, Frederick W . (1903) Shop management, reprinted in Taylor, 1964 . Taylor, Frederick W . (1907), 'On the Art of Cutting Metals', Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers XXVIII . Taylor, Frederick W . (1911), The Principles of Scientific Management, reprinted in Taylor, 1964 . Taylor, Frederick W . (1912), Taylor's Testimony Before the Special House Committee, reprinted in Taylor, 1964 . Taylor, Frederick W . (1964), Scientific Management, New York . Thompson, G. B ., ed . (1917), Theory and Practice of Scientific Management, Boston . Venediktov, Anatolij V . (1957), Organizatsiia gosudar tvennoi promyshlennosti v SSSR, Vol . I, Leningrad .

Huw Beynon, Andrew Cox, Ray Hudson

Opencast coalmining and the politics of coal production • In 1984, when the British coal-miners began their strike against colliery closures, they talked of their fear of a 'hit list' of vulnerable pits and the prospects of large-scale redundancies in the industry . The . President of the NUM, Arthur Scargill, talked repeatedly of such a hit list in two years that led up to the strike, and of the prospect of 70,000 jobs being shed from an industry that was located predominantly in areas of above-average unemployment . At that time there was worry over what had been called the 'peripheral coalfields' in South Wales and Scotland and across the North of England . There was some worry too of the threat of coal imports and of the unfair competition from a domestic source in the form of nuclear power . In 1989 all of these fears seem understated rather than exaggerated . In the wake of the miners' dispute the organisation of coal and energy in this country has been subjected to its greatest and most lasting transformation ; greater indeed than that which accomplished nationalisation or that which followed the importation of oil in the 1950s and 1960s and the oil price increase in the early 1970s . Unlike those other great changes, however, the current shake-up has received remarkably little public attention . This is especially the case

Focusing on the general picture, as well as the specific changes in the Northeast, the authors consider the ramifications of an expanding opencast sector in British coal mining . They draw attention to the intersecting politics of employment and environment and suggest 89 that a basis for opposition campaigns may be constructed .

Capital & Class

90

on the left of the political spectrum . Here it seems that (with the miners' strike out of the way) attention can freely be directed toward other more intriguing issues like post-Fordism and post-modernism . On the coalfields the post-strike period has been quite a traumatic one . And while news headlines draw attention to the occasional location of Japanese factories in South Wales, Scotland and the North East, the underlying pattern of change has barely surfaced . As such it's worth beginning with some statistics . In March 1983 there were 207,000 people working in the British coal-mines . In March 1989, their number had been reduced to 87,79 1 . All best estimates anticipate a further reduction in the current financial year, and few people expect there to be more than 70,000 miners working in the industry by 1990 . In 1983, 191 collieries operated in the industry ; today just 93 remain and up to twenty of those are immediately vulnerable . Across the coalfields the talk is of men being 'sick to death with the industry' and the way they have been treated . Sick to death too with the changes and the uncertainty . What these changes add up to is in some ways quite simple . With the abandonment of the Plan for Coal came the New Strategy For Coal which replaced production targets with financial ones . These targets have been used, alongside the international coal market, to increase pressure on British Coal's costs . This pressure has been enforced by the fact that the bulk of British Coal's product is sold to the Electricity Supply Industry, and this is to be privatised, as has its other significant customer, British Steel . In these circumstances, and in a quest for 'low cost coal' . British Coal has closed down deep mines . In the mines that remain open, new technologies and working practices have been introduced at a rapid rate . These practices have been introduced unilaterally in many instances, and in spite of ideas of the UDM being a 'sweetheart union', the Nottingham coal industry has been affected like all the others . However, less attention has been paid to the fact that British Coal has (in a variety of - often surreptitious - ways) been pushing for the expansion of opencast mines . Given a fourth Thatcher government, there is every indication that the coal industry will be privatised, and in this context the private owners of the opencast coal companies talk of their future as the new coal owners . This development is of some significance, and it is this on which we focus on in this paper .

Politics of coal production

The post-war coal industry in Britain developed under the umbrella of the 1946 Coal Nationalisation Act . This Act vested all reserves of coal (with a few exceptions) with the National Coal Board, which was made the monopoly producer and distributor of coal in the UK . This monopoly was based upon the fact that it produced around 200 million tonnes of coal in the 750 or so deep mines that densely packed the coalfield districts . Within this arrangement opencast mining was a decidedly minority activity . Opencast mining began on a significant scale in 1942 as a part of an emergency measure in wartime . In the post-war period, Britain was a single-fuel economy and coal was in scarce supply . As such opencast methods of extraction continued . The arrangements under which this mining took place were rather complicated however . The opencast operators were not made a part of the National Coal Board . Neither were the opencast workers recruited by the National Union of Mineworkers . These facts emphasise the apparent temporary status of opencast mining at that time . To them can be added the legal regulations which surrounded opencast methods of extraction . The main opencast sites were organised under a licensing arrangement with the NCB . This eventually became co-ordinated by the NCB's Opencast Executive . Civil engineering companies would tender for contracts to mine identified opencast sites, the coal from which would be delivered, at an agreed price, to the Coal Board . In addition, other smaller opencast sites and drift mines were allowed to produce and sell coal, under licence from the NCB and in return for a tonnage royalty . The size of these sites and mines (in terms of tonnage and workers employed) was regulated by Act of Parliament . Thus at the fringes of the NCB, a private system of production continued, largely dependent upon the nationalised industry . These arrangements were solidified in 1957 through a special Act of Parliament which dealt with the opencast sector, and in substance they carried the industry through the next twenty years . Basic to the industry was an understanding of the subordinate and marginal role of the private sector . In 1959, when the threat of oil imports had become clear, official policy aimed at phasing out the opencast sector in spite of its peak performance of the previous year . That it was saved from near extinction owed much to the support of Alf Robens . As MP

The British coal industry and opencast mining

91

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for Blyth he had direct experience of opencast mining on his doorstep in Northumberland, and he became a powerful advocate in the House of Commons . He carried this advocacy forward as Chairman of the Coal Board . In his advocacy of opencast mining Robens had an eye to a profitable area of production within the Boards operations . While output was cut in the 1960s it (like the deep mines) was also rationalised and the sector organised on a more competitive basis . These changes were allied with technological improvements in digging and transportation . In this way opencast output increased incrementally towards the end of the sixties - 6 .17 million tonnes coming off the sites in 1967 and 10 million in 1973 . Thus, on the eve of Plan for Coal, the Opencast Executive of the Coal Board felt in a strong position to push for an increase in the tonnage from the private sector . Here, of course, it was pushing at an open door . The 1974 Plan for Coal was a blithely optimistic document, which argued (with little evidence) that the retreat made by coal in the 1960s would turn into an advance which would carry the industry towards the end of the century when coal output would match the levels of the 1950s . Specifically it was proposed that output should be increased from 110 million tonnes to 135 million tonnes by 1985 . As part of this general increase opencast output was planned to rise from 10 to 15 million tonnes . Here it was assumed that demand for coal would increase as part of a general movement away from oil . It is not just how the figures for opencast and deep-mined tonnages were arrived at that gave cause for concern . There was some apprehension over the possibility of the deep mines increasing output at such speed, opencast mining being more adaptable in the short term . But this was no more than a general feeling . Specifically the figures came out of an ad hoc arrangement within the tripartite committee that produced the Plan and many analysts now see it as little more than a 'back of an envelope' calculation (Prior and McCloskey, 1988 : 57) . It was a calculation which was to have its significance . It was one which was based upon a growing strength and confidence within the Open Cast Executive, and which came at a time when civil engineering companies were geared up to the task of earning profits in coal-mining . In this sense the Plan For Coal's assessment of the supply potential of the private sector (back of the envelope or not) was correct . It was

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potentially the most accurate part of the whole plan . Certainly its assessment of likely market developments were far from accurate . Tables 1 and 2 reveal these trends clearly . Table 1 : Total

UK

inland consumption of primary fuels for energy use (percentage share)

Primary fuel

1955

1965

85 .4 14 .2 0.4

61 .8 35 .0 2 .7

253.9

303.3

Coal Petroleum Natural gas Nuclear/Hydro-

1975

1980

1985

1987

36 .9 42 .0 17 .1 4 .0

36.9 37.0 21 .4 4.7

32 .2 35 .2 25 .2 7 .4

34 .4 32 .3 25 .4 7.9

324 .8

328.0

326 .9

338 .1

electric Total energy

(million tonnes coal equivalent) Source:

Table 2 :

UK

UK

Digest of Energy Statistics (Department of Energy) .

coal markets 1955-88 (Million tonnes) 1955

1965

1975

1985'

1988

Power stations

44 .0

71 .1

73 .4

73.9

82 .5

Coke ovens Manufactured fuels and gas works

57 .0

47 .7

23 .2

13.2

12 .9

Domestic (house coal and other solid fuels)

39 .0

28.8

11 .6

8.6

6 .6

Industrial, commercial and other consumers

76 .9

37 .0

14 .0

9.7

9 .5

216 .9

184.6

122 .2

105 .4

111 .5

Total Source: Digest of

UK

Strike affected year.

Energy Statistics .

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In the 1970s, output increased, but only opencast coal output kept pace with the Plan For Coal estimates . Despite clear signs that the market assumptions behind the plan were wrong, the 15 million tonnes a year target remained . The overall target was broken down into detailed regional targets which were used by the Opencast Executive to justify the opening of new sites . Local environmental planners found such targets (in state documents) compelling support and gave these requests a sympathetic hearing . With such support the private sector reached the 15 million target in 1980 - five years ahead of time . It maintained those levels through the 1980s and has recently exceeded them . As a result it has also strongly increased its share of UK coal production . In 1980 opencast production represented 12 % of the total UK coal output . By 1988 this had increased to 17 .9 million tonnes - over 17 of total output (see Table 3) . As its significance as a producer was increased, so too has the private sector emerged as a powerful political force within the industry . In the context of debate over the privatisation of the Electricity Supply Industry and the coal industry, private coal companies now have a significant voice . As they push for a more central role in the industry so too have they pressured government over the statutory limitations placed upon their activities . Within the newly-formed British Coal, opencast mining is recognised to have a completely changed role . It was described by the company's marketing director, Malcolm Edwards, as one of the two main assets of the company - the other being the FiveYear agreement with the CEGB . This statement makes clear the growing reality within the coal industry - squeezed into a duopolistic arrangement with the Esi ; pressed by the availability of cheap coal on the international market ; increasingly reliant upon supplies of coal from its own private sector . How have these factors come together? Government Policy and the coal industry

The present Government's energy policy was outlined in 1982 by the then Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Nigel Lawson, in a speech to the Fourth Annual Conference of the International Association of Energy Economists at Churchill College, Cambridge . As he put it, ' . . . I do not see the Government's task as being to try and plan the future share of energy production and

Politics of coal production

consumption . It is not even primarily to try and balance UK demand and supply for energy . Our task is rather to set a framework which will ensure that the market operates in the energy sector with a minimum of distortion and that energy is produced and consumed efficiently' . . . . . . there is something even more fundamental . This is to recognise, as Governments have not always done in the past, that for the most part energy is a traded good' . More recently it has become apparent that the Government has adopted a different agenda, forcing the coal industry to adopt differing goals from other energy industries (most notably the nuclear power sector) . Since the 1984/5 NUM strike, British Coal has been forced to work within tight financial limits set by Government . The most recent corporate planning document of British Coal (the successor to Plan for Coal) New Strategy For Coal, outlines the intended future for the coal industry . Its main goals are : 1 . To phase out the industry's dependence on subsidy and to break even by the end of the decade . 2 . To achieve conditions in which the industry could sell coal at competitive prices . To this end the industry would abandon any fixed production targets (as was the case under Plan for Coal) and adopt a more flexible approach to meeting market requirements . To achieve these aims British Coal decided to maximise output at low cost collieries and opencast sites as a means of reducing average costs . £1 .50/GJ (gigajoule) was set as the production target for all collieries, with opencast sites having to produce coal at 1/GJ . It appears that British Coal has a firm commitment to keep to these cost targets, allowing inflation to move the real level downward slightly each year. The Coal Board's defence of the new strategy is based upon the argument that costs need to be dramatically cut in order to compete with cheap coal imports . As such, it talks of critical cost barriers at £1 .65/GJ ; £1 .50/GJ and £1 .00/GJ, and argues that 'it is most unlikely that any colliery constantly producing at an operating cost in excess of £1 .65/GJ could make an economic contribution even if supply and demand are in

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Table 3: UK coal production (million tonnes) Year

Deep-mined

Opencast

Other(1)

Total

Opencast as % of total output

1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

206.9 197.6 187.1 177.5 184.2 190.2 200.8 205.9 207.4 214.7 216.1 215.2 217 .0 213.3 213.3 213.4 204 .7 198.4 189.0 184 .8 192 .4 192 .7 189 .8 183 .1 170 .2 167 .7 159 .7 146 .6 136 .7 136 .5 109 .1 120 .0 100 .0 117 .4 110 .3 107 .1 107 .5 107 .8 112 .4 110 .5 106 .2 101 .7 35 .2 75 .2 90 .4 85 .8 83 .5

1 .3 4.6 8.8 8.2 8.9 10.5 12 .0 12 .7 12 .1 11 .0 12 .1 11 .7 10.2 11 .5 12 .3 13.8 14 .6 11 .0 7 .7 8 .7 8 .2 6 .2 6 .9 7 .5 7 .1 7 .2 7 .0 6 .4 7 .9 10 .6 10 .4 10 .1 9 .3 10 .4 11 .9 13 .5 14 .2 12 .9 15 .8 14 .8 15 .3 14 .7 14 .3 15 .6 14 .3 15 .8 17 .9

Sources: UK Mineral Statistics and Energy Trends . (1) Coal recovered from tips, etc . (2) Strike Affected Years .

0.5 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.7 1 .1 1 .5 2.0 1 .5 1 .3 1 .1 1 .5 2.7 3.2 2 .7 2 .5 2 .3 2 .3 1 .8 1 .2 0.9 1 .6 1 .5 1 .9 1 .7 1 .9 2 .2 3.2 2 .8 1 .7 3 .2 3 .4 2 .8 2 .4

108 .2 202 .2 195 .9 185 .7 193 .1 200 .7 121 .8 218 .6 219 .5 226 .2 228 .5 227 .1 227 .4 225 .6 226 .1 227 .8 219 .8 210 .1 197 .8 195 .0 202 .6 200 .4 198 .0 191 .6 178.9 177.6 169.9 155.7 147.1 149.4 121 .8 132.0 110.5 128.7 123.8 122.1 123.6 122.4 130.1 127.5 124.7 119.2 51 .2 94.0 108.1 104.4 103.8

0.6 2.3 4.5 4.4 4.6 5.2 5.6 5.8 5.5 4.9 5.3 5.1 4.5 5.1 5.4 6.0 6.6 5.2 3.9 4.5 4.0 3.1 3.5 3.9 4.0 4.1 4.1 4.1 5.4 7 .1 8.5 7 .6 8.4 8.1 9.6 11 .1 10 .5 10 .5 12 .1 11 .6 12 .3 12 .3 27 .9(2) 16.6(2) 13 .2 15 .1 17 .2

Politics of coal production

balance . In the short run we would regard this as an absolute limit of acceptable costs . . . indeed in due course we shall need to aim at costs of no more than £1 .50/GJ at our long life pits . Because the UK market is likely to be contained for some years ahead . . . any additional production must be low enough in cost to justify additional exports at prices of about £1 .OOGJ .' In pushing these policies the strategy argues that 'We need to maximise output in our low-cost collieries and opencast sites as a means of reducing average costs .' This appeared in the evidence to the Select Committee as the need to 'develop new and replacement capacity and new opencast output with sufficiently low costs to be competitive' (House of Commons Select Committee on Energy, 1987) . In this process established requirements relating to the environment are simply dispensed with under the pressingly urgent language of costs, and cost-cutting . We read of the 'vital economic importance of opencast as a source of low cost coal' . And of how : 'British Coal considers that in order to pursue these policies effectively they (sic) will need to maintain opencast output at 14m tonnes p .a . . . . with the possible expansion up to 18m tonnes p .a . subject to availability of low cost sites .' To this, the 'National Assessment' adds the rider which is in keeping with the market orientated approach of the document . This, it says, 'would not be regarded as an absolute upper limit' . The near religious zeal of the document reflects a view that opencast mining has a crucial role . 'it keeps out imports, with which it can compete on cost grounds, and in doing so provides employment in the UK which would otherwise be transferred to suppliers abroad' . Without opencast output 'we would lose employment in both areas, imports would rise and the balance of payments and security of domestic

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energy supply would suffer' (British Coal Opencast Executive, 1986) . The tone of the document is itself very revealing ; even disturbing . It implies that anyone opposed to these developments must be unhinged or ill-intentioned . Certainly in dealing with Coal Board representatives in those years it was difficult not to feel the sense of ideological fervour which gripped them . Certainly in the pursuit of these objectives they have been successful . In its most recent report on the industry the Monopoly and Mergers Commission (1989) described its performance as 'impressive by any standards' . Since 1982-3 face output has increased by 94 % and output per man shift by 85 76 . High cost collieries have closed, and new heavy-duty faces have been established in the ones that remain . In these manning levels have been reduced . In the deep mines and opencast sites costs have been cut dramatically (see Table 4) . Still opencast coal appears to have a cost advantage . And still the squeeze continues . In Scotland where the opencast sites and deep mines are run by the same management there is a real possibility of the deep-mined production ceasing . For in spite of all these changes ('impressive by any standards') British Coal is still in the red . Yet again it will not break even .

Table 4 : Cost of production 1987/8 deep-mined and opencast coal Deep mining areas

Cost of production (£/GJ)

Scottish North East North Yorkshire South Yorkshire Nottinghamshire Central Western South Wales Kent

2.53 1 .48 1 .60 1 .62 1 .49 1 .60 1 .64 2.31 2.43

Total

1 .65

Opencast area

Cost of production (£/GJ)

North East North West Central West Central East South West Scottish

1 .04

Total

1 .03

Source: British Coal Annual Report and Accounts 1987/8 .

1 .30 0.67 1 .14 1 .30 1 .02

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99

Equally, electricity privatisation will almost certainly cause further serious retrenchment at British Coal . The most vulnerable deep-mine area is the North East which sends a large proportion of its production to the Thames power stations. At the February 1989 meeting of the Coalfield Communities Campaign it was forecast that by 1991/2 only one or two pits could be left in the North East, even though it has the cheapest deep-mine production in the UK (Samuelson, 1989a) . These remarks echoed forecasts made ten years earlier and which then were dismissed as extremely alarmist . North East coal will quickly be displaced by imports . Moreover, recent proposals to build large new coal importing facilities around the UK (most notably at North and South Killingholme on the Humber) could further eat into the heart of British Coal's market . The Energy Minister, Mr Michael Spicer, recently restated the Government's view that, after privatisation, generating companies would be free to buy the cheapest fuel on the market, arguing that any additional imports would apply more pressure on British Coal to increase efficiency and become more competitive (Mason and Samuelson, 1989) . More recently in the House of Commons, Cecil Parkinson, Energy Secretary, expressed the view that British Coal needed to break even, and argued that the corporation should increase the rate in which it 'shed unprofitable businesses in non coal markets', while continuing the process of 'restructuring its operations' (Samuelson, 1989b) . In this context opencast coals expansion is justified repeatedly as a means of keeping out imports .

And in line with these changes the Government has been involved in a process of altering the planning regulations which relate to the coal industry . A White Paper, presented to parliament in May 1983 has still to appear as an Act . Instead a Circular (3/84) was issued by the Department of the Environment . This circular established a set of 'transitional arrangements' which would be in force in advance of the impending act . The White Paper and the circular rested, in part, on the findings of the Royal Commission on Coal and the Environment, which were published in 1981 . The Flowers Commission had recommended that the future of opencast

The planning system

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mining be linked to the future of the deep mines and, 'as older, more unprofitable and less environmentally acceptable mines are closed . . . the volume of opencast mining should be allowed to decline' (Flowers Report, 1981 : 8-9) . Understandably, this conclusion caused some problems for the Government . Nevertheless the Commission did talk of opencast production being justified in the context of a specific need for the type of coal to be found on the site . It referred, for example, to a 'demonstrable need for a certain grade of coking coal' or if there was a 'need to fulfill short term increases in demand' . In a highly significant Public Inquiry into the Opencast Executive's Woodhead Site in the Derwent Valley in the North East of England, the Inspector wrote of environmentally damaging opencast production being justified only in the face of 'strong', 'certain' and 'urgent' needs . Rather ambiguously, perhaps, Circular 3/84 picked up these themes . It referred to the special need for 'particular types of coals such as anthracite and prime quality coking coals which are in short supply in the United Kingdom' . Most significantly it recommended, in paragraph 15, that 'each project should be considered in terms of the market requirement for its planned output (taking into account the alternative sources of supply including deep mined coal)' . This paragraph - on 'market requirements' - sat alongside the Circular's references to the 'need' for coal and to the importance of filtering planning applications through a 'broad sieve' . Here then we see a transformation in markets (increasing international competition ; increasing dependence upon electricity generation) affecting both sectors of coal supply . We also see the state regulation of supply through the operation of the planning system and the financial regulation of British Coal . These combinations of factors often led to intense frustration felt by each of the separate interests involved in the regulation and development of coal production . Private operators have frequently refused to provide mineral planning authorities at the application stage with evidence of the type of coal or the details of the market it will supply . British Coal, for so long the monopoly producer, has tended to take the

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101

view that it is the best judge of its interests . In a recent Public Inquiry, for example, the head of the North East Area of the Opencast Executive expressed the view that 'the market requirement for various types, grades and qualities of coal is known pre-eminently to the Board' . The successor to Circular 3/84, Mineral Planning Guidance Note No . 3 (MPG 3) on 'Opencast Coal Mining' (Department of Environment/Welsh Office, 1988) was published in June 1988 ; and this is altogether a clearer and more direct document than its predecessor . Here there is a clear shift from the language of Flowers, and an abandonment of any notion of need (with all the metaphysical and relativistic problems that word contains) . Instead the language is one of costs and markets . It makes clear that : 'because opencast coal is one of the cheapest forms of energy available to this country, it is in the national interest to maximise production where that can be done in an environmentally acceptable way' (para . 5) . and 'there is a strong case in the national interest for allowing these resources to be developed unless there are overriding environmental considerations (para . 6) . The 'need' for coal is now determined to exist in advance as a matter of policy, without reference to the justification of the need on a site by site basis . Furthermore, the document makes clear that 'opencast is not in competition with deep mined coal' (para . 3), thereby establishing clearly the parameters within which local planning authorities should make their decisions . Under 3/84 opposition to opencast sites had been based strongly upon the idea of 'need' and the linked idea of competition with the deep mines - opencast coal, it was argued, isn't needed, sufficient supplies are available in deep mines which will be closed should opencast production continue . Such agreements won some support from Inspectors at Public Inquiries . MPG3 made them much less potent .

The implications of these changes, taken together, are wide ranging and significant . Cumulatively they can be seen to involve the detailed impact of market forces, and the interests

The public private divide

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of private capital, with the complex of social relationships that has made up the coal industry (and the coal regions) since 1945 . They are changes of some substance therefore . Nowhere is this more clear perhaps than in the perceptible emergence of a private coal interest in the coalfields, for as British Coal pressed for the development and expansion of the opencast operations under its control, so too have contractors operating in the private licensed sector pushed for an extension of their operations through a relaxation in the statutory regulation of the independent sector . Their evidence to both the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the Select Committee has laid great stress on the efficiency and viability of the private operations and the need for a greater scope (through a lifting of the tonnage limit) and freedom (a reduction or removal on the royalty payment to British Coal) for their operations . Their case resonates with the White Paper 'Lifting the Burden' and found some sympathy in Circular 14/85 from the Department of the Environment which urged the planning system to support developments unless they cause 'demonstrable harm' . Table 5: Opencast production statistics 1983/4 - 1987/8 (100 tonnes) Year 1983/4 1984/5 1985/6 1986/7 1987/8

Opencast executive sites

Licensed sites

Total production

13,833 13,660 13,867 12,813 14,461

966 1,238 1,396 1,783 1,838

14,799 14,898 15,263 14,596 16,299

Source: County Planning Officers' Society, 1988 .

The private opencast sector has been strenuously lobbying Government over the past few years to remove or relax the legal restrictions placed on its activities . The output of private sites is restricted to 25,000 tonnes or thereabouts (which, with extensions, means in practice a production limit of 50,000 tonnes) . Licensed opencast sites also pay a royalty of £13 .50 per tonne to British Coal . Production figures for both British Coal Opencast Executive and Licensed Sites (for the years 1983/4 - 1987/8) are shown in Table 5 . Licensed output can be seen to be steadily

Politics of coal production

increasing, and this will be escalated by the recent announcement to seek to increase the legal tonnage from such sites to 250,000 tonnes . This increase has been achieved by a persistent and effective political lobby . The parliamentary group in support of opencast includes the Conservative MP's Marcus Fox, Peter Rost and Michael Fallon . They are part of a powerful new grouping whose links extend throughout the coal industry . Its growing influence was also indicated when Mr Robert Young (Chairman of Young Group plc, private operators and contractors) became a freeman of the City of London (sponsored by Mr Ian MacGregor, former Chairman of British Coal) . The impact of the changes hinted at here can be clearly seen in a number of ways, and perhaps most clearly in an area like the North East . This area has an extensive exposed coalfield, and is one of the places where independent licensed operations have been most prominent . In this respect the area isn't typical, but it focuses attention upon trends which are emerging on a national scale . For example, nationally and in the North East, recent years have seen a clear shift in the balance of coal output . Nationally, deep-mined output remains dominant, though it has fallen from 105 million tonnes in 1981/2 to 82 mt in 1987/8 while opencast output has risen from 15 .4 mt to 17 .2 mt (of which the licensed operators production has risen from 1 . 1 to 2 . 1 mt) . While locally in the North East the deep mines (with 10 million tonnes output p .a .) are still clearly dominant, their output has declined substantially from the 14 .5 million tonnes of 1981/2 . In contrast opencast output stabilised around 3 million tonnes and has been recently expanded . Its share of total tonnage has increased from a sixth to a quarter in this period . This pattern has not been even . In County Durham, in contrast to the national pattern, there has been a gradual expansion of opencast output but a decline in output from Opencast Executive sites . In 1987-8 production statistics indicate that output from the private licensed sites (at over 400,000 tonnes) provided over a third of opencast tonnage in the county (County Planning Officers' Society, 1988) . There is also an increasing tendency for private companies to be operating in both sectors of opencast mining . Mostly they originate within road haulage or the civil engineering

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industry but they are increasingly being constituted as a group of private coal producers . In this there are a number of small independent operators (e .g . Banks, Budge, Young Group, in the North East) and another group based on conglomerates and major companies like Burnett and Hallamshire (now renamed NSM, following a recent restructuring) . Some idea of these changes can be seen in the history of Ryan International, originally a Cardiff-based coal recovery firm . The company was hauled back from receivership in 1985 by a group of investors led by Mr Christian Hotson . In 1986 it bought up the Derek Crouch Group of Companies for £28m . Crouch had a history of contracts with the Opencast Executive and own the famed 'Big Geordie' dragline in Northumberland . The new company established through this merger had an annual coal output of 2 .75 million tonnes . At the time of the merger Mr Hotson remarked that it would increase the company's standing in the coal industry and protect it from changes in the political scene . He added, 'You need size and strength to negotiate in an industry dominated by two monopolies like the CEGB and British Coal' (Talt, 1989) . Further plans to merge Ryan with the Carless oil group in 1988 to create a broadly-based energy conglomerate with assets of £267 million foundered when Carless was the subject of a takeover bid from the Kelt oil company . At the beginning of 1989 Ryan's history took a further turn with the company being the subject of a £69 .6m management buy-out by a new company called Digger . The significance of this private coal interest upon the patterning of the public/private divide can be seen in a number of ways . Most notable perhaps is the movement of personnel between the sectors . The statutory requirement for colliery managers to be certificated has meant that the management of licensed drift mines is dominated by ex-managers of the NCB . As such, in 1986 Mr Michael Eaton, the Coal Board's spokesman during the miners' strike, headed a buy-out team which purchased four private anthracite drift mines in South Wales (The Times, 4 .12 .86) . Equally prolific are the numbers of planners, surveyors and geologists who have moved from local government, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF) and British Coal to work for the opencast operators . This is a national phenomenon, but it is most developed in the North East .

Politics of coal production 105

There, eight members of County Durham's planning staff have taken employment in the private coal sector in the past six years . We have interviewed some of these, and were informed graphically of their need to go 'the way of all flesh' . The financial inducements were just too attractive to stay with the local authority . We also talked to some of the people who stayed, and we've heard of the deterioration of morale in the planning profession . Where planning appeals have been heard, it has often been the case that the private sector knew the local authorities prepared arguments better than the County Council . 'We've had a number of cases where the chap who's putting up the case for the private operator is the same person who prepared our case rejecting their application in the first place' .

The change in the pattern of coal supplies has also had its effect upon the composition of the coal industry labour force . The partial break in the monopoly of British Coal has been most pronounced in the case of the NUM . At the moment the deep-mine workforce is divided between the NUM and the UDM . In this context the presence of non-NUM members on opencast sites and in licensed drift mines, adds a further complicating factor to the organisation of labour in the British Coal industry . An example of this development was seen in the (perhaps mischievous) suggestion by the Regional Secretary of the TGwu in South Wales to the effect that his union would organise the (perhaps mischievously) proposed new mine at Margam if the NUM would not agree to a new working week agreement . It now appears that the UDM will take over this role if the pit is ever sunk . George Wright's involvement in the coal industry comes through his union's recruitment of workers in the opencast sites in South Wales . As a consequence of this the TGwu has become a solid supporter of opencast sites, in contrast to the opposition of the NUM . These differing views were the subject of considerable discussion in 1989 when it seemed possible that the two unions would merge . In South Wales, the opencast sites are highly unionised ; in other areas they are less so . On some sites labour only subcontracting (the lump) has become established, along with non-unionism . A complex coal industry labour force emerges from this account, as part of a trend which can be expected to continue into the

The labour force

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1990s . It is in stark contrast to their established image of the traditional miner', with powerfully linked ideologies of class and community . Opencast sites are of relatively short duration, and involve workers in fixed contracts which are, for some, renewed with the next site . It is a pattern of short-term mining, therefore, with a less sustained relationship with particular communities . Frequently opencast contractors and private operators promise to employ local residents on new sites (often as a way of pacifying opposition to a planning application) . However, the companies usually move their existing staff to the new site Table 6: Employment in deep mining in three peripheral coalfields North East area Year

1983/4 1984/5 1985/6 1986/7 1987/8

No. of deep mines

Manpower

Deep mine output (1,000 tonnes)

16 15 10 8 7

22,900 Strike affected 17,900 14,400

10,985

No . of deep mines

Manpower

28 28 17 14 11

20,100 Strike affected 13,500 10,200 7,500

No. of deep mines

Manpower

9 9 9 6 4

13,100 Strike affected 7,700 4,500 3,500

11,800

9,582 10,229 10,255

South Wales Year 1983/4 1984/5 1985/6 1986/7 1987/8

Deep mine output (1,000 tonnes) 6,606 6,638 6,479 5,027

Scotland Year 1983/4 1984/5 1985/6 1986/7 1987/8

Deep mine output (1,000 tonnes) 5,323 4,276 3,442 2,603

Politics of coal production

and the few local people who are fortunate to be offered employment usually fill vacancies for unskilled and low-paid jobs . The opencast employment scene is paralleled to some degree by the increasing proportion of deep miners who have to travel from their 'home communities', where the pits have closed, to employment at a pit in another part of the coalfield . Generally, as we have seen, employment underground has declined dramatically . In the North East, deep-mine employment has more than halved during the last five years . In South Wales there are now less than 7,000 men in the industry while the Scottish area has been reduced to three deep mines and under 3,000 men . Table 6 summarises the changes that have taken place in these 'peripheral' coalfields . We have noted the changes in the deep mines (in relation to work force, flexibility, redundancies, etc .) and pointed to the ways in which these are linked to developments in the opencast sector . Here the labour process is much less complex, involving less fixed capital equipment and also less skilled labour. In the region (the North East) where British Coal achieves its highest productivity the 3 million tonnes of opencast coal is produced by about 1,250 opencast workers, yet the 10 million tonnes of deep-mined coal is based upon a deep-mine labour force of 11,600 . It is this 'employment effect' of a shift from deep-mined to opencast mining which has worried local authorities and was prominent in the evidence presented by the Coalfield Communities Campaign to the Select Committee on Energy (House of Commons, 1987) . The concern hinges upon the employment and income multiplier effects generated by deep-mined production in contrast with opencast mining . This view has been expressed at a number of Public Inquiries and several inspectors have seen it to be a source of legitimate concern for local authorities worried by high local unemployment . In her Report following the Barcus Close Opencast Inquiry, Co . Durham (1984) the Inspector concluded that . . . Production of coal from deep mines is much more labour-intensive than opencast mining, and this is a very important consideration in this area, which has lost so many mining and industrial jobs over the past few years . The (Co . Durham) Structure Plan records the limited percentage of the national workforce now employed in

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industry, and the retention of such employment in an area traditionally heavily reliant on this sector of the economy is very relevant' (Barcus Close Inquiry, 1984) . A growing body of empirical evidence exists on the impact on local labour markets of deep mines closures, most notably the study Undermining Easington (Hudson, Peck and Sadler, 1986) . While similar detailed studies haven't been undertaken in relation to the jobs in opencast mining and the overall impact of a shift in the balance of coal supply, it seems reasonable to suggest that the opencast coal supply is based upon a smaller, less skilled labour force, with a less stable regional base, and less developed employment linkages into other branches of local industry . Also in some regions there seems to be a spatial separation between the operations of the deep mines and the opencast sites (e .g . in parts of the North East), while in others (e .g . South Wales) opencast sites and deep mines are worked alongside each other . The implications of these variations (in terms of work-force co-operation, solidarity, etc .) are, as yet, unclear . What is clear is that the overall composition of the mine labour force in Britain is being transformed . The implications of this - for the operation of the industry and the politics of the coal districts - are potentially far reaching .

Policy implications and the environment

Opencast mining is recognised as having an environmentally damaging impact, although the scale of this is disputed by the Opencast Executive . The ongoing environmental costs of opencast mining also include noise and dust, plus the presence of heavy plant and haulage wagons on roads . Certainly the operation of an opencast site leads to an immediate loss of amenity value (loss of trees and original vegetation, hedges, wildlife, farm buildings and other surface features) . John Atkinson (former Land Commissioner for MAFF in the North East Region with responsibility for all NCB opencast restoration) thought that restoration (after opencast coal extraction) was a much abused word (Atkinson, 1986) . He thought that it was nothing more than a salvage operation with the objective of mitigating, as far as possible, the enormous loss to the landscape, the diminution of soil productivity and the immeasurable loss to plant and wildlife and the natural environment . Mr Atkinson also added that if

Politics of coal production

restoration is not supervised properly the results will be a 'cosmetic confidence trick' . He concluded that such tricks have been played in the past and that restoration of any site can only be as good as the supervision it receives . The subject of restoration was ably discussed in the Inspector's Report following the Ellerbeck West Opencast Inquiry, in Lancashire (Ellerbeck West Inquiry, 1989) . He thought that . . . common sense insists that the restored landscape would for many years appear 'man made', more or less devoid of the countless natural features and eccentricities which are part and parcel of its present charm and result from the passage of time rather than man's artifice . In time, another landscape would begin to mature, but I consider that it would be very many years before this assumed an interest and sense of naturalness akin to that of the site's landscape' . Recent British Coal financial statistics show that site restoration accounts for only 2 .6% of total opencast costs (British Coal, 1988) . During 1988 several doctors in Glynneath in the Vale of Neath, in South Wales, produced a report linking high levels of illness in their community with the dust from opencast coal mines (See Watson et al., 1986 ; Jones, 1988 ; and The Times, 5 .2 .89) . The doctors' carried out a two-year investigation among the 7,000 people served by the health practice after high prescription costs had been challenged by the Welsh Office . The report established that a high level of asthma attacks occurred when the wind was blowing from the opencast site and that ear infections, which in many cases affected different people, tended to follow after a short time lag . The doctors had earlier expressed their fears for the local residents health at the Brynhenllys Opencast Inquiry . British Coal attempted to belittle their concern and accuse them of being 'anti-working class' because they expressed concern for the health of their patients . After lengthy considerations of evidence by the Glynneath doctors to the Derllwyn Opencast Inquiry (during 1988) the Welsh Office has issued an unprecedented order to reopen the Inquiry (with a medical assessor) to consider further medical

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evidence . This re-opened Inquiry is still on-going . There is growing interest throughout the country in this issue with further detailed research being proposed . Where derelict land exists, these sites can be seen to have a positive reclaiming impact . Such land is, however, declining rapidly on the exposed coalfields . In Scotland, in the North East and the North West of England, few applications in recent years for large or small sites have involved derelict land . Opencast operations are slowly moving onto land of higher agricultural potential and into areas of greater environmental sensitivity . This is likely to lead to increasing opposition to the expansion of this kind of mining . The MAFF has tended to occupy a neutral position in most areas of dispute . In this it recognises the damaging impact of strip mining, but also the economic interests of many farmers for whom 'coal is the best crop' . Environmental pressure groups such as the Council for the Protection of Rural England (cPRE) draw upon traditional support in the countryside areas which is often politically conservative . To such groups are linked 'local residents', whose social composition is far from even . New arrivals, often professional and managerial couples are usually in the forefront of action committees . Occasionally such opposition is supported by local business interests or development corporations . In the old coalfield districts considerable care has been taken by planning authorities with their 'image' in relation to prospective new employers . Coal, with its connotations of dirt and grime - of old industry and the past - has been downvalued within this and a strong emphasis has been given to cleanliness and an ordered environment . Within these districts, therefore, there have been occasional signs of the supporters of 'economic' activity siding with 'environmentalists' against opencast coal mining . The politics of this are often convoluted, however, as local industrial development organisations seek to promote an 'enterprise culture' that seeks strongly to dissociate itself from the old collectivist culture of the coalfields, which some opponents of opencast seek to defend . Such has been the case of the Derwentside Industrial Development Agency which have presented evidence to several Public Inquiries opposing opencast activity (most recently at the Rose Hills Public Inquiry, Co . Durham during 1986) .

Politics of coal production

In this paper we have been concerned to comment on the variety of ways in which changes are taking place in the British coal industry focusing upon the increasing significance given to opencast production nationally . While these changes have been expressed in terms of a dramatic increase in efficiency and competitiveness of the industry such an emphasis fails to examine the costs and long-term consequences of these changes . Those can be viewed in terms of the loss of job opportunities in the established coal-mining districts of the country . In parts of Scotland, South Wales, the North East and South West Yorkshire and Nottingham increases in productivity have to be counterposed with accounts of heightening levels of unemployment and deprivation . However, it is clear that the British coal industry will never again employ large numbers of miners and realistic projections need to recognise this . Equally, it seems inevitable that the political squeeze exacted by this government on the industry will continue up until the next election . Should the Tories be returned again, the industry will be privatised, and by that time the deep-mined sector will have been contracted even further than it is today . Equally it seems clear that the opencast sector will thrive, and that within it quite powerful private coal interests will emerge . The general impact of those changes upon the coalfield districts (strongly documented as Labourist and solidaristic) needs to be considered . In making a judgement on the future of deep mines it is helpful to return to the writings of Ian MacGregor . In his book The Enemies Within, he makes clear the way he sees changes developing in the industry . Here he talks of 'the change from a labour intensive to a capital intensive economy' as being inevitable, and a force which 'no politician or union boss' can make disappear . His role, he recognised as being one of managing the change 'of being a sort of midwife to it' (MacGregor, 1986) . In this respect MacGregor was quite clear seeing . Mining will be an increasingly capital intensive industry . Modern faces produce as much coal as was, just recently, produced by efficient collieries . Superpits now produced greater tonnage with a half of the labour force they employed in the early 1980s, and it is likely that this trend will continue apace . In another respect MacGregor's vision was rather distorted however . In all capital intensive systems the compliance

Conclusion

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of the workforce is critical . As the 1978 Ridley Report made clear with respect to the electricity supply industry, the new right Tories seemed to recognise this in advocating buying off potential opposition with above-average wage rises . The Government remains sensitive to this issue in relation to the power stations but not the coalmines . And here we have one of the unanswered questions in relation to British mining in the 1990s . At the end of the strike MacGregor announced 'People are now discovering the price of insubordination and boy are we going to make it stick' . Miners still remember this . When market forces change, and when ownership alters, they may put that memory to use . But, as we have made clear throughout this paper, the modern coal industry is more complex than the industry of the 1950s . Opencast mining and the presence of large numbers of private licensed mines will clearly remain a part of the industry in the foreseeable future . Here significant numbers of workers are employed on a quasi-casual basis . Some are unionised, but by no means all of them are . Many of the opencast operators have strong antiunion views . The relationship between these workers (and their trade union) and the deep mines is a perplexing question . As is their relationship with the people in whose locality opencast mines are established . In an earlier article we tentatively pointed to the potential significance of environmentalist protests against opencast expansion (Beynon, Hudson and Sadler, 1986) . It would seem that, currently, peoples' perceptions of their lives and the places in which they live are altering in important ways and in the coal districts this is of some significance . In these localities, for generations, people lived amongst the dirt and grime of industrial production, in the firm belief that the industries that led to environmental pollution were central to the livelihood of their area, that pollution was part of life . 'Where there's muck there's brass' . Yet surprisingly, and with some speed, people in these areas seem to be taking a radically different view of things . In the wake of the closure of collieries and steel mills, ex-miners and steel workers can be heard to talk of the 'human environment' and the future of their families . Men who, as children, slid down colliery waste heaps may reminisce upon their past with some fondness but this is now what they look to as a source of entertainment for their

Politics of coal production children and grandchildren . In the North East it has been interesting to note how the deepest sarcasm of the barristers employed by the opencast sector has been reserved for the person who has presented evidence for the Miners Support Groups . Here an active group (comprised of many ex-miners) which developed during the miners' strike has engaged positively with the issue of opencast mining . It has presented evidence which combines a view of the future of the deep mines with an awareness of the environmental loss involved in the operation of the opencast sector . These issues about the future pattern of coal and energy supply in Britain, and the environmental effects associated with it, are all contingent upon political decisions which have opened up the coal sector to the pressures of the international coal market . Changes in politics or in this market would clearly have their effects in the coalfields . Certain things (particularly certain certainties) seem to have changed for good, however . It is still far from clear where these changes will end up .

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Atkinson, J .H . (1986)Opencast Coal Working', paper presented at a conference convened by

CPRE,

Stafford, October 1985) .

Barcus Close Inquiry (1984) Inspectors Report for the Barcus Close, Burnopfield, County Durham (October 1984) Appeal by Ward Bros . Plant Hire Ltd ., Ref. T/APP/Y1300/A/84/10480/p . 5 . Beynon, H ., Hudson, R . and Sadler, D . (1986) 'Nationalised industries and the destruction of communities : some evidence from north east England', in Capital and Class No . 29 . British Coal (1988) Annual Report and Accounts (1987/88) . British Coal Opencast Executive (1986) Opencast Coal - A National Assessment . County Planning Officers' Society (1988) Opencast Coal Mining Statistics 1987/88 . Department of Environment/Welsh Office (1988) Mineral Planning Guidance Note No . 3 . Ellerbeck West Inquiry (1989) Inspectors Report (Mr J . Dunlop), Ellerbeck West Opencast Public Inquiry, (February 1989) Ref . APP/c2300/A/87/67269 . Flowers Report (1981) The Coal and the Environment, Department of Environment . House of Commons Select Committee on Energy (1987) First Report (Session 1986-87) The Coal Industry . Hudson, R . Peck, F ., and Sadler, D . (1986) Undermining Easington, University of Durham/Easington District Council . Jones, B . (1988) 'Doctors Join Greens Against Opencast Mines', in The New Statesman 3/6/88 . MacGregor, I . (1986) The Enemies Within . Mason, J . and Samuelson, M ., (1989) 'Coal Imports Threaten Jobs', in Financial Times 10 .2 .89 . Prior, M . and McCloskey, M . (1988) Coal on the Market, Financial Times International Coal Report . Samuelson, M . (1989a) 'Coal Industry Under Threat', in Financial Times 10 .2 .89 . Samuelson, M . (1989b) 'Scargill Says Cuts Prove Him Right', in Financial Times 14 .2 .89 . Tait, N . (1989) 'Management Buy-Out Wins Control At Ryan', in Financial Times 2 .2 .89 . Watson, M .W ., Thomas, J ., Temple, J .M .F ., and Rees, H .G . (1986) 'Opencast Mining and Health - The Effect of Opencast Mining on Health in the Upper Neath Valley' .

Jimi Adesina

The construction of social communities in work : The case of a Nigerian factory • This paper examines some dimensions of work relations, with an emphasis on shopfloor life in a Southern Nigerian refinery . Elsewhere' I have examined work and work relations from the perspective of value relations, i .e ., the worker as an object of production . Here I am interested in looking at those relations from a different angle, i .e ., the perspective of the 'deconstruction' 2 of value relations ; this is the fundamental project in this paper . The emphasis on the nature, dynamics and reproduction of collectivities in work is on the ways in which people express themselves as active human agencies, rather than simple objects of relations . In other words as active subjects who attempt to redefine their positions in the production process and rescue their subjectivity . This argument is not simply painting the 'other side' of value relations in work, but expresses the method of 'one-sided abstraction' (Elson, 1979) . In other words, moving from one aspect of a totality to another, in order to lay bare the complex, contradictory, character of work relations, which gives 'totality' its meaning . The analysis will focus, primarily on two forms of communities in work', which I call 'Vertical Communities in Work (vcw) and 'Lateral Communities in Work' (LCw) . The Lcw

Adesina discusses the construction of social communities in work, identifying the significance of 'vertical' and 'lateral' communities in the workplace .

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involves the more recognisable collectivity or community of shopfloor (or office) workers, which bourgeois sociology has always referred to as work group . What is different here is an attempt to specify its (LCW) location in the concrete-labour aspect of the expenditure of labour-power . The vcw, on the other hand, deals with the social relations of supervisory staff and their 'subordinates' . It is also possible to identify a third community in work, which involves attempts at promoting a 'corporate collective' ; an identification with the corporation, I will argue that although the last form presupposes the management's active involvement, explaining it simply as attempt at 'subordinating' or 'incorporating' the workforce, would fail to grasp its complex basis and its interaction with LCW and vcw . The thrust of Cressey and Maclnnes (1980) piece, was to argue on the extent to which workers' interest can become coordinated with that of their employers . One implication of this phenomenon, is that we cannot take the antagonism of value relations for granted . Burawoy has developed the other dimension of the argument - also argued by Cressey and Maclnnes (1980) - that the workers' economic survival depends on the survival of the unit of capital which employs their labour-power . I have elsewhere argued the extent to which the coordination of interest between workers and management flows from the duality of labour activity itself (cf. Adesina, in press) . Here, my discussion of the 'Corporate Collective', is to demonstrate the extent to which the immanent duality of the labour process, expresses only one dimension of the coordination of the labourer's (perceived) interest with Management's . The other dimension of this process shows that the corporate collective relations do not just flow out of the 'given conditions of production', but are actively cultivated . In other words, the active ideological efforts to develop corporate citizenship, i .e ., allegiance to, and identification with, the employer . This I believe goes beyond the issue as specified by Burawoy, and Cressey & Maclnnes . Significantly, the corporate collective is indicative of the managerial recognition of the problem of transformation of labour-power into labour ; that workers needed to be cultivated as human subjects as well ; the motivational question in bourgeois management studies . However, no cynicism is being assumed on the part of the managers . Many of them

Social communities at work

genuinely see the workplace as social community in which the workers and themselves invest their lives ; albeit hierarchically structured - with everyone knowing their stations in life - and the value criteria hegemonic . Edwards' (1979) work also focused on how the large corporations are increasingly trying to foster the spirit of corporate collective among their employees . This he explained in terms of the internal labour market of the 'primary labour market' firms . However, as Joyce's (1980) study of work and society in 19th century Northern England shows, the fostering of collective identity with (owners and functionaries of) capital is not a recent development (cf. Burawoy, 1985 : Ch . 2) . The process is also not peculiar to the 'industrial workers' as Newby's (1979) study of agricultural workers shows . The vcw raises a number of theoretical issues in the light of conventional analysis of supervisory personnel . A number of workplace studies - especially the radical ones - perceive the Foreman, for instance, as an unmediated agent of capital (Burawoy, 1979 ; Edwards, 1979 ; Stone, 1975, etc) . There is however, a tradition in the Sociology of Work which recognises that supervisors sometimes act in concert with their subordinates, in opposition to management . The 'man in the middle' thesis (Roethlisberger, 1943) explains this phenomenon from the perspective that supervisors are 'torn by competing demands and loyalties' of management and the workers (Fletcher, 1969 : 341) . Some of these writers suggest that the ambiguous behaviour of supervisors is a result of their dwindling power (Child, 1975), or that this reduction in supervisors' power 'exacerbates' their ambiguity (Fletcher, 1969) . Although Fletcher rightly argued against the 'monolithic' classification of foremen - inherent in the original thesis - his 'reformulation' still rests primarily on the same premise . My argument, vis-a-vis Burawoy, Edwards and others, is not that supervisory personnel do not exercise the power of capital, or that they do not do so in coercive ways, but that this cannot be taken for granted . On the other hand, particularly against the 'dwindling power' subset of the 'man in the middle' thesis, I argue that the ambiguity of supervisory personnel is immanent in the production process itself . Supervisors at once perform the global functions of capital and at the same time, the function of the collective worker (Carchedi, 1975, 1975a) . The former involves directing and coordinating

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labour activity of others . As aspects of the collective worker, supervisors expend labour-power and therefore share the concrete-labour experience of the workers (Marx, 1976 : 54950) ; they are subsumed under the dictates of capital . These form the basis of the vcw, although its articulation3 is culturally specific, and is strengthened by previous collective struggles in the refinery, as will be discussed below . The results of the emphatic relation between supervisors and the supervised, that vcw implies, could be seen in the alliances between senior and junior staff unions in the plant . Quite significant is the extent to which, in the absence of strong shopfloor unionism, supervisors can become the sources of defence of shopfloor workers against the higher hierarchy of management . However, the vCW can, as Burawoy (1979) recognised, become the basis of the intensification of labour, I will argue that it is in the contradictory unity of these two aspects of the vcw that we can best appreciate its essence . The specific form or language of the vcw is sourced by traditional cultural values and practices of the Nigerian content in which workers and supervisors grew up . Examples are reactions to the arrival of a new baby in the family of a co-worker, bereavement, etc . Workers' collectivities or 'solidaristic' relations in work is something that is widely recognised in most sociological studies of the workplace . Here I will explore the root of the LCW in the labour process - the terrain of concrete-labour activities - and the extent to which the organisation of work eases the development of social community spirit . The LCW, I will argue, is a microcosmic class identity, but because it is based on experiential relations of the labour process, it can also segment the workers along unit or departmental lines . However, the LCW, I further argue, becomes the terrain of cultural activities and the premise of workers' collective defence . In this connection, I examine the viability of Burawoy's (1979) characterisation of 'workers' adaptation to work' (Baldamus, 1961) as 'consent' . I argue that while workers are 'adapting to work', they are also adapting the work to themselves . While Burawoy is correct in highlighting the limits of workers' `autonomy' in the workplace, his case I believe, is overstated . Underscoring the LCW, I argue, is an 'alternative morality', distinct from capitalist ethos . The weakness and strength of the LCW need careful, dialectical handling .

Social communities at work The LcW and vcw represent distinct evidence of workers' redefinition of their role in production, and the forms they take, as stated above, must be located within the specific cultural context . As Willis notes, 'non-work supplies many of the categories and meanings for work but it can only be understood in relation to work and is finally shaped by it' (1980 : 187) . But this reflects only one aspect of the issue in that the terrain of work gives rise to a distinct redefinition of 'non-work' relations, and I use the deconstruction of ethnic relations to demonstrate this . This is quite significant in view of the history of Nigeria's dominant political practice in which ethnicity has been a potent means of generating followership for politicians . The deconstruction of ethnicity is significant for the future of working class (people's) politics in Nigeria . The implication of the above is that one should not see work relations as epiphenomic reflection of orientations people 'carry' to the workplace (Goldthorpe et al ., 1968), nor argue the case of a self-sustaining autonomy of the labour process (Burawoy, 1979 : Ch . 9 ; Edwards, 1983, 1986) . While these various communities in work mediate the primary commodity relations, one should note that the valorisation process does not necessarily disappear from sight ; a case is the intensification of work that vcw involves . However, the corporate collective, vcw and LcW represent 3 levels of the addressing of the workers' subjectivity in the context of commodity production . While the corporate collective, from the perspective of the global function of capital, involves the primacy of the valorisation criteria ; the vcw expresses the contradictory execution of the function of capital and that of the collective worker, often within the primary criterion of the former and sometimes against senior managers, The LCW, however, involves the workers in the autonomous construction of their own collectivity in work often in hostility to the capitalist commodity criteria, managers and supervisors . Both the articulation of the LCW and its ethos represent the construction of an embryonic working class identity and consciousness ; an issue addressed elsewhere (cf . Adesina, 1989) . Even when workers help one another to survive the work, they do so in implicit opposition to the demands of commodity production and bourgeois individualism, with their collectivist ethos . Even when keeping production going, workers may be re-adapting the work to themselves . LcW is indicative of

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an autonomous, emergent working-class identity .

The research setting The research on the Nigerian oil industry, on which this paper is based, was conducted between 1985 and 1987 . This involved the author in an eight-month period of fieldwork, six of which were spent working, as a fitter mechanic and trainee plant operator, within the refinery, which is the focus of the discussion here . The refinery, located in Warri (Bendel State) in the riverine area of southern Nigeria, and is owned by the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (the NNPC) . With an estimated turnover of $11,000 million in 1987, the NNPC tops the list of the 400 biggest sub-saharan African firms, and 18 times bigger than the nearest firm in Nigeria (South 3/87, pp . 65-80) . Within the period of the fieldwork also, extensive interview was conducted, along with a questionnaire-survey . The refinery, commissioned in 1978, is divided into two divisions ; the Refining Division (RD) and what I call the nonoperational departments . The former, the core of production activities, has a number of departments, which include the Production, Maintenance, Fire and Safety . Other departments in the division include the Programming & Control, Inspection and Testing, and the Stock Management departments . These serve as back-up units for the production areas involved in planning production levels with the other arms of the NNPC, quality control on both products and repair works in the refinery, and the stocking and allocation of spare parts and materials for maintenance and repair jobs . The Technical Services Department on the other hand served as an internal unit for planning and overseeing the execution of new construction projects . All these other units of RD, are later referred to as Auxiliary Services . The remaining units, outside RD, of the refinery include the Administration and Finance divisions, the Estate, Organization & Manpower Development, Internal Audit and the Purchasing departments . The refinery was headed by a General Manager, a position one removed from that of the Managing Directorship of NNPC, while the major divisions were headed by Managers . The refinery was under the management of the personnel of the Italian oil conglomerate EN!, whose subsidiaries also built the

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plant, under a technical arrangement with the Nigerian Government . This arrangement lasted till 1984, when the plant was fully 'Nigerianised' . The Production and Maintenance departments, where most of the fieldwork was done, employ over 36% and 27% of the total workforce, respectively . The refinery's workforce is drawn from all over Nigeria, reflecting the ethnic heterogeneity of the country . Even with 78 .9176 of the workforce from Bendel State, and my survey showing about 62% of the sample is from the local government areas adjoining the refinery, the ethnic plurality is not affected . Bendel State is a highly poly-ethnic part of Nigeria, so is Warri with three major ethnic-nationalities and languages within a 4 kilometre radius of the town . This paper is divided into three sections, in which each social community is examined . In NNPC, the cultivation of the corporate collective takes many forms ; from the organisation of sports and leisure activities, to internal newsletters and the projected corporate image of Management . Above all, the character of the corporation as a unit of State-capital, puts it in the unique position to generate corporate collectivity . Both the dynamics of the corporate collective, and implications for work relations is examined first with reference to sports and leisure activities . 12 February 1983 saw the grand finale of a three-day sports fiesta of the NNPC . Three days in which over 300 sports persons representing the four operational zones of the corporation had engaged in the first national competition of its kind . As befitting the status of the corporation, it took place at the National Stadium in Lagos, the country's biggest sporting complex . The fiesta was a fruition of an idea conceived two years earlier - which 'received the blessing of Management' (NAPETCOR, 1983 : 23, 4 (3)) - and the final stage of the sports competition that had been going on within the various operational units of the corporation for a year . The closing speech of the NNPC's Managing Director reflects the satisfaction reported in NAPETCOR, the corporation's quarterly news magazine . The chief executive declared : it gives our Management great pleasure to see employees of all grades and cadres playing together . I enjoin you to ensure that this communication process and team work

The nature of corporate collective

Capital & Class

122 transcends the sports field and permeates your working relationship in the office and in the operational areas for the benefit of the Corporation and of Nigeria as a whole (NAPETCOR, ibid, p . 23). As he noted further : In encouraging sports, we are also investing in good health and higher productivity . (ibid) . The Lagos fiesta, however, represents a more general trend within the corporation . There were by mid-1985 no less than four NNPC football clubs playing in either the State or National Football League . The Warri Refinery Football Club, the most successful of the teams, was the national 2nd Division league champion and was promoted to the 1st division in the 1986 football season . In many locations of the corporation, great attention is paid to the provision of sports facilities . While there has been major encouragement from Management in the development of sport, and NAPETCOR would no doubt report it as 'investing in good health and higher productivity', the emergence of sporting activities is both fortuitous and a matter of tradition . In terms of the latter, sports - in particular football - has always relied on companies setting up employee football clubs and teams . Up till the 1970s, for instance, the major teams in the national league had been associated with firms . To a great extent, corporate prestige, it was argued by football enthusiasts in NNPC management, also flows from having teams bearing the corporation's name in the league . On the other hand, the rapid development and proliferation of sports activities in NNPC cannot be explained in terms of tradition alone . Since Most NNPC projects are located in remote areas of the country, the provision of recreational facilities has often been taken as part of the projects . Sometimes sport was developed by the employees in these remote locations to overcome after-work boredom . Warri refinery is an example of these two aspects . At the initial period of the refinery, the absence of recreational facilities in the town meant people had to look inward for sport and general recreation . The housing complex, for refinery employees, had football pitches on its grounds, and the first series of soccer matches were purely recreational ;

Social communities at work

mainly within the ranks of junior and 'intermediate' workers . By 1980, full-fledged inter-departmental competitions were being arranged . The formal adoption of a team by the refinery management, was aided by a number of soccer enthusiasts within the Management . 4 By 1984 when the club assumed a semi-professional status, the performance of the team or its players, had become an integral part of shopfloor discussions . Matches involving the soccer team were usually preceded by handbills (sent out during working hours) to muster support for 'our boys' . Both the players and those running the club are employees, and the latter take up the duties on a voluntary basis, while the player-workers devote most of their time to soccer ; a result of the league success . The implication of the above for the discussion here are two-fold . First, although the club is now an official 'institution', it was initiated by the employees . One cannot therefore see the club as an outcome of managerial 'strategic' initiative . Nonetheless, and this is the second aspect, the club and the exploits of its players have become vital aspects in the cultivation of a collectivity around the firm . One only needs to witness the gusto with which the club is cheered by the workers at the Warri Township Stadium, or the cloud of gloom that settles on the plant whenever the team lost a major match, to appreciate this factor . Managers, supervisors, operators, cleaners and drivers are, at least for those brief moments, united in the NNPC clan' . A different dimension of the cultivation of the corporate collective is a general development of recreational facilities . In most of the operational locations of the NNPC, there are staff clubs which cater for general after-work recreation . The staff clubs are organised strictly along seniority lines ; there are separate junior and senior staff clubs . In the refinery, the senior staff club is within the housing complex, providing bar and restaurant services, billiard and other games rooms . The evenings and weekends are almost a continuation of work relations, albeit in a less formal environment . The General Manager, like an imperial chieftain, 'graces the club with his presence' once in a while . The junior staff club - established after a protracted union agitation - is located just outside the fenced perimeters of the plant . Like the senior staff club, it has bar and snack facilities, but not a cozy restaurant or the games rooms . The club's lush furniture, carpet and aircon-

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ditioning, however sets it apart from what is available in the town to the average plant worker . The club has the distinct air of catering for 'NNPC workers' and their guests . The distinct constituency which is being constructed through these clubs, is a constituency of the unit of capital . Even when the junior/senior staff divide is part of these clubs' realities, the junior worker is being constructed as a member of the 'NNPC family', set apart from other members of the working class in the town . There are other dimensions to the construction of the corporate collective . The regular hosting of Christmas parties by the corporation for its employees and their families is an important dimension . A substantial part of the celebration is devoted to children, and gifts are handed out by 'Father Christmas', professional comedians and drama groups are hired to perform, while the children sometimes stage their own plays . The parties, as NAPETCOR once put it, are meant to generate 'a family spirit across the various levels' of the corporation's hierarchy, in the hope that this 'spirit will permeate their working relationship' . A more pervasive dimension of the attempt to cultivate the 'family spirit' are the two in-house news journals ; the monthly bulletin called the NNPC News and the quarterly magazine, NAPETCOR . Both are published by the Public Affairs Department in the corporation's headquarters in Lagos, and are distributed free-of-charge to the employees . The NNPC News is a news broadsheet while NAPETCOR combines news coverage and light reading (in short stories, cartoons) with an intellectual air ; carrying articles on the technical aspects of petroleum operations, management studies, etc . Both journals cover events involving employees and their families, from the junior workers to the Managing Director ; from wedding or child-naming ceremonies to bereavement or successes in and out of the work context . The coverage of positive personal news has tremendous effect on the individuals involved ; the feeling, for many, is like appearing on the television or in a national newspaper, particularly among people who would not normally 'make news' . It nourishes a sense of belonging . NAPETCOR also regularly carries backcover advertisements of the corporation which, although are part of the projection of a corporate image, have significant effects on the

Social communities at work

cultivation of the corporate collective . Let us take four of such advertisements, which reflect the diversity of the issues these advertisements raise . The first three emphasise the degree to which NNPC is not only the 'pillar of the Nigerian economy', but also on the cutting edge of the technology for national development . In addition to being the revenue base of the economy, NNPC also 'fuels the fleet that keeps the nation moving' . More importantly, NNPC is not just producing, but it is pioneering the technology for 'Nigeria's industrial takeoff . In another of such advertisements, the emphasis, of corporate self-perception, shifts to the idea that NNPC is making real today what are the stuff of dreams . NNPC is turning the forbidden 'murky swamps [of the riverine parts of southern Nigeria) and sand waste [of the Saharan northern Nigeria] into gold . . . black gold' . It is important, given the readership of the journal, that all these 'accolades' are not just something bestowed on an abstract corporation ; NNPC means everyone who works in it, from the Plant Operator to the Managing Director . They fuel the nation, brave the 'frontier' of technology and significantly, are involved in 'national development' efforts . Work is not just about commodity production but making `Nigeria great' . The implication is that these advertisements make people 'feel good' about being part of NNPC, and my survey shows that there are many who believe they are involved in the national development effort, that their concrete-labour activity is the stuff that keeps the nation going . It is not uncommon to find workers who, with great pride, tell you how their own efforts as plant operators, maintenance technicians, caustic soda loaders or control panel operators, form the basis of the Nigerian economy . This pride in their own labour, often flows from direct experiences ; they know that when there is an equipment failure or a machine breaks down the country could face petrol or domestic gas shortages . However, while the workers' concrete-labour is often identified with the usevalue dimensions of the hydrocarbon commodities they produce, this identification does not, per se, simply flow from experience . These perspectives are actively cultivated and articulated by the Management, and as elements of the corporate collective, the advertisements contribute to the workers' identification with the corporation . In any case, one of the aforementioned corporate advertisements, which speaks directly to the (potential)

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employees, not only guarantees to fulfil their technical dreams but also provide them the job of a lifetime . All this is not to suggest a 'grand design' of management to 'hegemonise' the workforce, but the effect is certainly to encourage a sense of corporate collective . But what is the significance of all this? It is important for one to approach the contradictory elements in worker ideology from the contradictory dimensions of lived experience, and more important, from the perspective of the ideological activities of the dominant bloc in society . Second, the ideology of the corporate collective reveals the extent to which the expenditure of labour-power does not simply rely on the self-propelling force of production, but are ideologically articulated . The corporate collective often becomes the terrain where the humanity of the worker, denied in the labour process, is recognised and acknowledged . Nonetheless, what cannot, and should not, be assumed is a notion of 'incorporation' or pathological 'subordination' of the workers to the employer . First, the image of workers' concrete-labour acknowledges the reality ; it is not just a case of the management hoodwinking the workers . Second, the corporate collective, as will become clear in a moment, is not the only collectivity in work, nor is it the most potent . However, the corporate collective is an aspect of the complex - often contradictory - totality of the workers' experience of work . What I have tried to do so far is expatiate on this aspect of this totality in the procedure of one-sided abstraction . The vertical community and work relations

In the Introduction to this paper, I outlined in general terms the framework of the vcw . This section examines the diverse bases of the vcw and its implications for work relations . vcw refers to the reconstruction of work relations such that workers and supervising staff do not confront one another only as 'determined' objects of production, but as human beings . In this sense, the primary value relation is redefined in the process of empathic interaction between supervisor and the supervised . I mentioned, earlier, some of its implications, both socially on the shopfloor and politically ; here I am interested in exploring its dynamics . The rise and dynamics of the vertical community To understand the specific form that vcw takes in the refinery, in particular the production areas, we need to go back

Social communities at work to the beginning of the Warri refinery operations . Between 1978 and 1981, all the key posts were held by the ENI Italian staff. In 1979, for instance, there were 93 'expatriate staff in the Refinery, 55 of them were in the production and 22 in maintenance departments . All senior posts, from Refinery Manager to Chief Operators and Boardmen (Control Panel Operators) in the Process Areas, and from Maintenance Manager to Supervisor in the Maintenance Department, were held by the Italian personnel . By 1980 the figure went up to 95 . The technical agreement under which the ENI subsidiary, Snamprogetti, managed the refinery envisaged the gradual transfer of operations to the Nigerian personnel ; the so-called 'Nigerianisation' process . This process, and the nature of training the process staff involved every new employee spending time on the shopfloor to gain experience of the operation of the plant . However, under the Snamp management, there was the feeling among the indigenous personnel that Snamp was deliberately hampering the Nigerianisation process in order to protect its lucrative management contract . What, however, exacerbated the situation, was what the indigenous staff saw as the prevalence of racialism on the part of the Italian personnel . Racial prejudice, many believed, fed the high handedness of the Italians' treatment of the Nigerians . As a Boardman recalled : 5

Di way deh dey take behave dat time you go t'ink say to operate di refinery na magic . You see as all of us dey here so? For where! Even to see black face for 'ere na wah . If you wan move near di board deh go shout `No touch!, no touch!!' . Na only dem dem go dey around. The way they behaved, you'd think operating the refinery is magical . You see how people take things so easy? No it couldn't happen then . It was rare to find a black person around here . If you came close to the panel, they'd shout at you : 'No touch!, no touch!!' . They're the only ones you'd find around here . The significance of the period for a discussion of vcw is that most of the boardmen, chief operators and supervisors in 1985/6 were working as plant operators at the time . They experienced the harshness of shopfloor life alongside the people they now supervise . Plant Operators told me of an instance when Oloba, currently a supervisor, was accused by an Italian shift supervisor of abandoning his post during the night shift .

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If the other operators had not rallied round and backed his story, and insisted it was all the shift supervisor's mistake, Oloba would have lost his job . A chief operator described, in perhaps exuberant terms, the workers' reaction to this regime :

Ah, my broder, na revolution . People come dey tamper wit' di valve; turn 'am small until di tin' go trip di alarm for Control Room . Den, you go return'am to normal position . Come see how deh* go run come insi'e plant, but everybodi go jus' dey look . Ah!, it was a revolution, mate . The blokes were tampering with the valves turn it gently until it tripped the alarm in the Control Room . Then return it to its normal position . You should see how they'd* shoot into the plant, but everyone would pretend like nothing was wrong . [* the Italian panel operators] This experience of collective struggle figures prominently in the narrative and explanation of many supervisors, when they overlook a worker's violation of work rules . This supports a continued sensitivity to the nature of the labour process, especially in the production areas . Between chief operators who head the shift crews and the plant operators, there is a relaxed application of the rules which forbid the latter to come to the Control Rooms (cRs) except for instructions . Very often this is ignored, as long as the chief operator does not feel that the plant operator is ignoring his work, particularly on afternoon and night shifts, when there are no senior managers in the plant . As Willie, a chief operator explained : We have to be liberal with them (operators), it's not easy . . . but when you work in the plant you realise how things are . . . the managers don't always know that . Two issues need highlighting here ; first, while race gave the vcw its specific origin in the refinery, one should stress that race only provides the framework, the form, within which shared experience of the labour process binds the supervisor and the workers together . Willie, cited above, is a case in point ; like quite a number of chief operators and foremen, that I met, he joined the plant well after the period of intense conflict with the Italian personnel . Second, unlike the Gouldenerian (1954) 'indulgence

Social communities at work

pattern', workers' violation of work rules are not just tolerated in order to enhance production, but because of shared pain of the process of labour . This leads to the redefinition of work relations, sometimes in opposition to management . This redefinition of relations can take the form of CR operators spreading the word of the sudden appearance of senior managers in the plant, so that plant operators who might be asleep or not in their posts are not caught unaware . In a number of cases, especially during the night shift, the public address system or telephone link between the plant and the CR is used to alert the plant operators . It could turn out to be a false alarm, but no one seemed to mind ; the next time round, it could be for real . In other circumstances recommended penalties for infringing company rules are overlooked . An instance was a case of a radio operator who was called a number of times on the wireless without any reply, because he was not at his desk . the shift superintendent who was returning to the CR building came to the radio desk to ask the operator where he was earlier . The superintendent was apparently not convinced by the explanation he received, but surprisingly, to me that is, he went on to explain the risks . The calls were made on channels open to everyone with a walkie-talkie in the plant, including the General Manager and they would have known that the radio operator was not on his desk . Next time he left the desk, advised the superintendent, the operator should call up two or more people on the open channel and say he was going to the plant clinic, that way he would cover his tracks . An important basis of the vcw is the extent to which sustained interaction between supervisors and subordinates helps redefine the primary work relation . In the process, the value relations of the boss/bossed is transcended, people begin to know one another as human beings ; someone with a family, a sick child, etc . This does not necessarily coincide with shared experience of the labour process or a previous collective resistance, as mentioned above . The interaction is more subtle in its mediation of work relations . Take the case of a shift supervisor who had acquired notoriety for imposing sanctions on people he found sleeping on night shift . In the Main Control Room (MCR), however, he seemed quite a different person from the infamous person I heard so much about . This is where he had his office ; his shift coinciding with that of

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Shift B crew . His relations with the boardmen and the chief operators had therefore been on a sustained basis . The modes of surviving the night-shift is an instance of the effect of sustained interaction on the exercise of supervisory power . The methods of 'surviving the night-shift' are diverse ; from intense debates, to music, but most important is taking a nap in relay . All these are, officially, illegal, but the shift supervisor had become embedded in the ethos . Whereas he handed out reprimands in other units, here if someone fell asleep for an extended period, the supervisor would walk to the person's table, tap it until the fellow woke up or he would call out from across the MCR, to wake the fellow up . On one occasion, he quipped ; A beg, may'una wake up, di one wey you sleep don do . Abi ya wife naw 'gree you sleep for house . You naw leave 'am chopmoney? Wake up man, you've slept long enough . Didn't your wife allow you to sleep at home . Perhaps you didn't give her home maintenance allowance? Assorted jokes like this are common in the relationship between the immediate boss and subordinates, and are often a means of reconciling the contradictory aspects of their relations ; the supervisor's concurrent performance of the directive function of capital and that of the collective worker . While I have highlighted the elements of the vcw which have their roots in the production environment, one should recognise other aspects of it which stem from non-work contents . These are often aspects of the indigenous cultural relations . In the electrical workshop of the Maintenance Department, for instance, the message reproduced below, was pinned to the notice board . READ ME GOOD NEWS TO ALL ELECT SHOP WE ARE BLESSED AGAIN WITH TWO NEW BABIES FROM MESSERS OKE & NWANAFO AS USUAL YOUR TEN NAIRA (N 10) Both the 'blessing' and the money contribution concern the whole of the workshop, the monies go to the mother ; their colleagues' wives . This offering of a gift is a common traditional practice for many of the Nigerian nationalities and

Social communities at work

is not uncommon in many other units of the refinery . Home visits to condone bereaved co-workers, subordinates or bosses and their families, are almost obligatory . So are home visits to congratulate them for the arrival of a new baby . Travelling with co-employees to their hometowns for weddings, burial, etc ., is also common . The vcw dimension of these is that value relations are mediated ; work relations begin to assume a more personal character and to that extent help people to rescue their humanity from the de-personalising criterion of commodity production . Vertical community in perspective Having illustrated the sources of the vcw, it is important to explore its implications for work relations, beyond the sketches made above . I have insisted that one should approach work relations as primarily wage-form relations organised around commodity production . In other words, while vcw (and the corporate collective) mediate the primary commodity relations in work, the valorisation process does not disappear from sight . Quite often these collectivities reinforce and accelerate the valorisation process . Hence, two principal, but contradictory, implications of the vcw flow from this perspective . First, the vcw in mediating the primary relations of work can involve the supervision in the defence of their subordinates, vis-a-vis an overall boss or a challenge of managerial definition of work organisation or work rules . Either way vcw results in a redefinition of work in ways that take the humanity of the workers into consideration . The second, and contradictory implication is that in moderating the primary commodity relations, vcw can undermine workers resistance to the intensification of work and the extraction of greater surplus labour . These are two sides of a contradictory whole, and while neither undermines the objectives of production - the extraction of surplus labour - they help us understand the forms that politics of production take in the refinery . For the time being, I will illustrate these contradictory aspects of the vcw, empirically . In addition to the cases of mediated work relations cited above, a couple of other cases involving the defence of subordinates may be cited . There are many cases in which foremen, in the Maintenance Department have to stand up for

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their subordinates in the distribution of amenities ; from lockers to safety wares . An instruments section foreman spent days complaining to the superintendent that 'they're cheating my men again' over the allocation of new lockers, until he got a couple more for 'his men' . The most famous intervention in Maintenance (now part of the shopfloor folklore), is the case of a mechanical section superintendent . The corporation management embarked on a certificate vetting operation of junior and intermediate staff . This involved checking the validity of the formal qualifications on which the employees were employed . The exercise created panic among the mainly artisan workers in the department and the superintendent was reported to have insisted to the senior managers that, as far as he was concerned, the blokes were doing the job required of them and that was more than any certificate could do . Neither the junior or senior staff unions resisted the exercise and at least a number of the workers would have been fired had the superintendent not intervened . To test the extent to which such incidents were widespread, in a survey 6 conducted among the refinery's nonsupervisory workers, the statement : 'My immediate boss will defend those under him, even to Management, when he thinks they are right', was put to the respondents . 70% agreed, with various degree . 7 The response across departments varied, 52 170 of the respondents from the Auxiliary departments and the 68 .5176 of those from Production agreed . This is against 70 .5 % of those from Maintenance, and 74 % from Administration and 87 .6% from Finance . By contrast, only 19 .3% of the total sample disagreed in any way . This mean, however, distorts the distribution since except for the Auxiliary departments, where those disagreeing were 44 % of the sample, other departments registered 18 .1 % or less . 8 An important aspect of this manifestation of the vcw is that in the absence of a powerful and combative shopfloor union protection, a supervisor standing up for a worker may be the only thing preventing the workers from being fired . While the cases examined so far involved tinkering with the rules, the vcw, in some areas, can lead to the reorganisation of the work process . In the truck loading section, for instance, the sustained interaction between the supervisor and the operators has led to a re-adaptation of the work schedule . By 0900 the first truck would be at the loading bay .

Social communities at work

Between then and 1300, the speed of the operation is usually frenzied, with every person at his post . At the end of the period, there would probably be a couple of tankers left to load . From then till closing time the change from the morning period is dramatic ; it assumes a jovial, relaxed atmosphere, with the exchange of banters and intense discussions, etc . When he was not joining in, the supervisor looked on with the air of a brooding hen . This arrangement contrasts sharply with the prescribed work pattern which expected the work to stretch from 0900 to 1600 . The unofficial lunch hour starts after 1300 instead of the normal time of between 1100 and 1300 . The extent to which shiftwork inhibits many workers from meeting their social obligations - e .g . attending family meetings, weddings, etc - has been reduced in most of the process areas, by unofficial arrangements . This involves two or more persons arranging to swap periods ; one covering for the period of the other's absence . All such arrangements are made with the knowledge of the supervisor . Most supervisors would, however, demand that the arrangement be made in writing, in case one party reneged . On the other hand, the vcw can become the basis of the intensification of work . The problem here is that because of the personal relationship that has developed between the supervisors and the workers, the former can count on the respect and affection of the subordinates to limit dissent to his demand for greater work effort . On several occasions, in the truck loading area, the operators had to work long hours and weekends to meet the demand for products . The operators, however, never seemed to mind the extra hours of work, and as one of them told me, their boss was always 'on the level' with them, always got their overtime claim-forms through on time, etc ., so they 'sort of owe him' a favour . In this sense they distinguish the supervisor from the uncomfortable side of the job they had to do . In any case, the overtime pay comes in handy . The constituency of the vcw could also be whipped-up to 'rouse' the workers . On one occasion for instance, the instrument section was being geared up for their part in a major repair job on the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit . The instruments' superintendent, generally acknowledged to be a nice bloke, sent out a paper . He outlined the duties, the

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new closing hours were now between '1900 and 2000 hours daily', an extra 3 to 4 hours . He ended with : 'I have no doubt in my mind that we belong to the group rightly described as 'NUMBER ONE' and 'TRAIL BLAZING' by the chief executive' . This sort of beloved-commander-calling-out-thetroops situation or image is only available to a supervisor who is seen by the subordinates as a 'nice bloke' . In this instance the corporate collectivity also came into play ; what with the chief executive calling them trail blazers . One should note that in many cases, being nice to the blokes is not necessarily at odds with being, at other times, 'as hard as nails' . In the survey of supervisory personnel conducted in the refinery, the question of the preferred style of supervision was raised . 54 .2 % thought being intimate but keeping the iron fist close by, was the most prudent and practical style of supervision . 22 .9% preferred being distant but using the kid glove, and only 6 .3 % thought being distant and using the iron fist was the best option . Only 16 .7 % opted for intimacy and the kid glove . 10 In a similar vein, the workers' survey reveals that 84 . 1 %, of the sample, believe - with varying degree of emphasis that their 'immediate boss (foreman, chief operator) is a very nice person', 79 .8% gave a similar response about their supervisor . Odum, the boilermaker supervisor (in the Maintenance Department), is perhaps an epitome of intimacy and iron fist-style supervision ; one moment jovial and sweating it out alongside the workers under him, and the next a raging, intimidating tower . One Boilermaker once described him thus He's a r-e-a-1 bastard, but a nice one, sometimes . On the other hand, I asked if the workers believed there was 'a danger of . . . being victimised, if (they) "were outspoken against" a number of people including the supervisory personnel .' In cases of the 'immediate bosses', 30 .9% said 'definitely yes', and another 30 .9% said 'possibly yes' . Only 5 .5% said 'definitely no' . In the case of supervisors, 27 .7 % said 'definitely yes', 29 .4 % said 'possibly yes', and only 6 .9176 'definitely no' . There is no statistically significant relationship between area of work and the pattern of response . On the whole, my assessment is that relations between workers and first line supervision, i .e . foremen and chief operators, are more intimate than with supervisors and super-

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intendents . In the case of the boilermakers' unit, it is sometimes difficult to tell the foreman apart from the workers . The limit of intimacy and empathy is when a supervisor felt anyone was challenging his 'authority' . It reminds us that the relation is primarily a 'superior/subordinate' one, defined with the terms of hierarchical production relations, in which one of the parties exercises the delegated power of capital . In reverse, this also limits the capacity of a supervisory officer, to intervene on behalf of those under him . My experience is that most would withdraw if their own necks were on the line .

The existence of shopfloor collective and work-group solidaristic action are issues recognised by most branches of work study . This section looks into the articulation of LCW, its dynamics and implications for the 'reconstitution' of life on the shopfloor . An important example of the forms the Lcw takes was evident one afternoon during the fieldwork . About six operators gathered inside a shelter-kiosk in one of the process areas to discuss the finances of their thrift and credit co-operative ; one who still had outstanding loans to repay and how much, when the savings for the years would be collected from the bank, and who would handle payment to members . Two of them represent the adjoining process areas, and one representing members on another shift had stayed behind to attend the meeting . On the outside the rumbling and whistling of the plant continued . Doug, the co-operative's current chairman, had earlier explained to me the nature and the reasons for setting up the co-operative society . Each month members contribute a fixed amount, depending on the individual . At the end of the year, the savings are handed over to the contributors, but during the year loans are advanced to members, without interest on the loan . Non-members, among the process operators could also, on a member's recommendation, be given a loan . As Doug explained, 'we are all the same, you know' . It is important to take cognizance of both the ethos of this co-operative and its wider social implications . Doug gave his own experience as a typical reason for setting up the body . Almost two years previously, while preparing for his wedding, and all his savings committed, his mother fell ill . She was admitted to a private clinic 12 , and he ended up with

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a bill of over 250 naira, which had to be paid before she could even leave the clinic . Doug approached his bank, for an overdraft : 'a carry di hospital bill, carry my pay slip show dem . Na lie! No gospel wey a naw preach dat day . Di Manager naw gif me face at all, 'e say 'e no'o gif me anyt'ing . I went with the hospital bill, my pay slip . No way! There was nothing I didn't tell them . The Bank Manager flatly turned down my request ; refused to give me anything . It was such an experience that led to the formation of the cooperative among the operators . The co-operative - which the workers proudly state is independent, not governmentsponsored - represents a dimension of the collectivity in work, and is vital to an appreciation of shopfloor culture. Intricately woven into, and giving character to intra-workplace relations . While arising from individual financial problems that confront the workers, the co-operative involves the adoption of a collectivist solution to the problem of their exclusion from the criteria of credit facilities of the banks . Although, in its form, the co-operative owes much to the traditional thrift and credit system (called Esusu among the yorubas) it addresses contemporary class issues . The implication for larger class analysis is of course the need to recognise the individual aspects of the class, and the class dimensions in the resolution of an individual's problems . Surviving the work Perhaps the most obvious aspect of the implications of for work performance is in the collective effort to survive the work . Some aspects of this have been raised elsewhere (cf . Adesina, 1988 : Ch . 5), but here I will re-focus on the issue from the perspective of the nature of the LCW . The four-day night-shift, for instance, begins to take its toll on the workers on the second night, and on most days between 0100 and 0300 . On many nights when the plant is not giving problems, the boredom could be severe, but when the plant is restless the sound of the alarm or its anticipation could also be difficult to cope with . The regulations do not allow for music or 'nonoperational' discussions, but it is difficult to imagine people doing without them . In the MCR, surviving the night is a LCw

Social communities at work

collective venture . The discussions ; from politics or religions, to marriage counselling and technology transfer, sometimes start early . One or two persons may be the butt of the jokes, which frequently shift in the choice of target . It could be someone with a noticeable bulging stomach doing minor exercises to remain awake, who would be dared to `touch his toes' . Tamuno's cassette player is integral to the whole effort, as is Sheke's comic act . Where sleep creeps in on an operator the others (chief operators and boardmen) almost instinctively take charge of the panel for the sleeping fellow . Across the panels, especially where a particular unit is giving excessive problems, the adjoining operators lend ears, eyes and hands, in spite of the panel not being in their charge . Sometimes they take telephone messages or adjust the dials for a beleaguered boardman tackling another section of the panel . An extension of this collectivist spirit is the non-existence of the dichotomy in the duties of the chief operator, who heads the crew, and the boardman, who is actually responsible for the panels, inside the CR'S, in spite of what the rulebook says . Relations among the plant operators follow a similar line . While the official job description gives the impression of unabridged demarcation, e .g . the heater operator with the heater, the pump operator with the pumps, etc . ; situations where the pump operator lends a hand to the heater operator is common . Generally one operator looks (or listens) out for the next operator's equipment, and alerts the latter where there are changes in the dial reading, sound or vibration . Even deep into the night, shift, taking a nap has a collectivist dimension to it, as in the CR . Where two or three operators are on an adjoining stretch, one would commonly stay awake and keep an eye (and ear) on the others' equipment, almost unconsciously . It is also common to find a young operator cuddled up on a stack turbine gangway, a text book on his lap and cotton wool in his ears . The cotton wool serves as ear muffs! Many of them are struggling to pass more O/L or nh papers, and they depend on their mates to keep ears and eyes open for their equipment . The issues discussed so far have two aspects ; one involves the extent to which the workers rely on one another to get through the work-day, Kamata (1980) noted a similar pattern among Toyota's assembly line workers . While this pattern may sustain work performance, there is a danger - political

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and analytical - in simply denouncing it as collective 'voluntary servitude' (cf. Burawoy, 1979) . The importance of my expatiating on the bases of the co-operative becomes relevant here . A dismissive attitude fails to grasp the ethos of the lateral community, which I call Alternative Morality . This is because the Lcw is underlined by a moral rejection of capitalist ethos of work organisation and relations . The collectivity represents attempts of people to re-assert their humanity in a context which takes them as objects of commodity production . While the morality is by no means revolutionary, it underwrites, in its wider nature, workers instinctive clash with bourgeois morality and social relations . The second dimension, also implicit above but further illustrated below, is that 'adaptation to work' (a la Baldamus, 1961) might in fact involve workers adapting the work to themselves . The case of operators catching up on their studies is an example . The adaptation of work and the collectivist survival take other forms apart from those outlined above . Among boilermakers, for example, the pacing of work usually involves voluntary relay of task performance among work-gang members . The work on the valves of the Fcc reactor plug, is typical . The job involved removing the valves, lifted by a crane, cleaning the inside and bolting them back . Each valve has over 15 bolts, each over 3 inches in diameter . To unscrew them, one person had to fix the spanner to the bolt and hold it while another person hit the spanner with a non-spark hammer (the metal rust having made it impossible to unscrew the bolts with pneumatic instruments) . The weight of the hammer easily took its toll on the wielder, and the person holding the spanner could get shock from the vibration of the spanner . However, within the work-gang which had no discernible leader, no one was left to spend too much time at either wielding the hammer or holding the spanner . Someone was bound to say ; 'you do well, oya bring 'am, go rest small' ['well done, now let me have a go at it while you take a rest'] . This is not limited to jobs in the plant . Someone doing a job in the workshop can easily call out to some other fellow, standing by, to lend a hand . The caller would probably have some words thrown at him in mock anger, but would receive a hand anyway . In a similar vein, the collectivist ethos form the basis on which the older hands pass advice on work survival to the

Social communities at work newer hands . No one in a work-gang expects you to throw yourself at a job zealously . Take it in your stride, don't break your back for them (supervisors/managers), would be the advice . In addition know how to survive the supervision . Part of the shopfloor folklore include cases of people who got too enthusiastic and ended up with half their teeth knocked out or like Numa, with first degree burns from the waist down . Nobody, not the management, gives a toss for your life, so take it easy on the job, mate!, was what a new technician got from the old hats on the job . The shopfloor folklore also includes warning on the danger of working in certain areas or jobs, and there are jokes and backroom humour which form not only the basis of surviving the work but also the construction and articulation of community spirit on the shopfloor. Among process plant operators, for instance, jokes, discussions and arguments may be forms of relieving the burden of the job, but they have other aspects as well . As in the CRS, it is varied and unpredictable who would be the next target of the jokes . For many of the new and younger operators, it is a process of becoming part of the collective, the transmission of experience of the job ; its hazards and how to survive it . In short, aspects of the construction of communal ethos and the lateral constituency (cf. Gray, 1986) . Emeka, a teenage trainee operator, who was under six months in the refinery, was 'caught' in the web once during a discussion on the effects of night-shift on operators . Someone was using another operator as an example :

when di boy fist come, 'e fine well well, 'e jus' be like woman, but now 'e don ol', 'e don wohwoh when the chap first came, he was a beauty, pretty like a woman, but now he's aged, his beauty has faded Emeka, a 19 year-old new hand, alarmingly cried :

Ewo!, na 'im be say me sef go come of quick, quick so Blimey! that means I'm going to age pretty fast too Geepe, a 26 year-old old hand, half jokingly said :

Oh, shu', you naw know? You t'ink na like dis 'a of reach when a start. Small time now all dat ya face wey fresh so, go come wrinkle.

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Oh, really, don't you know? . You think I was this aged when I started here . Pretty soon, your face which is so fresh, will wrinkle . Braimah, another old hand then said : 'E don begin dey get 'am sef. He's even started having them (wrinkles) . Across the plant from CRS to the process areas and maintenance, the one rule that I never saw violated once, was snitching . No one snitches around here, a billboard might have announced . There are instances in Maintenance, when a group or someone had shared the punishment or dressingdown for someone else's mistake . While the supervisor was around, nobody would squeal . Afterwards, they probably would give the offending bloke a severe mouth-thrashing . The important thing (to over-flog the point) is the need to recognise what the Lcw involves - beyond bourgeois sociological category of work-group - as a distinct and autonomous collective ethos, which stands in sharp contrast to bourgeois individualist ethos . The no-snitching culture involves collective defence underwritten by a distinct morality . Lateral community and the reconstruction of relations A vital implication of the Lcw is that it becomes the basis for the reconstruction of social relations in a different sense . A current of studies, in the African context, has always focused on the issue of ethnic plurality and fissure that is taken as a necessary consequence of a multi-ethnic environment . To a large extent, many of such studies take ethnic fissure for granted ; Ahiauzu (1983, 1984) being a more recent example . The refinery workforce is poly-ethnic (cf. Adesina, 1988), and the process plant Shift B crew is, in this sense, typical . The crew had people from a wide spectrum of ethnic-nationalities : the northern, western, eastern and riverine parts of Nigeria . Doug's crew for instance is predominantly Bendel (state) in origin, but only three of the twelve spoke the same primary language : Urhobo . One would expect this ethnic heterogeneity to result in fissure and ethnic-based cliques . However, relations within the crews were devoid of ethnic undertones . Although ethnic identity is neither denied or obliterated, its existence is acknowledged only in terms of

Social communities at work

differences of origin . The acknowledgement of ethnic plurality in this case is analogous to the recognition of the multiple colours and shapes of shells, stones and glass that go into a mosaic . The plurality does not necessarily lead to cliqueformation . Let me explain, Doug is an Edo like Edorkoh the boardman, but his relations with Edorkoh were hardly as strong as with Geepe and Braimah, who are from different ethnic groups . Bayo, another crew member, is from the same place as the supervisor, but his allegiance to the crew members was not in question and no one assumed he would snitch on the group . More significantly is the active discouragement of exclusion that seemed based on ethnic backgrounds . A couple of people speaking in their shared primary language over a length of time could get hooting from others in the plant or the CRS of "e do' ('okay, pack it up') . Pidgin English as a common language, by contrast, is actively encouraged . Shared language or primordial origin is not as such the problem, it is when there is a hint that it would corrode the lateral collectivity that voices are raised . In a number of instances, more than voices are raised . The message was conveyed harshly to a fresh trainee, who was with a boilermaker crew, working in the kerosine reformation unit . Apparently he was not doing any specific work, but on the approach of the Head of Maintenance, he picked up a hammer and started working frantically . The Head was not only from the same place as the trainee, but helped him secure the job . A number of other people in the crew, aware of his relationship with the Head, noticed the trainee's action . As soon as the Head left, all hell broke loose ; an old boilermaker descended angrily on the trainee : Oh, oh, na because ya broder dey come na'im make you carry hammer, begin dey do eye service? Make'a warn you ; next time 'a go blow ya head, you hear? Oh, because your kinsman was coming is that why you started working, trying to impress him? I'm warning you, if you repeat it, I'll knock off your block, is that clear? The trainee had a rough period during the week, because almost immediately the word spread throughout the unit . There is another dimension to the relationship between ethnic plurality and the LCW which needs to be analysed .

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Workers in the refinery are, for instance, bussed to and from work . One afternoon, someone almost missed the bus, and a friend of his who was inside called out to the driver ; 'a beg stop o, Ette wan enter' ('please stop, Ette has to come on board') . Ette is a Kalabari word for 'brother', but is often used as a joke name for those from that ethnic group . In a different context, jokes of this nature could be taken as highly offensive, but within the workgroup, among tight-knit collective, it is simply an acknowledgment of their plural origin . A 'tourist researcher' might interpret this as evidence of ethnic fissure, but it fails to explain why the very next minute the same people would be sticking out their necks for each other . In having jokes at someone's expense, it is not uncommon to hear a cat-call of 'okoro man' (reference to an Igbo person) or 'dis "ngbati ngbati" people sef (a Yoruba person) . While evident of the acknowledgment of ethnic plurality, the transfer of that into the basis of allegiance, or interaction, is actively subverted by the Lcw . It could be argued that the subversion of ethnic cliques might be relevant to the workplace, but not so credible outside the factory gate . The after-work relationship between members of Shift B does not, however, support such response . More often than not, if you went to Doug's place and he was not in, he was most likely out with, or at the place of some other bloke in his shift . There is no doubt that the disruption of normal social life that shift-work involves could explain the closeness of the group . They are probably the only ones whose work and leisure periods coincide, and there is no doubt that the rest-days (especially after the night shift) unleash a ravenous appetite to catch-up on their social lives . This does not explain why they do it together . Beyond the dash for a rejuvenated social life is a significant aspect of the Lcw for general non-work life . When any of them was out of town, the others were expected to take care of the person's family, this is not limited to the group alone . When Opara, a technician was out of town and his younger brother - living with him - had a problem with the police, Opara's wife turned to Frank, one of his workmates for help . Frank simply assumed it his personal responsibility . And Frank and Opara are from different ethnic groups . It could of course be argued that people define themselves within different symbolic locations, and that in other instances ethnic loyalties will take over from

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143

the (proto-) class . Maybe, but the essential points here are (a) we cannot take this for granted, and (b) the Lcw, deriving from shared experience of the commoditisation of their labourpower, has a lot of implications for the de-construction of ethnic loyalties . And this is by no means limited to the workplace . It is against the background of the work and non-work articulation of the solidaristic essence of the Lcw that one appreciates its powerful implication for unionism, union struggles and non-union collective defence on the shopfloor, 13 It is equally important to put the Lcw in perspective ; its strength is also one of its major limitations . The Lcw is experientially rooted in the terrain of concrete labour activity and it easily generates a micro-segmentation of the workforce . For instance many on shift duties in the process areas hardly know one another, especially if they are in different areas . In maintenance this is not such a major problem since only a handful of the workers are on shift duties, and these normally interact with those on day work . A more recurrent problem is the schism between clerical workers and plant workers, which sometimes take the less antagonistic form of jocular chastising of clerical workers for their ignorance of the plant operation . The more antagonistic aspects creeps in when off-handed references are made to 'people in the white house', i .e . the administrative block, with its airconditioned rooms and lush carpeting and 'clean jobs' . Among maintenance workers there is a widespread perception of clerical workers as absolute incompetents, which is probably a reflection of late processing of overtime pay claims and related problems . On the side of clerical workers, because plant workers', especially maintenance technicians, boilersuits, are always covered in dirt and grease, these workers are always looked down upon by clerical staff . The fact that these are stereotypical images does not seem to deter such ideas .

In the preceding pages, I have attempted to demonstrate the varied aspects of, and forms, of social communities in work . The principal aim of the paper as I pointed out earlier is to demonstrate other dimensions of work relations which often involve the deconstruction of value relations . In doing this I have placed emphasis on the dialectical contradictory aspects

Conclusion

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and essence of these communities . I started with the exposition of the basis and dynamics of the 'corporate collectivity', and then moved on to 'vertical' and 'lateral' communities . The emphasis was on the ways in which the corporate collective is by no means the only or the most potent, the same goes for vcw . Further reflection is however necessary here . The corporate collective raises issues about an aspect of production relations (and workers' experience of it), which is not simply one of commodity production or value realisation . Even with commodity production as the criterion of production the relations of production are not simply defined in those terms . The attempt to touch the worker's 'soul and body', is also a constant aspect of capitalist relations (cf . Stone, 1975 ; Joyce, 1980 ; Burawoy, 1985) . Braverman (1974) rightly emphasised 'the habituation of the worker', and how this has become the purpose of a host of academic disciplines ; from industrial psychology to industrial relations . What is being acknowledged is the duality of labour, which should also remind us of the workers' uneven experience of capitalism (cf . Nichols & Armstrong, 1976) . The nature and the articulation of the corporate collective, will differ from one workplace to another . In the case of the NNPC, its centrality to the Nigerian economy and character as a unit of State-capital, form the basis of the ideological construction of the corporate collectivity . As I mentioned earlier, the ideological implications for the workers cannot be dismissed as a simple case of workers' selfmortification . The vertical community, also means that even within a unit of capital or workplace, there is an uneven experience of production relations . I have registered my reservation for describing supervisory personnel as simple agents of capital, and I am not sure to what extent it is valid to argue that the 'ambivalence' of supervisors, relative to their prescribed roles in production, is because of their declining power (cf. Hill, 1973, 1976) . By contrast, one needs to appreciate the duality of the performance of the global functions of capital and that of the collective worker, that the supervisory position involves . What is clear in this study is that the collectivity which binds workers and some of their supervisors together also derives from the previous collective struggles and specific cultural (traditional) practices . The collection of money gifts for a co-worker's wife is a case in point . Persistent interaction

Social communities at work

between the supervision and the workers also forms the basis of the vcw . An important element of the vcw, as I noted, is that in a situation like the refinery's with no strong 'shop steward' tradition, the intervention of the supervisor could be the only thing preventing a worker from losing his job . Even if there was a strong and active shopfloor union - at the time of the fieldwork - there are issues which are probably too 'insignificant' or immediate for a union official to get involved in . Such issues might however be vital to the individual worker, and in these instances the supervisor might be the only person to talk to . I have cautioned against the idea that these are non-contradictory processes . A vcw promotes patronage-dependence relation, without the power that a membership can wield on union representative . It can be the basis, also, of labour intensification . The LCW, on the other hand, is perhaps the most significant in terms of workers' autonomous construction of identity and constituencies . I emphasised the extent to which the LCW is underscored by a given moral disposition which affects the pacing of work, the process of collective defence and the re-constitution of social relations . The pacing of work, and the whole process of surviving work cannot again be seen only in terms of workers' adaptation to work, since the work is also being adapted . As the fountainhead of collective defence and covert struggles in work, the LCW is also being replenished and reinvigorated, hence its symbolic (re-)constitution . In understanding the overall character of shopfloor life, it is important to see the LCW itself as a terrain of cultural activities (cf. Adesina, in press) . In its folklore, it not only recognises, but constructs (micro) class identity . But the fact that LCW is woven around work unit-based interaction, it reflects and often reproduces the micro-segmentation of the labour process . This I suggest is its limitation ; the community so constructed is therefore less than class . The various social communities in work, as I have attempted to demonstrate, are not purely a result of the labour process . The vcw and LCW are in many aspects, influenced by non-work relations ; influences that are re-articulated within the context of the labour process . The LCW, for instance, involves the deconstruction of certain non-work identities and cleavages . Both the vcw and the LCW are vital for the nonunion (cf. Adesina, 1989), and union-based politics of production (cf. Adesina, 1988) .

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146 Notes

An earlier version of this paper was read at the Warwick University Comparative Labour Studies seminar series in February 1988, I am grateful to the participants for a stimulating discussion . I am also grateful to Richard Hyman and Robin Cohen, Peter Nolan, Bob Fine and Peter Gutkind, of the University of Warwick ; and John Ohiorhenuan of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, for their comments on earlier versions . My gratitude also to M . Cowen and John Solomons, who served as the assessors, for their comments . 1. See my State-Capital and Labour in Nigeria's oil industry: work community and the politics ofproduction, Oxford/Lagos : Malthouse Press (in press) . This paper is an aspect of this larger project . 2. I use 'deconstruct(ion)' as 'to break down', rather than in the neo-Kantian sense of literary criticism, which claims there is no single correct interpretation of artistic works . 3. I use 'articulation' in the sense of 'give form or expression to' not in the althusserian sense . My gratitude to Richard Hyman and Robin Cohen for drawing my attention to this . 4. The first chairman of the football club is a former Head of Production . 5. My retention of the pidgin English original (on the left hand-side of the quotes) in which the interviews were conducted, is for two reasons; (1) there is the problem of translation, from the pidgin to formal English, which often leads to the loss of texture and rhythm in the original, (2) Pidgin English as a derivative of indigenous languages and thought process, in linguistic expression, and formal English is the closest thing to a working people's (class) language in southern Nigeria, more so in Warri . It is important as part of working people's oral, creative expressions that we acknowledge it as such . The attempt at translation, on the right hand-side is for the benefit of those unfamiliar with southern Nigerian pidgin . Given that pidgin is predominantly a spoken language, my transcription is largely phonetic . 6.

The survey was conducted between October and December 1985 with an initial projected sample of 400, 254 questionnaires were returned giving us a response rate of 63 .5 % and the sample being over 26 % of the study population . There is a close fit, at the departmental level, between sample and population distribution . Questionnaires were handed directly to the respon-

Social communities at work dents and collected by the researcher, without going through the hierarchy in the refinery . Cf. Adesina (1988, in press) for a discussion of the methodological issues arising from this survey . 7. 1 collapsed all the Agree and Disagree options, e .g . Strongly Agree, Agree, Agree Slightly. 8 . X2 =62,95, Sig=0 .004 . The degree of association is, however, weak ; Cramei s V=0,227 . 'Finance', here, embraces Finance Division . Internal Audit and Purchasing departments . 9. The survey of supervisory, but non-managerial, staff was conducted between November 1985 and January 1986 . Of the total study population of 188 only 167 were available for polling (others being on training or annual leave) . 102 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 61 .07 % and the sample being over 54 % of the study population . See Adesina (1988, in press) for further discussion of methods and methodological issues . 10 . Correlated with department of respondents, the Contingency Coefficient= 0 . 39 . Level of education is the only category significantly related to response pattern . Multiple Regression = 0 . 3 34 . R2 = 0 . 118 ; by no means a strong relationship . 11 .

There is no significant relationship with department . 12 . State hospitals were (still are) nothing to write home about, and NNrc's medicare programme only covers the worker's family for procreation . cf. Adesina (1989 and in press) for a wider discussion 13 . on this aspect, and the re-addressing of the category of 'production politics' .

147

Capital & Class

148 Bibliography

Adesina, J .O . (1988) Oil, State-Capital and Labour: work and work relations in the Nigerian National petroleum Corporation, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Ph .D thesis . Adesina, J .O . (1989) 'Worker Consciousness and Shopfloor Struggles : a case of Nigerian refinery workers', Labour, Capital & Society, (Autumn) . Adesina, J .O . (in press), State-Capital and Labour in Nigeria's oil industry : work community and the politics of production, Oxford/ Lagos : Mairhouse Press . Ahiauzu, A . (1983) 'Cultural Influences on managerial industrial relations policies : a note on Hausa and Ibo workplaces in Nigeria', Labour and Society, Vol . 8, No . 2 (AprilJune), pp . 151-62 . Ahiauzu, A . (1984) 'Culture and Workplace Industrial Relations : a Nigerian study', Industrial Relations Journal, Vol . 15, No . 3 (Autumn), pp . 53-63 . Baldamus, W . (1961) Efficiency and Effort: an analysis of Industrial Administration, London: Tavistock Publications . Braverman, Harry (1974) Labour and Monopoly Capital : the degradation of work in the twentieth century, New York : Monthly Press . Burawoy, Michael (1979) Manufacturing Consent: changes in the labor process under Monopoly Capitalism, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press . Burawoy, Michael (1985) The Politics of Production : factory regimes under capitalism and socialism, London : Verso. Carchedi, G. (1975) On the economics identification of the new middle class', Economy and Society, Vol . 4, No . 1, (February), pp . 1-86 . Child, John (1975) 'The Industrial Supervisor', in G . Esland et al. (eds) People and Work, London : Holmes McDougall & Open University Press . Cressey, P . & Maclnnes, J . (1980) 'Voting for Ford : industrial democracy and the control of labour', Capital & Class, no . 11, pp . 5-33 . Edwards, M . (1979) Contested Terrain : the transformation of the workplace in the twentieth century, London : Heinemann . Elson, D . (1979) 'The Value Theory of Labour', in Diane Elson (ed .) VALUE: the representation of labour in capitalism, London: CSE Books . Fletcher, C . (1969) 'Men in the middle : a reformulation of the thesis', Sociological Review, Vol . 17, pp . 341-52 .

Social communities at work Goldthorpe, J . et al . (1968) The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Gray, R . (1986) 'The deconstruction of the English working class', Social History, Vol . 11, No . 3, (October), pp . 363-73 (Review Article). Hill, S . (1973) 'Supervisory roles and the man in the middle : dock foremen', British Journal of Sociology, Vol . 24, pp . 205-21 . Hill, S . (1976) The Dockers: class and tradition in London, London: Heinemann . Joyce, P . (1980) Work, Society & Politics: the culture of the factory in later Victorian England, London : Methuen . Kamata, S . (1982) Japan in the Passing Lane, London : Counterpoint . Marx, K . (1976) Capital: a critique of Political Economy, Vol . 1, (translated by Ben Fowkes), Harmondsworth : Penguin Books/ New Left Review . Newby, H . (1979) The Differential Worker, Harmondsworth : Penguin Books . Nichols, T . & Armstrong, P . (1976) Workers Divided, Glasgow : Fontana . Roethlisberger, F .J . (1943) Management and Moral . Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Press . Stone, K . (1975) 'The Origin of Job Structure in the Steel Industry', in R . Edwards et al, (eds) Labor Market Segmentation, Cambridge, Mass : Dc Heath . Willis, Paul (1980) 'Shop-floor culture, masculinity and the wage form', in J . Clarke et al . (eds) Working Class Culture : studies in history and theory, London : Hutchinson/cccs .

149

Patrick Bond

The new US class struggle : financial industry power vs. grassroots populism In a complementary article to Cleaver's discussion of the debt crisis in Capital & Class 39, Bond considers the explosive growth of debt in us finance and the populist campaigns ranged against this new financial power . Bond suggests that the bases of new local, national and international 150 coalitions to refuse the imposition of the costs of devaluation onto exploited groups can be seen in these campaigns .

• The Unites States economy, like many others across the globe, is awash in a sea of debt deeper than in any prior historical period . 1 Increasingly, the concomitant rise in financial sector power is recognised as a phenomenon worthy of analytical attention and sustained political struggle . In the us, a new populism reminiscent of the powerful movements of the 1890s and 1930s, but augmented by `rainbow' and internationnalist tendencies, is emerging from grassroots campaigns over who will bear the burden of devaluation of the us debt . To grasp the potential of existing populist forces to challenge the financial system and hence ultimately to transform the economy into one more reflective of their anticorporate, decentralised and community-controlled politics, it is useful to begin with a rudimentary glance at us financial capital flows . A full-fledged analysis, yet to be undertaken, would explain the roots of the ascendancy of finance ; its changing relationship to the productive economy ; the exercise and the limits of financial power, and the alliances and conflicts that the rise of finance engenders . For the purposes of this paper, only a skeletal outline of such an analysis is offered, geared to separating contingencies of the recent period from what might be considered the necessary, underlying tendencies of capitalist economies during times of crisis . Enough should be laid out, however, to show convincingly

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that the curious combination of power and vulnerability in the financial system at the present time is no accident, and furthermore that such material conditions provide the organising handles around which a full-fledged progressive political movement can be, and is being, built . The analysis begins with some definitions . Financial capital is, in simple terms, an external source of funding ; i .e ., funding not immediately derived from activities in the economy's real sector where business profits, household wages or government tax revenues form the basis for consumption and investment . Institutionally, financial capital encompasses the funding capacity of banks, other retail savings and lending institutions, money market funds, institutional investors and other participants in the bond markets, and stock market investors . Though financial capital has both debt and equity forms, there has been a net retirement of equity from the us

The rise of financial capital

Table 1 : Domestic us credit market debt outstanding, by borrower (Year-end level, in billions of current dollars) Type of borrower

1982

1984

1986

1988

Total nonfinancial sectors us government State, local governments Households Nonfinancial corporations Farm Other business

4,655 991 324 1,626 965 185 564

5,954 1,377 385 2,038 1,197 188 769

7,618 1,815 520 2,593 1,530 157 1,002

9,003 2,188* 588 3,176 1,885 142 1,190*

758 72 59 76 159 4 179 210

1,006 84 87 93 193 18 289 242

1,511 76 101 145 308 72 532 279

2,103* 78 91 210* 416* 144* 809* 353

5,413

6,960

9,129

11,105

Total financial sector Commercial banks Banks' domestic afiliates Savings and loan associations Finance companies Other private financial institutions Mortgage pools Sponsored credit agencies Total credit market debt

* indicates 1982-8 increase greater than 105% (which is the increase in total debt) . Source: Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds Summary Statistics (March 18, 1989) .

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stock markets in the mid- and late- 1980s as companies (other than financial institutions, ironically) have been made private . Thus in terms of the supply of external funding, the credit markets have been the principal site of dynamism, growth and shifting power relations, and hence are the focus of our concerns in this paper (see Table 1) . Returns on financial capital are not directly dependent upon value production in the economy (see Figure 1) . While traditionally, financial capital serves both to lubricate the payments system and to provide funds for productive investments (Role 1), there are moments when finance delinks from production entirely to pursue speculative ends (Role 2) . A third role, and one increasingly prevalent in the us, is the `finance capital' conjuncture at which financial capital merges with productive and/or merchants' capital, exercising command and control functions . 2 Table 2 : Domestic us debt instruments outstanding (year-end level, in billions of current dollars)

Debt instrument

1982

1984

1986

1988

Total nonfinancial sectors us government notes State, local government notes Tax exempt private notes Corporate bonds Residential mortgages Commercial mortgages Farm mortgages Consumer credit Bank loans Other nonfinancial

4,655 991 324 418 407 1,225 299 111 389 464 350

5,954 1,377 385 522 469 1,520 417 112 519 553 465

7,618 1,815 520 689 664 1,946 551 96 656 659 542

9,003 2,118* 588 760 862* 2,384

758 389 100 29 174 66

1,006 531 151

1,511 810 271

30 220 75

36 285 109

2,103* 1,163* 376* 35 377* 153*

5,413

6,960

9,129

11,105

Total financial sector us government-related Fin . inst . bonds & mortgages Bank loans Open market paper Fed . Home Loan Bank loans Total credit market debt

706* 87 746 699 642

* indicates 1982-8 increase greater than 105% (which is the increase in total debt) .

US Class struggle The definitions and the theoretical framework implicit in the figure are useful when applied as follows : first to inform the intermediate investigation of necessary (as opposed to contingent) processes or tendencies of the financial economy ; second, to assist in the analytical task of weighing the concrete evidence of the development of these tendencies ; and third, to determine opportunities for political intervention . Six necessary tendencies - rising credit demand ; innovations in the supply of credit ; higher interest rates ; flows of funds from productive to financial assets ; increasingly destructive speculative fevers' and the financial sector's capacity to exercise power - and evidence of their existence in the us will be taken up next .

The increasing demand for external financing We begin with the idea of economic crisis in part manifested in a tendential decline in the rate of profit, and note that for whatever reason this can be attributed to - i .e ., whether as a result of the rising organic composition of capital, a wage-led profit squeeze, or underconsumption - the corporate sector as a whole will require larger external sources of funds to maintain investment and growth in an increasingly competitive world economy . 3 In the us, substantial evidence for a declining rate of profit and subsequent increase in corporate debt ratios exists since the mid 1960s and early 1970s (Pollin, 1986) . Niggle (1986) has calculated that since that time, new investment in fixed capital has increasingly been financed with borrowed funds : the ratio rose from 30 .2 during 1950-66 to 48 .8% from 1967-81 . In comparison, while the high interest rates of the early 1980s made Wall Street equity issues a popular means of raising external funds for corporations (other than financial institutions) - from 1980-3, $3 1 .3 billion was raised in this manner - from 19848 the phenomenon of leveraged buyouts was largely responsible for a substantial negative flow of funds ($443 .8 billion) from equity markets (Federal Reserve Board, 1989), which served further to increase the power of creditors relative to owners . Interestingly, as Table 1 indicates, the greatest relative increases in us indebtedness came in the financial sector, which borrowed funds both to cover a weakened financial

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154

THREE ROLES OF FINANCIAL CAPITAL 'Financial capital' is a broad term referring to sources of external funds for capitalist investment and consumption . In its relation to the capital accumulation process, financial capital has three different but inextricably interrelated roles : (1) as a means of lubricating exchange, facilitating new investment, or, in short, accommodating production; (2) as a means for speculation ; and (3) in a direct investment relationship with corporations (and, occasionally, states) . Figure 1 : The three roles of financial capital c <

.lp . . . P . . .c' mp

CIRCUIT OF PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL (C) : I/ productive capital

merchants' capital

\f V 'finance capital'

A financial capital

DIRECT INVESTMENT RELATIONSHIP loan capital stock issuance venture capital

CIRCUIT OF FINANCIAL CAPITAL (FC) :

'necessary cost of circulation' ACCOMMODATING PRODUCTION 1 loan capital money-dealing capital stock issuance

M-FC-M'

C-- SPECULATION loan capital money-dealing 'unproductive' capital investment outlets stock issuance metals - other commodities - financial instruments - real estate

2

US Class struggle

position (e .g ., the savings and loans, or the money centre banks in the wake of the mid-1987 Third World loan loss reserve additions) and to take advantage of deregulation and securitisation of markets (the mortgage pools and finance companies) . Financial institutions also raised external funds in the form of equity, mostly on the New York Stock Exchange . An average of $14 .1 billion per year in equity was issued by financial institutions from 1984-8, compared to $3 billion per year from 1977-83 (Federal Reserve Board, 1989) . As Pollin (1987) points out too, an obvious response to falling profits was to lower workers' wages . Average weekly earnings of private sector production and nonsupervisory workers fell by 9 .5 % between 1970 and 1982 (Conference Board, 1988) . Consequently, simply to maintain an average standard of living, consumer borrowing increased . From Federal Reserve consumer credit surveys, Pollin found that at the highest end of the income scale, borrowing increased primarily for speculative purposes (e .g ., stock market investments or real estate) . All told, household debt as a ratio of disposable income rose from 72% in 1975 to 92% in 1986 . And to explain state debt, Magdoff and Sweezy (1987) point out that in order to confront economic stagnation, Reagan's tax cuts and increased spending on armaments were financed through an explosion of federal borrowing . (Current efforts to disguise the $250+ billion annual federal deficit by adding in budget surpluses for trust fund items such as social security are ultimately self-deluding) . More so than the increase in corporate and consumer debt, state borrowing is contingent upon the variety of forces that affect fiscal policy ; as the case of Britain suggests, it is possible for a national economy to become increasingly leveraged, consistent with underlying necessary tendencies, in spite of balanced government budgets . Finally, to dramatise the demand for credit, consider that the vast majority of the borrowing has occurred during a time of extremely high - indeed, unprecedented in postwar history - real interest rates . In sum, the recent period of turbulence characterised by a global economic slump, sporadic sectorally - and geographically-limited recoveries fuelled by speculation and unsustainable forms of accumulation, and declining profit and wage rates, will logically, even necessarily, lead to a larger, different and fundamentally more important role for

155

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156

the financial system . The changing nature of the supply of financial capital Having addressed the demand side, the obvious point to make about the supply of financial capital concerns its increased flexibility - technologically, institutionally and geographically . Recent innovations in computer and communications technology as applied to the financial system have had liberatory effects on the supply of credit . And the financial product diversification and deregulatory movements which have sprung up across the globe in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the standardisation of the new products through securitisation of financial assets for resale on secondary markets, are producing an uncontrolled institutional and geographic dynamism in financial markets . These, however, mainly fall into the category of contingencies, since they are evolving in a manner largely ancillary to the deeper logic of capital's relation to finance . If there exists sufficient political power, these contingent innovations can be arrested or regulated through national state intervention . There are, in contrast, at least three more deeply rooted tendencies which can be considered necessary financial sector companions to the natural development of capitalism and which have important political implications : (a) The technological, institutional and geographic expansion of financial capital beyond the control of the nation-state - including the recent failure of international regulatory agencies to replace the gold standard and fixed dollar with a new universal monetary equivalent - reflects the declining capacity of the state to control international capitalism in a manner conducive to its long-term reproduction (Wachtel, 1986 ; Clarke, 1989) ; _ (b) The continual need to speed the circulation of capital - to limit the time it stands idle - becomes a vital function of a continually innovating financial system (Harvey, 1985 : 36, 190) ; and (c) The need for productive capital to push beyond its current geographic bounds is accommodated especially in the provision of trade finance by an ever-expanding financial system (Harvey, 1985 : 38) . These tendencies are not easy to measure or predict, since

US Class struggle

the full impact of deregulation is still to be felt . But there is plenty of evidence of both contingent and necessary tendencies . We are witnessing an expansion in scope and scale of international financial markets (and within the us, of interstate banking) ; a profusion of new financial instruments with ever-shorter maturities ; an explosion of the secondary markets for securitised financial assets ; an unevenness of deregulation based on turf wars within the financial industry yet an inexorable wave of expanded powers offered to financial institutions in general ; a multitude of new market entrants concomitant with rapidly increasing concentration within the traditional fractions of the financial industry ; and the swift diversification of financial institutions under bank holding company shells . While the separation of necessary from contingent innovations in the supply of finance is not an easy task, it may be important in order to ultimately determine which financial innovations accommodate production and should therefore be retained in any reform programme, and which, on the contrary, simply fuel speculation or increase the financial sector's power to no productive end . Finally, in assessing the changing nature of the supply of credit, it is useful to recognise the evolution in both the type of credit supplied and the suppliers . Note in Table II, for example, the increasing ability of corporations to borrow more from lenders other than banks, through bond issuance and borrowing collateralised by property (corporate mortgages) . Note, too, the increasing role of government-insured loans in the credit markets, a signal that, as with the Farm Credit System, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, the Guaranteed Student Loan Programme, and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, there may be major delin quency and default problems ahead for the state . A larger project geared to tracking changes in the supply of credit is vital to deepening the strategies for populist resistance to financial capital . The rising cost of credit The major attraction for new market entrants into finance appears to be the fact that the real rate of interest has stayed at historically high levels (the prime was general higher than 6%) throughout the 1980s, having hovered between -1 and

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+ 196 in the 1970s . While the interest rate might appear to be contingent upon the state policy chosen to manage devaluation of capital - plainly it was a deflationary policy in the early 1980s following an inflationary one in the 1970s - there are tendentially necessary forces in the financial system which result in a rise in the real rate of interest toward the end of an accumulation cycle . These forces have more to do with the demand for credit than anything else (Harvey, 1982 : ch . 9) . As Marx (1967 : viii ch . 32) put it, 'In times of crisis the demand for loan capital, and with it the interest rate reaches its maximum ; the rate of profit as good as disappears, and with it the demand for industrial capital .' The flow of capital from productive to financial circuits With a declining rate of profit in the manufacturing sector and an inordinately high real rate of interest, it is logical to expect flows of capital from productive to financial circuits, even within a given firm . This trend was clearly in evidence in the us even before interest rates rose in 1979, with net nonfinancial corporate acquisitions of financial assets as a percentage of fixed investment rising from 24% in the mid-1950s to 31% in the 1960s, 43176 in the 1970s, and 50% by the early 1980s (Niggle, 1986 : 378) . And during the 1980s Ford Motor Co . became the largest savings and loan institution in the us, General Motors built up the largest mortgage portfolio (through its auto financing division), and Sears transformed itself into a giant financial services firm . Combining this movement with the first tendency outlined above - rising demand for credit - Niggle's extensive study found that compared with financial institutions, 'there have been significant changes in the non-financial corporations' operations that have blurred the distinctions between the two types of firms . The nonfinancial corporations are increasingly assuming one of the principal functions and distinguishing characteristics of financial intermediaries - borrowing to lend . And increasingly their gross return on capital consists of interest on lending and capital gain on speculation rather than of profit on industrial enterprise' (1986 : 377) .

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The speculative aspects of financial capital In two respects - overindebtedness and the proliferation of investment arenas unrelated to production - the above tendencies combine to oblige financial capital to take on its second role, as a speculative circuit of capital delinked from the productive circuit (see Figure 1 .) . On the one hand, as Minsky (1977) points out, there is the necessary movement of debtors through three successive stages of indebtedness : (a) 'Hedge' financing is the case when the borrower's cash receipts are expected to exceed the cash payments to the lender by a significant margin ; (b) financing becomes 'speculative' when the borrower's cash flow payments in the near-term exceed the cash flows that are expected from the lender over this period ; and (c) 'Ponzi' financing occurs when speculative financing goes sour and when the interest portion of the borrower's cash payment commitments exceeds the net income cash receipts, resulting in a need to borrow further merely to pay off the old debt . Ponzi financing represents an extreme stage of the delinking of finance from production, but one not unknown in today's economy . It wasn't long before loans to Third World nations slipped into this category . Hundreds of us savings and loan institutions (s&is), which originally served steady if unexciting home and mortgage credit needs, also became Ponzi institutions in the 1980s, as they found themselves in need of more external financing to cover bad loans ; following deregulation in 1980, they increased the interest rate they paid depositors in order simply to borrow to grow out of their problems (most were unsuccessful) . And on the other hand, aside from the increasing fragility of the credit relationship, there is another side to financial speculation : the rise of speculative investment arenas . Debt is increasingly used to fund investments which are marginally related, if at all, to production . These include not only precious metals, art and the like, but all manner of fictitious capitals - paper representations of capital . In the us, a partial list of speculative investment arenas would include Third World loans to corrupt sovereign borrowers and lending to Real Estate Investment Trusts in the 1970s ; currencies and precious metals (especially from 1979-81) which continue to fluctuate wildly ; agricultural commodities ; us farmland and

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energy-related real estate markets in the 1980s ; credit on the margin for the 1982-7 and 1988-9 Wall Street bull markets ; and the next set of speculative markets - overpriced Northeast real estate and excessive downtown office building construction across the country, overindebted corporations dependent upon asset sales, uncontrolled securitisation of inadequately collateralised financial instruments, and other exotic and generally unregulated financial transactions (credit commitments, currency and interest rate swaps, futures and options, etc .) . The growing power of financial capital

In spite of the fragility within the financial system created by these speculative fevers, the increased level of debt across the economy transfers real if sometimes obscured power to financial capital . It is that combination of power and fragility that offers subordinate classes especially fruitful prospects for challenging financial capital . Although the nature of financial industry power depends on a series of contingencies, it is fair to argue that as the accumulation cycle draws to an end, there is a logical concentration in economic strength and increase in the political power of financial capital, including the formation of finance capital power blocs . This may continue until the point at which devaluation of the overaccumulated financial capital, perhaps wrought by uncontrollable haemorrhaging of exposed financial institutions or perhaps by an inflationary response to crisis conditions, begins in earnest . Evidence of the rise of financial capital power over the past two decades or so is abundant : at the level of the international economy as mediated through the IMF ; at the level of the nation-state as witnessed in the Federal Reserve Board's formation of monetary policy ; at the level of even national corporations as their own overindebtedness forces them to comply with constraints imposed by their lenders ; at the interstate level as seen in the formation of regional banking compacts ; at the level of the municipality and region where financial capital plays a larger role in the development process ; and even at the neighbourhood level as financial capital ebbs and flows, bringing first physical decay and then gentrification . As an illustration, consider financial power relative to productive capital . While the nature of the relationship

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between financial and productive capital has been strenuously debated (see, e .g ., Mintz and Schwartz, 1985 ; Herman, 1981 ; and Kotz, 1978), there has been insufficient attention to the profound changes in corporate financing in the 1980s, and the impact of increased corporate indebtedness on the command and control capacity of the financial sector . We have much to learn, for example, from the example of Eastern Airlines, which in March 1989 declared bankruptcy in the midst of a labour dispute on the basis of $2 .4 billion indebtedness ; the trade union efforts to resurrect the airline from its notorious anti-union management foundered in the rocky boardrooms of Eastern's creditors committee . Naturally, the power of financial capital is enhanced or constrained by various alliances and conflicts, which to a large measure are contingent upon the nature of the state regulatory apparatus and the historical development of the national financial system . These in turn are deeply affected by class and class fraction dynamics and the nation's position in the international division of labour . Thus while necessary tendencies leading to increased financial power may exist, they will be significantly influenced by the following four types of contingencies : (a) alliances or conflicts between financial capitals of different nations, regions, sizes or market orientations ; 4 (b) alliances ('finance capital') or conflicts between financial capital (or fractions thereof) and other fractions of capital ; 5 (c) state strategies to support or constrain the interests of financial capital through regulation ; 6 and (d) conflicts between financial capital and subordinate classes . It is to these latter we turn next . There are two areas of inquiry to be addressed in this section : what political lessons can be drawn from the analysis of necessary versus contingent processes in the financial economy? ; and what objective conditions now (or potentially) exist in the us that make grassroots struggle against financial capital particularly fruitful? Principles for intervention against financial capital The first political message easily drawn from the theoretical discussion is that two of the three roles played by financial capital - speculation and 'finance capital' - are unproductive

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in value terms and in fact counterproductive for the economy and particularly for poor and working people . Both speculation and finance capital groupings should be regulated out of existence, at the least . In the 1930s these were accomplished, respectively, through a financial collapse, which cooled speculative fevers, and through the Glass-Steagall Act which the Roosevelt Administration, supported by enlightened capital, imposed on Wall Street to formally divide banking from commerce . In the 1990s, populist political forces in a new organisation, the `Financial Democracy Campaign', hope to achieve the same results without accompanying social costs . A second conclusion with major political implications is that the necessary tendencies of rising financial capital affect all sectors of the economy, driving working-class and middleclass households to a point of sharing short-term common objective interests of reducing the burden of increasingly unmanageable debt . Hence, more conservative constituencies - e .g ., middle-class students, defaulting already at a record pace, and homeowners with two mortgages and unmanageable credit card and auto debt - will finally see it in their objective interests to join populist struggles against financial capital . In the United States, the inclusion of the middle class has generally been crucial to the success of social movements, and in the struggle for economic justice, their input will be welcomed . 7 Furthermore, given the underlying tendency of the real rate of interest to rise, the logical implication is that some effort to gain popular control of monetary policy ('democratising the Fed') may be useful (Epstein, 1988 ; Greider, 1987), in the spirit of the old populist Greenback movement of the 1890s . The culmination of unbearable household debt and more democratic control of monetary policy might create a self-interested demand by popular forces for high inflation in order to 'monetise the debt' and thus redistribute wealth from creditor to debtor, so long as low-income people can be protected . Also, with the tendency for financial institutions to face increasing bankruptcies, with or without inflation, it should be worthwhile to resurrect the demand for socialisation of banks (rather than simply lemon nationalisation, as in the case of Chicago's Continental Illinois in 1984) . These might best be controlled at the local level, especially if pension funds can

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be attracted to help fund investments (Murray, 1988) . To avoid the recent French experience - where disarticulated financial and productive sectors prevented nationalised banking capital from being used efficiently - Lipietz (1988 : 401) recommends a national investment bank 'lending at low interest and long term and buying new shares, or helping new kinds of enterprise to exist, making socialist experiments, and so on .' A national industrial development bank has oft been proposed in the us by left economists (e .g ., Bowles, Gordon and Weisskopf, 1983), and Canada's New Democratic Party had proposed nationalising one major commercial bank for the purpose of redistribution of credit (Naylor, 1985) . Two other demands would also increase popular control of the financial system : formal credit allocation to ill-served sectors and geographic areas through something like the strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (which gives banks a mandate to make inner city loans) (Nader and Brown, 1989) ; and reregulation to limit specific financial institution practices . Some anti-consumer banking practices were attacked vigorously in the 1960s and 1970s through the Truth in Lending, Equal Credit Opportunity, and Fair Credit Reporting Acts, but others - such as anti-labour loan covenants, pension fund terminations for the purpose of loan repayment, 'redlining', etc . - continue unabated . Above all, the point should be stressed that the tendencies of financial capital at the late stages of a long cycle of capital accumulation imply global overaccumulation of debt . Since an inverted pyramid cannot be built indefinitely, the major struggle in the next decade will be over who bears the cost of devaluation of that debt . That struggle has begun in earnest, so far leaving poor and working people devastated . At least half a million us family farms disappeared in the 1980s because of the collapse of the price of Midwestern farmland and subsequent collateralisation of unpayable family farm debt through widespread insurance company foreclosures . Hundreds of thousands of jobs and livelihoods were lost during the downturn in the energy industry and the subsequent disintegration of the speculative Houston, Dallas and Denver commercial real estate markets . Tens of thousands of educations for African American students are being denied, due to the funding crisis for African American universities victimised by the racially-biased Reagan and Bush Administration reactions

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to the student loan repayment crisis . 8 Then there is the enormous transfer of the costs of debt devaluation directly to the us taxpayer: the $335 billion savings and loan bailout ; the taxpayer-assisted Brady 'Voluntary Debt Reduction' Plan for the Third World ; and the recapitalisation of the World Bank, the IMF, and other multilateral financial institutions (whose funds go to bail out the major Third World creditor banks) . It is this process that represents the most serious fiscal threat to the already-strained us federal budget and to ordinary households who themselves find it more difficult to meet interest payments on household debt 60 % higher than historically normal . Most painful of all, consider the suffering of hundreds of millions of poor people affected by structural adjustment policies used to devalue the Third World and hence reduce labour costs for debt-equity swap collateralisation and a new wave of direct foreign investment . These are conditions which presage a national, and perhaps international reform movement . Before considering resistance to financial capital at such vast scales, it is vital to examine the local settings in which a populist, anti-finance movement is grounded in the us - in the opposition to financial sector power at the neighbourhood and workplace levels . Grassroots bank campaigns

Many examples of successful locally-based bank campaigns in the us can be cited, from the disparate experiences of housing and community development organisations, trade unions, religious groups, consumer advocates, farmers, antiapartheid groups, and other forces . When these groups fuse their interests and issues in a city - or region-wide alliance, some very real and impressive victories can be won . For example, urban 'reinvestment coalitions' typically comprise large numbers of inner city community groups and civic and block clubs, and fight for low-income home mortgage and small business loan agreements from banks through use of the federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) . CRA is an example of a 'nonreformist reform', a law which empowers activists by providing a handle for delaying bank mergers and acquisitions until the bank shows its 'ongoing and affirmative commitment to meeting the credit needs of the entire

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community in which it is chartered to do business', i .e . ; until the bank cuts a deal with its critics . In more general terms, the question then becomes, what can develop out of community reinvestment quid pro quos during the present merger and acquisition wave in the banking industry, and in the event of periodic, necessary government bail-outs of failing financial institutions? Can the reinvestment issue be broadened into a unified critique of financial industry practices and perhaps even capitalist social relations? None of the reinvestment coalitions in us cities have been as broad-based as that of the Maryland Alliance for Responsible Investment (MARL) in Baltimore, which serves as a good example of what can be done. There, diverse groups such as the middleclass consumerist Citizen Action Coalition, a student antiapartheid coalition, and small political groups joined nonprofit housing developers and low-income community groups and important mainstream organisations like the AFL-CIO trade union federation and the venerable NAACP civil rights group to fight the local financial industry head on . In its initial campaign in late 1986 against Baltimore's biggest bank, Maryland National Bank, MARI demanded and won concessions before permitting a merger with a Washington, DC bank to be finalised . These concessions included $50 million in below-market lending commitments for lowincome neighbourhoods spread over five years, $50,000 per year in grants to community groups, free checking accounts for the poor and elderly, and a community monitoring board to prevent gentrification lending . In addition, under pressure from MARI's internationalist activists, the bank ended all its remaining business relationships with South African banks and even formally endorsed the idea that banks should be penalised for Third World loans and that debt relief should be granted (Bond, 1987) . MARI then took on the fastest-growing us bank, one already exercising substantial political power in the Southeast and certain to be a major force in the banking industry of the 1990s, North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) . MARI objected to the bank's maintenance of an office in Johannesburg and its huge stock holdings in Shell Oil (the subject of an international anti-apartheid boycott) ; its loans to Guatemala for helicopters ; its racially-biased lending policies in its headquarter city, Charlotte ; its role in the deindustrialisation of the North

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Carolina textile industry while lending to El Salvador's sweatshop textile firms ; and lead role in a credit syndication used by Ford Motor Company to build a 'runaway plant' in Mexico . New members quickly signed up - textile, steel and auto workers' unions, several churches, city anti-apartheid activists, the Central American Solidarity Committee . A mid-1987 rally attended by more than 1000 Baltimoreans was held outside the NCNB office in the financial district featuring Jesse Jackson and exiled Guatemalan labour leader Frank LaRue . Finally, in 1989, NCNB agreed to a multi-million dollar community reinvestment package, though many international issues remain outstanding . The breadth and excitement in these campaigns - the issue range, the educational potential, the victories, and the ever growing list of participants - testify to the potential for bringing structural analysis and progressive grassroots forces into play against huge financial institutions . There are more than one hundred independent community reinvestment coalitions throughout the us like MARI, though only a few are as internationally-conscious . These coalitions have as roots thousands of campaigns for better low-income housing and equitable community economic development . The community reinvestment movement has won more than $5 billion in lending concessions for low-income areas during the 1980s, according to the Washington, Dc-based Centre for Community Change, which helps co-ordinate bank campaigns across the us . The most spectacular victories against banks were won by a state-wide coalition in California which fought for a $350 million package from Crocker and Wells Fargo Banks in 1986 ; by the Chicago Reinvestment Alliance which forced First National Bank of Chicago to commit $120 million in 1985 ; by a Pittsburgh coalition which won a $135 million commitment from Pittsburgh National Corporation in 1988 ; and by a Pennsylvania-New Jersey two state coalition which in 1986 forced Midlantic and Continental Banks to provide $85 million in inner city loans with below-market interest rates . One of the most promising developments in grassroots struggles against financial capital is the increasing willingness of trade unions to challenge the power of financial institutions . To do so in the context of 'corporate campaigns' often represents the strongest stand unions can take against companies with which they have come to loggerheads on contract

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or certification negotiations, and which simultaneously are vulnerable to pressure on their lines of credit . This is true especially for overindebted companies, for those firms which rely on ready access to liquid funds, and for companies which, with the prompting of their financiers, terminate worker pension funds in order to repay loans . 10 For all such companies, banks and other financial institutions can apply a crucial pressure point, and thus trade unions have learned to apply substantial pressure to the banks . The first and most important example of this approach was the ji Stevens campaign carried out by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in North Carolina in the late 1970s . Protests, shareholder votes and consumer boycotts ultimately forced representatives from Manufacturers Hanover Bank and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to resign from Stevens' board of directors . 11 A more recent and especially innovative example of workers pressing financial capital to gain concessions was the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union drive against Las Vegas casino operators in 1989 . The casinos had enormous debt loads - in the form of the high-cost junk bonds originated by the notorious financier Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham Lambert - which, the union claimed, placed the financial burden on the workers . Their guerrilla theatre outside the entrance to a huge savings and loan association which purchased the casino junk bonds Gibraltar of California, a failing $15 billion s&i . which was in the process of being taken over by federal banking regulators - included professional Las Vegas dealers slapping out cards at blackjack tables, emphasising the theme, 'Don't Gamble with our Money .' This sent a strong signal to the casinos that their credit lines were under attack, and aided the union in its contract talks . In the late 1980s, the campaigns for community control of capital waged by inner city reinvestment coalitions were joined by corporate campaign strategists at the most innovative unions . Some, like the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), moved in this direction in order to woo allies in places like Omaha, Nebraska ; Brooklyn, New York : and Washington, Dc where they had no members . In Omaha, the UMWA pressed Nebraska's largest bank (FirsTier) to put more money into farming and inner city communities, and, the bank claimed, to confront the interlocking directorate relation-

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ship that the bank chairman had with a mining company (Peter Kiewitt) that refused the union an acceptable contract . Thanks to organising by a UMWA staffperson in 1988, the union's natural allies such as the Nebraska AFL-CIO joined, for the first time ever, militant community groups in the African American neighbourhoods of North Omaha (who were, for a variety of important historical and personal reasons, hostile to organised labour) . Others in the coalition included farm advocacy and church groups with concerns about the rural economic crisis . They ultimately forced the banks to commit several million dollars in new funds to low-income areas . Other protests by the UMWA against the Pittston Company, which denied the union a contract in what became the most intense labour struggle in the us in 1989, focused on banks like Crestar in Washington, DC and Manufacturers Hanover in Brooklyn . In both cases, community coalitions and the UMWA joined forces to demand that the banks withdraw a $100 million line of credit to Pittston (essentially a strikebusting fund) and to reinvest more in low-income areas . While the union's demands were generally unsuccessful, the communities did receive concessions they probably wouldn't otherwise have won, and the unions did at least raise the cost of doing business with the target company . The local bank campaigns are portentous not because of their successes in forcing marginal changes in the way financial institutions do business, but in linking issues and hence constituencies . More significant is the development of a broad, working front - an ever-present but often unrealised goal in progressive political practice in the us - against financial capital, with components from different geographical, sectotal, racial and subordinate class bases . Even traditionally conservative small business people regularly line up in pickets outside banks, side-by-side with advocates for the homeless and trade unionists . These broad fronts and their protests are successful because they readily lead to material gains for all of their participants in the short-term . Financial institutions are sensitive to adverse publicity, since the only major difference between retail banks is the effectiveness of their marketing (location of branches matters much less since the advent of automatic teller machines) . Hence, protests can make a big difference . Furthermore, any grassroots movement to gain local

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electoral office will eventually confront the power of financial capital, which at the municipal and regional level exerts strong control over Democratic Party politicians . 12 Banks play a vital role in 'growth machines,' coalitions of elites from varied sectors - especially rentiers, supported by politicians, local media, utilities, universities, etc . - which aggressively promote metropolitan growth (Logan and Molotch, 1987) . Bankers were the main actors in the downfall of one of the us's two recent big-city populist mayors, Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland . 13 We might conclude from the recent evidence that at least two aspects of grassroots struggles against financial capital set the stage for a deeper, more fundamental challenge to capital itself. First, the consciousness-raising component of the activist critique of financial speculation and power is vital to any further political economic transformation . The issues raised in many of the bank campaigns move logically from local housing conditions to apartheid, as activists practice the bumpersticker slogan, 'Think Globally, Act Locally' . But consciousnessraising without empowerment can be debilitating, and so campaigns like those of MAR! only succeed when they provide both local organising handles and the opportunity to win incremental victories which simultaneously teach participants about the irrational nature of the system . As financial institutions inevitably attempt to realise surplus profits through destructive and sometimes spectacular speculative investment processes towards the end of a long-wave of capital accumution (e .g ., the 1920s and early 1930s, and the mid-1970s to the present), consciousness-raising will be an integral, relatively straightforward and fruitful aspect of grassroots, anti-finance populism . Second, to eventually restructure the economy in a more democratic way, the notion of 'community control of capital' represents a seed-bed theme that can flower and grow under conditions created by progressive political activists in local and national campaigns against financial capital . The populist activists by and large all recognise that collective, democratic approaches to production and consumption hold the best hope for ultimately building a society free of financial speculation and ruin . There are courageous efforts underway to build upon the nascent models of worker-owned and managed shops, nonprofit community development corporations, co-operatives of

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all kinds, community land trusts, community development credit unions, and other similar ventures some have called 'seedbed socialism' which are valiantly trying to eke out grassroots economic development in an increasingly hostile climate . To survive and perhaps even prosper in the near-term, access to credit, on their terms, will be critical . Community control of credit in an era of rising financial capital, is what the new populist activism described above is most fundamentally geared to . Thinking globally, and acting locally, nationally, and globally The grassroots bank campaigns have, in the past two decades, even bubbled up from below to affect national political processes . There have been successful attacks on the national financial establishment by activists affiliated with National Peoples Action, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Centre for Community Change, consumer advocacy groups, Ralph Nader's BankWatch, and more recently, the Financial Democracy Campaign (FDc) . Mainly concentrating on Washington legislative reforms, these groups have contributed in impressive ways to debates over financial policy on issues ranging from Third World debt to bank bailouts to monetary policy to community reinvestment to credit card rate disclosure to 'lifeline banking accounts' for poor customers . Farm groups such as Prairie Fire, Save the Family Farm Coalition, the League of Rural Voters, and the North American Farm Alliance have won concessions in the form of the Farm Credit Act of 1987, which gives them more leverage in dealing with their local creditors . In early 1989, public interest watchdog Nader and the began a full-fledged national taxpayer revolt to dissuade Congress from bailing out 1,000 failing S&Ls . With high profile leadership from Jesse Jackson and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, and with populist strategy developed by ACORN and the Durham, North Carolina-based Institute for Southern Studies, the FDC's principles were quickly endorsed by more than 200 organisations across the us . Protests were organised at dozens of locations, including FDC

sit-ins at bank regularity agencies, squatting in houses acquired by the government from bankrupt s&Ls, demonstra-

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tions at bank trade association conventions, and a congressional pressure campaign . The FDC demanded that the $335 billion that the House Banking Committee estimated would be necessary to solve the s&L crisis be supplied by those who benefited . In Jackson's words, 'We didn't go to the party, we didn't make the mess, and we shouldn't have to pay to clean it up .' The FDC targeted very rich individuals, who received windfall interest income in the 1980s, as well as money market funds which brokered 'hot money' (especially $100,000 certificates of deposit) to risky s&Ls . Other bailout funds, Nader and the FDC agreed, should be raised through taxes on speculative financial activities like leveraged buyouts and stock purchases . There were, however, some telling differences among populist and Left critics of the financial system, over, for example, whether institutional reregulation of the s&Ls was necessary to address the single most crucial issue for their constituents, the high cost of housing finance . 14 Ultimately, with the commercial banks and the S&Ls pumping in millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Congress, Nader and the FDC were unable to sway enough votes in mid-1989 to change the terms of the bailout . Thus the populist critique of finance is turning to the many other areas in which the government has issued securities or guarantees to back low-quality credit instruments or other financial liabilities : pension funds, student loans, the deposit insurance system for banks, the Third World debt exposure of New York banks, and others still not visible to outside observers . According to one populist banking expert, 'Financial time bombs are ticking away . The Texas insurance industry is already u nraveling . GM and ford are suffering unprecedented defaults on auto loans . The Northeast real estate market is going soft . And bankers have been lending furiously to finance leveraged buyouts . Should a recession make these loans go bad, all hell could break loose .' In spite of efforts by some major international banks to reduce their Third World exposure and raise capital standards (though often through long-term borrowing), this prognosis probably remains true at the global level as well . An international program against financial capital has yet to be organised . But spurred by reports of 'IMF riots' and other forms of social unrest in many Latin American, Caribbean, African and Asian countries (George, 1988 ; Potter, 1988 ; Walton, 1987), the

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us Debt Crisis Network - a coalition of several dozen church, research and development advocacy groups - continues to work for changes in the brutal system of Third World debt peonage . The Network's European colleagues have generated far more popular consciousness on the issue, especially during the 1988 World Bank-iMF meetings in Berlin, but in the us, progressive environmentalists have taken on the World Bank's destructive policies, won major concessions, and continue fighting . The us anti-apartheid movement, after winning several battles dating to the late 1970s prohibiting loans of various kinds to South Africa, is attempting again to plug financial loopholes left in the 1986 sanctions bill . Indeed, with $12 billion in South African debt due to be renegotiated in June 1990, international anti-apartheid activists have reached consensus that manipulating the leverage that the financial sector exerts over even sovereign nations will be their most important pressure point as hopes for ANC-Pretoria negotiations intensify . Explicit internationalism by the FDC and other critics of financial capital may be the most self-interested direction they will move in . Facing the internationalisation of capital (Clarke, 1989), socially-destructive entrepreneurialism by local state managers competing desperately for new investment (Harvey, 1989), and geopolitical forces far beyond their control, populist activists in the 1990s will surely need to think globally, and to act globally, nationally and locally, to address both their immediate conditions and the political economic order as a whole . How serious a threat can all this populist domestic and international activism ultimately make to the established financial order? Perhaps never again will the homogenising and devastating effects of speculative, footloose financial capital create such a unified moment of populist resistance as happened at the end of the last century in the us (Goodwyn, 1978) . But spelled out here is enough preliminary evidence to conclude that finance may be an ideal issue base for Left politics in the us in the 1990s . The challenge for Left militants will be to work with and help move the new populist activists from what can sometimes be splintered, single-issue, transient half-campaigns against their local banks into larger critiques, first of the entire financial system and second of the world capitalist economy of which financial capitalism is only the latest phase . With or without the participation of the Left,

US Class struggle neighbourhood and trade union organisers will begin this journey just as they reach the limits of their local strategies and tactics, and they will move ever rapidly as the reassertion of underlying tendencies related to the rise of finance in a crisis-ridden global economy offers them both unprecedented dangers and promises .

Perhaps the single most intractable challenge facing international, national and local managers of capitalism is to engineer the means by which the unsustainable rise of finance will end and by which overaccumulated financial capital will be devalued . There are three basic possibilities : (1) as has happened so far, a series of 'partial' defaults (e .g ., midwestern farms, the 'Rustbelt' and energy-producing regions, the LTV company, Texas banks and s&L's, Argentina, etc .), juggled skilfully by the bureaucrats and money mandarins of the international financial system (primarily the us Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank for International Settlements), and backed by easy government 'lender of last resort' liquidity for highly exposed and especially vulnerable financial institutions (only unlike as in the past, the partial default option cannot be accompanied by a continued rise in aggregate global debt) ; (2) a full-fledged banking and stock market collapse, as happened in the us from 1929-33, to wipe overaccumulated financial assets clean off the books ; or (3) a period of roaring inflation and negative real interest rates, which would whittle down the debt mountain (debt is repayed in dollars worth less than when the debt was contracted), as happened to a very limited degree through most of the 1970s . Whichever route is taken in the early 1990s, there will be enormous social costs . Of the progressive us-based forces that might be equipped to challenge the process of devaluation of overaccumulated financial capital, the modern versions of traditional us populism - the Rainbow Coalition (Navarro, 1988), Alinskyite neighbourhood activism (Boyte, 1980), resurgent anti-corporate trade unionism (Moody, 1988), Citizen Action Coalition, etc . (Boyte, Booth and Max, 1986) - offer the greatest hope (Boyte and Riessman, 1986) . Of course, alongside progressive economic analysis and the capacity to appropriate and transform the rhetoric of class struggle (e .g ., against the 'money trust' or 'corporate barracudas'), populist

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programmes have, unfortunately, been infused with racism and nationalism at different stages . That is why the rainbow and internationalist components are so critical to populist politics in this stage of us development, and why campaigns against financial capital that contain these components will continue to attract leading progressive activists in nearly every us city . John Walton (1987 : 383) posits of recent, widespread Third World riots against austerity imposed by international financial capital, 'All of the protests succeeded, in the sense of shaking their societies into alert appreciation of the regressive policy effects and deepening urban poverty . In the longer run mass action has initiated a political transformation that continues to the present and suggests a realignment of the global political economy .' That is an ambitious claim, and if the populist struggles against banks and other financiers in the us merely achieve such luminous heights as shaking us society into an appreciation of the damaging effects of financial capitalism that would be a significant and worthwhile accomplishment . But if the excesses of financial capitalism do come to an end, however painfully for poor, working, and middleclass people across the globe, then there is more here than meets the eye . Such a development would also imply the demise of the very motor of the global economy : the financial sector that in fact has sustained consumption and investment in the shaky productive sectors . The end of financial capitalism, may be, as in the early 1930s, the beginning of a period characterised by depression, extreme interterritorial competition, the formation of enormous geopolitical economic blocs (Fortress Europe 1992, the us-Canada-Western Hemisphere bloc, the ASEAN economies), and quite possibly war and the widespread resurgence of domestic fascist movements . The Rainbow Coalition's influential Left strategist Vicente Navarro writes (1988 : 443), 'A natural rainbow is after all the light of the sun that struggles to get through the dark clouds . And there are enormous clouds on our horizons of which the largest is the overwhelming dominance that the capitalist class of the us has over economic, political and communication agencies and institutions in this country .' But if the end of financial capitalism and the devaluation of overaccumulated international financial capital substantially reduce the overwhelming dominance of financial institutions and simultaneously throw



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the capitalist class into disarray in the 1990s, that may be the silver lining that the Rainbow Coalition and other populist forces need to attempt a full-fledged political economic transformation .

1. The fundamental issue in examining international financial capital today is how to account for countries' explosive domestic indebtedness . To put this in perspective, while the external Third World debt slowed its growth at $1 .3 trillion at year-end 1988, us domestic debt reached nearly $11 .4 trillion (see Table 1) and us foreign debt continued to skyrocket, to more than $500 billion . Such a high level of debt is not out of the ordinary for the industrialised world . While institutional differences in credit markets affect the meaning of domestic debt, it is surprising to note that between 1975 and 1986, the nonfinancial sector (i .e ., government, consumer and non-bank corporate) domestic debts of both the us and West Germany increased from 120% of GNP to 167% . During the same period Japan's debt increased from 166% of GNP to 240% , while Britain's rose from 142176 to 161% (nearly all due to growth of consumer debt) (Bank for International Settlements, 1987 : 75) . Excepting differences in state borrowing, most of the phenomena associated with us debt that will be described below can be found in varying degrees in the other industrialised countries . 2. To avoid confusion, the label `finance capital' will only be applied to the conjunctural setting in which, as Hilferding (1981) described it, banking capital takes a leading position in a merger with industrial capital and merchants' capital . But Hilferding and others (e .g ., Green, 1987), assuming this formulation from the outset, fall victim to the notion that finance capital relations - mainly the extreme concentration of capital and its capacity to manage and direct further accumulation - could submerge underlying contradictions of capitalist reproduction . In fact, the submergence represented only a temporary displacement of crisis tendencies, not theit dissolution . So it is instead more useful in the us case and indeed in any theoretical investigation to limit the notion of finance capital to its direct investment relationship, and to more broadly conceive of financial capital as the introduction of m into a circuit of capital where m' can be derived regardless of the relationship of finance to production (see Figure 1) .

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3.

Though this is by no means an uncontroversial starting point, it is generally accepted by radical commentators that the past twenty years have witnessed vast upheavals in Fordist mass production and mass consumption spheres in much of the industrialised world . us profit rates certainly fell in the late 1960s and during most of the 1970s . And in manufacturing, after-tax rates of return as a percent of shareholder equity also fell consistently in the 1980s, except for minor upturns in 1983-4 and 1987-8, leading to increasing debt ratios in this sector (see e .g ., us Department of Commerce, 1988 : xxvii) . 4. Tensions and coalitions between financial capitals in the us are vividly apparent . Turf struggles between regional banks (those with between $5 and $50 bn in assets) and money-centre banks (with more that $50 bn in assets) have resulted in numerous attempts by one faction to weaken the other on policy grounds (for example . Third World debt write-downs by regional banks to force lower capital ratios for money-centre banks in late 1987) . Small community banks have attempted unsuccessfully to enter their interests into policy debates . There are passionate disputes between investment banks and institutional bond holders about how much debt corporations should take on during takeovers . Intense battles over issues of expanded powers are being waged between banks of all sizes, and between banks and the insurance, stock brokerage, real estate and investment advisory industries . At the international level, alliances are more common between banks of various nations in their efforts to ameliorate the Third World debt crisis . However, intense competition has emerged in battles over access to the more profitable foreign markets . 5. Both conflicts and alliances are apparent within and between the largest us business and banking firms . The conflicts have been played out over foreign policy in Third World nations (of which Panama is a fascinating example), trade policy, banking regulation, and international debt policy . But conversely, the tendency toward nonfinancial corporate investment in financial assets noted above is leading to greater commonality of interests . This will produce, on the one hand, increasing competition, especially in the consumer financial markets, but also, on the other hand, alliances between banks and corporations in the form of finance capital groups . 6. As mentioned, state strategies in the us are in flux due to political pressures and contingent events . For example, recent conflict between bank profitability and us foreign policy objectives in Mexico (as represented in the 'Brady Initiative' for voluntary debt reduction) has led to serious friction in the normally harmonious relationship



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between New York banks and the Treasury Department . The ultimate need for the state to represent the class interests of abstract capital may be recognised by state actors and by both financial and productive capital only when it is too late ; when deregulation has progressed so far as to endanger the very stability of the financial system . Major commercial banks continue to promote the deregulation of 1930s bank legislation, especially the Glass-Steagall Act which separates banking from direct forms of commerce, which will ultimately have such a seriously destabilising effect . 7. By way of illustration, in the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign of 1988, the entrance of white working-class and disgruntled middle-class voters stunned the major media, creating a renaissance of populist rhetoric by other Democratic Party candidates . 8. According to a Wall Street journal report (Putka, 1988) on a Department of Education initiative to cut new loans for colleges with a 20176 or higher default rate, 'Mr . (Bruce) Carnes, who leads the department's efforts to clamp down, acknowledges that the default initiative would have an imbalanced effect . "The sector that will be hit hardest by this will be black colleges . It's possible that their student bodies contain a high level of thieves ." Black colleges say this is typical of a misinformed government stance . "I don't accept that - it's not thieves," says (the financial aid director at a black university) . "If a kid comes out with $12,000 of debt and a BA in psychology, he makes $12,000 a year . Then he gets an apartment, and the first thing you know, he misses a payment ."' See Bond's 'Behind the News' account in this issue . 9. Community groups in Philadelphia criticised the international lending practices and South Africa ties of one of their biggest banks (Fidelity) in 1985 ; doing so helped the Eastern North Philadelphia Initiative Coalition win a $55 million agreement that may be the most successful reinvestment programme yet implemented . The visionary National Training and Information Center (parent of National Peoples Action) in Chicago began raising the issue of international drug money laundering in its bank campaigns as early as 1985 . As part of the socially responsible investment movement, the Presbyterian Church linked the international lending and South Africa ties of National Westminster Bank to its poor record of community lending in New York City, and won concessions from the bank in 1987 . And in addition to MARI, a group in Springfield, Massachusetts linked Central America concerns to redlining in a 1989 bank campaign against Bank of Boston . 10 . In the 1980s, two million us workers had their retirement

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security cancelled by companies which liquidated managementcontrolled pension portfolios that were inflated by the Wall Street bull market . In essence, although workers had borne the risk that such investments would not have done well enough to cover their contracted retirement income, the speculative rise of the stock market more than covered the obligatory payments, and yet it was the company, not the workers, that claimed the surplus . Banks are known to force upon companies plans which terminate the pension fund, pay the workers the amount they were contractually responsible for, and used the surplus to pay back loans . This has become prevalent in leveraged buyouts (takeovers which require enormous amounts of debt), and in some cases not only do workers lose their pension funds but their company is sold, the assets stripped, and marginally profitable plants are permanently closed . Corporate concentration through mergers and takeovers, and the rationalisation of production such processes engender, became extreme in the textile and food industries throughout the 1980s . Unions such as the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union struck back, by bringing court and legislative challenges against the termination of pension funds and the stripping of corporate assets that were both primarily the result of overindebtedness . 11 . The main union strategist for the Jr Stevens campaign, Ray Rogers, later set up a non-profit company called Corporate Campaign, Inc . in New York, where he and several colleagues offered advice on major campaigns against banks connected to the International Paper Company (Bank of Boston and Pittsburgh National Corporation) on behalf of Jay, Maine paperworkers ; to the Campbell Soup Company (Philadelphia National Bank) on behalf of Latino farm workers in rural Ohio ; to the Hormel Company (First Bank Systems) on behalf of meatpackers in Austin, Minnesota ; and others . 12 . Witness the s&L-related corruption that led to the resignations of the first and third ranking Democrats in the us House of Representatives in May 1989 . Speaker James Wright was ultimately felled by a questionable book royalties arrangement, but he admitted contacting government bank regulators on behalf of failing Texas s&L owners who had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party coffers, and he is alleged to have added billions of dollars in costs to taxpayers for the S&L bailout as a result of delaying clean-up legislation in 1986, again for the purpose of pressuring regulators . Majority Whip Tony Coelho used his California political networks, especially his connections to the Beverly Hills junk bond nexus of



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Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert, and Columbia s&L, to raise Democratic Party Funds . He resigned on the basis of an illegal $50,000 interest-free loan and $100,000 junk bond investment involving both the s&L and Milken . 13 . The other, the late Harold Washington of Chicago, had a stronger rainbow coalition constituency from which to oppose growth machine strategies (e .g., the revitalisation of the waterfront) and to support community development programmes (Giloth and Mier, 1989). 14 . The FDc emphasises the problem of redlining in inner city neighbourhoods and the need for a national low-interest housing fund which all financial institutions would contribute to . Nader calls for the Federal Home Loan Bank System to fund community development, with 20% of the system's capital invested in non-profit housing . Socialist housing experts led by Chester Hartman of the Institute for Policy Studies and Michael Stone of the University of Massachusetts/ Boston argue that bankrupt s&LS should be reconstituted as mutually-owned, locally-orientated housing finance institutions that would emphasise socially - rather than individually-owned housing .

Bank for International Settlements (1987) Annual Report . Bond, P . (1987) 'From divestment to reinvestment', Dollars and Sense, June . Bowles, S ., D . Gordon & T . Weisskopf (1983) Beyond the wasteland, New York : Anchor . Boyte, H .C . (1980) The backyard revolution, Philadelphia : Temple University Press . Boyte, H .C . & F . Riessman (1986) The new populism : Politics of empowerment Philadelphia : Temple University Press . Boyte, H .C ., H . Booth & S . Max (1986) Citizen Action and the new American populism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press . Clarke, S . (1989) 'The internationalization of capital and the nation state', unpublished mimeo, University of Warwick . Conference Board (1988) 'Real income and earnings', Economic Road Maps No . 2019-2020, July . Epstein, G . (1988) 'Democratizing the Fed', Dollars and Sense . Federal Reserve Board (1989) 'Flow of funds summary statistics', March . George, S . (1988) A fate worse than debt, Harmondsworth : Penguin .

References

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Giloth, R .P . & R. Mier (1989) 'Spatial change and social justice', in R . A . Beaureguard (ed .), Economic restructuring and political response, v . 34, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, Newbury Park, CA: Sage . Goodwyn, L . (1978) The populist moment: A short history of the agrarian revolt in America, New York : Oxford University Press . Green, G . (1987) Finance capital and uneven development, Boulder, co : Westview Press . Greider, W . (1987) Secrets of the temple, New York : Simon and Schuster . Harvey, D . (1982) The limits to capital, Oxford : Basil Blackwell . Harvey, D . (1985) The urbanization of capital, Oxford : Basil Blackwell . Harvey, D . (1989) 'From mangerialism to entrepreneurialism : The transformation of urban governance in late capitalism', Stockholm : Paper delivered to the VEGA Symposium, and forthcoming in Geographiska Annaler Series B, 1989 . Herman, E . (1981) Corporate power, corporate control, New York : Cambridge University Press . Hilferding, R . (1981) Finance capital, London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . Kotz, D . (1978) Bank control of large corporations in the United States, Berkeley: University of California Press . Lipietz, A . (1988) 'The limits of bank nationalisation in France', in L. Harris, J . Coakley, M . Croasdale and T . Evans (eds), New Perspectives on the financial system, Beckenham, Kent : Croom Helm . Logan, J . & H . Molotch (1987) Urban fortunes, Berkeley : University of California Press . Magdoff, H . & P . Sweezy (1987) Stagnation and the financial explosion, New York : Monthly Review Press . Marx, K . (1967) Capital, New York : International Publishers . Minsky, H . (1977) 'A theory of systematic fragility', in E . D . Altman and A .W . Sametz (eds), Financial crises, New York : Wiley & Sons . Mintz, B . & M . Schwartz (1985) The power structure of American business, Chicago : University of Chicago Press . Moody, K . (1988) An injury to all, London: Verso . Murray, R . (1988) 'Pension funds and local authority investment', in L . Harris, J . Coakley, M . Croasdale and T . Evans (eds), New perspectives on the financial system, Beckenham, Kent : Croom Helm . Nader, R . & J . Brown (1989) 'Report to the us taxpayer on the

US Class struggle savings and loan crisis', Washington, Dc : BankWatch . Navarro, V . (1988) 'Social movements and class politics in the us .', in R . Miliband, L . Panitch and J . Seville (eds), Socialist register, 1988 . Naylor, R .T . (1985) The domain of debt, Montreal : Black Rose . Niggle, C . (1986) 'Financial innovation and the distinction between financial and industrial capital', in Journal of Economic Issues, v. 20, No . 2 . Pollin, R . (1986) 'Alternative perspectives on the rise of corporate debt dependency : The us postwar experience', in Review of Radical Political Economics, v . 18, Nos . I & 2 . Pollin, R . (1987) 'Structural change and increasing fragility in the us financial system .' in The imperiled economy, New York : Union for Radical Political Economics . Potter, G . (1988) Dialogue on debt, Washington Dc : Center of Concern . Putka, G . (1988) 'Troubling statistics on student-loan defaults yield no agreement on explanation or solution', Wall Street Journal, March 15 . us Department of Commerce (1988) 'Quarterly financial report for manufacturing, mining and trade corporations', Bureau of the Census, Fourth Quarter . Wachtel, Howard (1986), The money mandarins, New York: Pantheon . Walton, J . (1987) 'Urban protest and the global political economy', in M .P . Smith and J .R . Feigin (eds), The capitalist city, Oxford : Basil Blackwell .

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Edited by the Sheffield Group The Social Economy and the Democratic State Lawrence and Wishart, London 1989, £8 .95 . pp . 286, ISBN : 0 85315 7189 Reviewed by Tom Ling

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The Preface informs us that the Sheffield Group, who edited this collection of essays, came together after Thatcher's third election victory in 1987 . It is to the Group's great credit that the deep pessimism of those times has not been allowed to corrode their, or the contributors', conviction that socialism is still firmly on the political agenda in Britain . What's more, they provide a text which bluntly acknowledges and itemises the weaknesses of past and present Labour Party policies, whilst seeking to build on the strengths of the Labour movement as a whole through a positive critique of Labour's policy review document Social Justice and Economic Efficiency . The Left needs more of this sort of thing .

Book reviews The overall strategy they propose is not original : it emphasises the need to reunite social and economic strategy such that social policy is no longer subordinated to a clearing up of the debris left by capital accumulation . Two elements in their analysis are more distinctive, however . First, they recognise that the increasing pace of internationalisation, together with changes in the labour process and the organisation of production, both undermine traditional labourist strategies of nationalisation and aggregate demand management and that altogether new approaches to economic intervention must be adopted . Second, as they put it, 'the privileged agent of the transition to socialism, the organised working class, is no longer the force it was' (p . 19) . The implication of this is that the success of socialism will depend upon the vitality and organisational strength of radical movements alongside the organised working class . For this reason it becomes • necessary to protect the organising capacities of such groups with constitutional rights . This leads the group to what it describes as 'the main missing link in the Left's search for an alternative agenda : the re-fusion of economic and social policy in the context of constitutional reform' (p . 14) . This broad-sweep approach gives the diverse range of essays which follow the Group's introduction a degree of coherence though their range is sufficiently broad to allow for important differences over the three questions which they ask of the Labour Party's policy review : does it re-fuse economic and social policy? Does it further democratise socialism? Will it help Labour to win the next election?

The integration of economic and social policy The Group warmly welcomes the fact that the Labour Party has undergone a

review of its policy both because this sug- 183 gests that Labour is serious about winning the next election and because it recognises the need for a systematic response to the impact of the new right . It identifies within the Review a wish to establish a coherent economic and social strategy . However, this is largely limited to disjointed hopes lacking a systematic underpinning . Great expectations unlikely to cope with the pressures of hard times . The need for a wider approach to social policy is clearly established by Roland Petchey in his essay on the politics of health . This is a refreshing account for at least two reasons . First, it starts from the assumption that something other than Tory hatred of the sick and the lame might have provoked its consideration of internal markets, management restructuring, expenditure limits on larger General Practices, and so forth . The structural problems of the NHS are taken seriously and the Tory response is rejected not because Tories are unpleasant people (which they may be) but because it would reinforce inequalities, externalise costs onto those who may be unable to afford such costs, prove to be administratively expensive and enhance bureaucrat (rather than patient) power . Labour's response, however, is criticised for its deep conservatism . The power of the medical profession is to be restored plus a few tried and tested failures (a Charter of Patients' Rights, userpanels, patient satisfaction surveys, etc) . A socialist strategy, for Petchey, must not only seek to reallocate resources towards the least healthy but also challenge the patientdoctor relationship which lies at the core of Western medical models . The World Health Organization's view of health as a positive state of physical and mental wellbeing (as opposed to simply the absence of illness) requires that the criteria with which we assess the institutions and practices of social life be fundamentally re-worked .

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In pursuit of this it may be that Charlie Leadbetter's contribution on 'Popular Social Ownership' tells us more about how to build a healthy society . A new social division of labour between intellectual and manual work is a necessary part of creating a healthy society . Indeed, I would argue that Petchey's focus on the knowledge gap between healthworkers and patients is misplaced . Professional expertise will continue to be desirable in various areas of health care . What is important is that the medical profession should not thereby secure control over the allocation of health resources and the development of a health-for-all strategy . It is important that specialism and expertise (both desirable from the point of view of efficiency) do not become a basis for protecting sectional interests and exercising power . On this subject Leadbetter arrives at some interesting conclusions . Leadbetter identifies the need to politicise the consumption of utilities, broaden the politics of production far beyond the constraints of just capital against labour and to include green and other issues, make producers more responsive to the requirements of child-care, education etc . upon which they depend, focus on micro-level deals over job security rather than national commitments to nationalisation and aggregate demand, and to develop new institutions and forms of politics capable of responding to the new problems and opportunities facing city-wide and regional economies . These conclusions are arrived at through some sweeping generalisations . Thus, Leadbetter unproblematically identifies a shift from Fordism to post-Fordism . In the former, nationalisation and Keynesianism 'synchronnised' with the requirements of a massproduction, mass-market economy . In the latter, corporate strategy has been brought closer to the consumer (sic), economic control has been internationalised, and the Thatcherite state has been recomposed into

a limited, authoritative and strategic organisation compatible with this brave new world . This is not the place to debate these views at length but a number of points must be stressed . First, it is in the nature of the separation of the political and economic spheres of capitalism that the degree of synchrony between them is always limited and in post-war Britain this was less sychronic than most ; second, developments in product ranges and niche-marketing have more to do with the old-fashioned pursuit of high value-added (made possible by new organisational and technological possibilities) than through any qualitatively new era ; and third, the alleged recomposition of the Thatcherite state has been a largely contradictory and messy affair which has been dramatically successful in some areas but a fiasco in others . The virtue of applying the term 'Fordism' to current events lies in the importance of the shift away from mass consumption and mass production . To use it more broadly is confusing at best and at worst it distracts attention from the things which the public sector can do best redistribution, planned investment and training strategies, maintaining safety and quality standards and so forth . Jim Tomlinson is properly concerned with what states can do . Starting with the internationalisation of the economy he considers the extent to which it any longer makes sense to talk of a national economic strategy. If the fundamental forces at work lie outside national governments' control, then how much real choice exists? His answer is that whilst modern Britain cannot realistically choose not to be a part of the global economy, it can make choices over the terms upon which it participates in that economy . Through intervention in training, investment and wage negotiation national policies can be evolved within which the sorts of micro-level policies outlined by Leadbetter could be applied . In this way,

Book reviews even if the aim was to attract multi-national investment, Britain could do so from a stronger position than merely offering low taxes, cheap and flexible workers, and access to the European market .

The furtherance of democratic socialism The extent to which the Policy Review furthers democratic socialism depends in part upon what is meant by that phrase . The implicit approach adopted by the Group and, albeit in different ways, by the contributors, is threefold . First, the satisfaction of human needs should lie at the heart of any socialist strategy . Whether the pursuit of this should include a universal basic income, as David Purdy suggests, or an improved welfare system plus a minimum wage, as Ruth Lister suggests, depends partly upon the time-scale envisaged and partly upon the relationship between income and work hoped for in a socialist society . Second, socialists must resist the fanciful assertions that the market is the source of choice and democracy for consumers . As Leadbetter rightly maintains, there are areas of activity which can be very usefully organised through market transactions, but there are whole aspects of social life where only the most unimaginative needs are catered for, the most impoverished demands encouraged and the fattest are fed . Socialism should be not only fairer than this but more joyful too . Third, democratic socialism involves the renewal of citizenship and democracy . Michael Rustin considers the constitutional implications, whilst citizenship is also raised in relation to welfare throughout the book and in relation to anti-racist strategies by John Gabriel . Rustin and Gabriel in particular are invigorating in their downplaying of tactical reasons for entrenching the rights of different social groups (although Rustin points out that tactics

move in the same direction as morality on this matter) . There is nowhere in this book a sense that the rights of social minorities would ever be irrelevant even in the finest socialist regime . Indeed, they would be even more important in such a society . If socialism involves a celebration of cultural diversity and distinctive forms of collective organisation, where does this leave individualism and individual freedom? For Rustin, 'there are limits to the credibility or desirability of an individualism of the Left' (p . 55), partly because opposition to capitalism's endless transformation of social life 'comes usually from particular communities and social selves' (p . 56), and partly because the institutions of the state have been 'legally hi-jacked' by the right and confronting these requires a broad-based alliance which trades unions alone cannot deliver . However, the protection of such group rights requires that individual rights in relation to both the state and the market be established and that diverse voices are not only tolerated, but positively encouraged within the state . And this means Proportional Representation . John Gabriel's main concern is with the implications of such arguments for the Labour Party's approach to racist practices within itself and how this relates to the new racism ('new racism' applies not to claims of racial superiority which nazism made unacceptable but to the equally insidious claim that races are just 'different' and cannot successfully share a common home) . Unless the Labour Party can draw upon those experiencing directly the adverse consequences of such racism it will find it hard to construct either an anti-racist alliance or the policies needed to combat racism . In addressing this issue in the conclusion, alongside the question of anti-sexist strategies, the Group emphasise that antidiscrimination strategies should aim to make themselves redundant but in the face

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186 of rampant and deepening inequalities, the Labour Party's hesitancy on these issues can too easily be seen as collusion . At the heart of this debate lies the relationship between socialism and class . It is not enough to note that the working class is not what it was . The working class, as a self-conscious fully constituted force has never been, in this sense, `what it was' . The claim to a privileged status for the working class has not been that it was somehow more morally deserving than other social groups . The claim focused on it as an agent of social transformation which its relationship to the productive process provided . The fact that the productive process now involves a far more complex social division of labour, that consumption patterns have recomposed cultural affinities, and that today workers experience even less of a shared culture (and more of an identical but privatised experience through the mass media), all complicate the building of socialism . Aggregating minorities can possibly open the way to electoral success, but it is not capable of transforming a capitalist society .

Winning power? A theme of this book is that if Labour are serious about electoral success, then they should adopt a critique of past errors under Labour alongside its rejection of Thatcherism . It is worth remembering that support for the Labour Party flowed away during the lifetime of the Wilson and Callaghan governments even more rapidly than during periods of opposition . The strategy of attacking Thatcher's policies is likely to produce a volatile electoral base, driven more by its opposition to Thatcherism than its support for Labour . Even if the purpose is to construct an anti-Thatcher majority (rather than a pro-socialist majority) this is a vulnerable strategy . This book not only

emphasises this but it also provides a basis from which positive policy discussions can be progressed . Constructing an anti-Thatcher majority may currently be the correct strategy . But it should not be equated with a socialist strategy unless it is clearly related to a theory of transition from capitalism to socialism and a consequential political programme . In this book there is a real sense of what democratic socialists should be struggling towards, and there is a direct engagement with the policy debate in Britain today . An important next stage in the debate must focus on the politics which lie between these two . We are offered interesting suggestions - top down and bottom up planning, decentralised decision-taking, democratised social institutions, a broader and enriched civil society . These are hard to argue with but sooner or later they all come up against the limits imposed by the veto power of capital . With what capacities and organisational strengths should such power be challenged? This book emphasises the role to be played by the collective energies of - different groups in the struggle for socialism . It also convinces this reader, at least, of the need to relate these issues to the class-based question of control over the productive process . The group is to be thanked for this important contribution and to be asked for a further volume - this time focusing on the transition to socialism .

Book reviews Nick Oliver and Barry Wilkinson The Japanisation of British Industry London: Basil Blackwell, 1988 ;E18 .95 ISBN : 0 631 160221 Reviewed by Juliet Webster The apparent Japanisation' of British industrial processes is currently the subject of much academic and managerial attention . It seems as though, as is the case with the study of 'flexibility', description is often fused with prescription and prediction . Indeed, as Oliver and Wilkinson themselves note, many of the writings on this subject have an almost evangelical flavour to them . The Japanisation of British Industry provides a welcome antidote to the hype . In it, Oliver and Wilkinson set out to unpack the concept of Japanisation, and to scrutinise the range of phenomena which it supposedly covers . Their aim is to assess its empirical applicability to British industry, and thereby to de-mythologise it . The term Japanisation' described two processes which are dealt with in the book : first, attempts by British companies to emulate Japanese production practices ; and second, the process and impact of Japanese direct investment in Britain . The recurring theme in the book is that Japanese industrial practices cannot be reduced to merely a set of production management techniques which operate in isolation from the rest of a company's activities : Japanization is not simply a matter of implementing total quality control and justin-time (JIT) production processes - it entails the adoption of particular work practices and personnel and industrial relations systems as well (p. 4) . Oliver and Wilkinson make it clear to us that Japanese industrial practices in fact extend far beyond the factory gates, in that they crucially rely upon a whole set of

sporting social, political and legal institutions which, as a package, bring out Japan's particular industrial competitiveness . In their introductory chapter, Oliver and Wilkinson explore the full range and origins of these phenomena, from manufacturing techniques such as total quality control ('rQc), just-in-time (JtT) production, statistical process control and group technology, to personnel practices including lifetime employment contracts, companybased welfare schemes, enterprise unions and the subcontracting of labour . Outside the plant, they describe the interdependence and reciprocal obligation that also characterises relationships between buyer and supplier companies in Japan, and they go on to show the vital role played by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in providing government support for and thus shoring up long-term industrial policy . When one also considers the role of Japanese banks in offering long-term credit and preferential treatment to companies, and the general long-term horizons used by the financial and industrial institutions in Japan, and it becomes clear that there is a very particular and complex web of practices and institutions contributing to the overall climate within which Japanese companies work . The clarification of the relationship between the different elements of the Japanese 'package' is critical to the usefulness of the concept . (Others, such as 'flexibility', which refers to an array of different phenomena, are so muddled that any explanatory value is severely restricted .) . The author's main task is to assess the extent to which such Japanese practices, the essence of which is relationships of high dependency (pace Galbraith, Pfeffer and Marchington) between the different institutions and practitioners, are actually being taken up in British Industry . Interestingly, they draw our attention to the fact that some techniques, such as total quality control,

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188 actually originated in the West and were exported to Japan in the 1950s, where they claim it is less significant than is often assumed . The 'Japanese-ness' of some techniques therefore seems questionable . Through case studies, Oliver and Wilkinson examine the industrial practices of six companies, five of whom are in the automotive sector and two of whom are Japanese companies operating in Britain . They also consider survey data from a wider sample of corporations in order to critically evaluate the use of Japanese-style manufacturing and personnel practices . While they find clear evidence of a shift in this direction, they make a number of qualifications to their findings . First, some Western corporations (e .g . IBM) have been successfully operating such practices for many years, so this is by no means a recent shift, nor is it exclusively Japanese . Second, some companies display significant problems in successfully adopting and operating certain methods : Oliver and Wilkinson point to the failure of zone briefings and circles at BL and the inability of Rover to secure the long-term loyalty of its workforce, and they comment on the fact that JIT and quality circles do not enjoy a high degree of success among their survey companies . Oliver and Wilkinson suggest that the reason for the relative failure of these techniques in Britain lies in the fact that many companies only adopt elements of particular techniques, making changes in a piecemeal fashion and modifying existing patterns of work organisation . In particular, they argue that companies seem to think it sufficient to implement the manufacturing elements of Japanese techniques, but not the personnel practices which are ideally associated with them . Thus, a company may introduce quality circles, but fail to secure the employee loyalty necessary to operate them properly through guarantees of lifelong job security . In all, they note a lack of associ-

ation between Japanese manufacturing and personnel practices in Britain ; British companies attempting to emulate the Japanese do not seem to regard these different componnents of industrial practice as an integral strategy in the same sense that the Japanese themselves do . They conclude that while the Japanisation of British industry will proceed, it will be at the expense of Britishowned companies . This is a particularly thorough exposition of Japanese industrial methods, and all the more valuable because it appears amidst a plethora of literature which seems to advocate the unquestioning and mechanical adoption of these methods . It is not always clear what Oliver and Wilkinson's own view is of such developments . For example, though they refer to Turnbull's dismissal of Japanese methods as merely new work intensification techniques, new enhancements of Fordism, and describe a very strongly repressive and controlled labour process within Nissan and Komatsu, they do not accept that these techniques can be so easily written off within the old Taylorist/ Fordist framework . Given that they do suggest that we are witnessing radical transformations in industrial practice, it would be interesting to know what their opinion of such transformations is and whether they are in fact critical of these .

Book reviews

The Oxford University Socialist Discussion Group Out of Apathy : Voices of the New Left 30 Years On Verso : London, 1989, £24 .95 hb £8 .95 pb . ISBN 0 86091 945 5 Reviewed by Richard Bellamy Out of Apathy is an ambiguous phrase . On the one hand it suggests an escape from apathy into activism . This was clearly the sense intended by E . P . Thompson when he coined the phrase in 1960 . On the other hand, however, it conveys a suggestion that something has been done from a feeling of apathy or in an apathetic manner . Regrettably, this is often the meaning conveyed by the essays in this volume . Thompson and the other protagonists of the New Left detected the roots of apathy in two forms of socialism they sought to reject : Stalinism and social democracy . They claimed that the first encouraged apathy by treating human history in a somewhat mechanistic fashion as being predetermined by necessary changes in the economic substructure . The second produced a similar effect by placing the bureaucratic expert above the ordinary citizen and by regarding political choices as constrained by certain technical and prudential 'realities' . In their place, the New Left advocated a socialist 'humanism which gave greater priority to the role of human agency in the making of the new future . This volume collects together the current reflections on this project of a variety of former members of the New Left such as Stuart Hall, Raphael Samuel and Charles Taylor . The most interesting pieces are the historical or anecdotal accounts of New Left attitudes to the Cold War, economic policy, and women . Their views on the present make for more depressing reading . As the contributors freely admit, the group never

succeeded in turning theory into practice 189 and becoming a social and political movement . Increasingly, as the biographies of the contributors testify, it became a school of thought within academia . In this respect, E . P . Thompson is conspicuous by his absence . The brief profiles of the international group of Oxford postgraduate students who organised the conference from which the book originates tells a similar story at a more banal level : from member of the university South Africa disinvestment campaign to writing a dissertation on the moral philosophy of Kent is a typical entry . Theic are of course a number of contingent practical reasons which might explain the New Left's failure to gain a popular following . At a theoretical level, however, an answer lies to hand in the virtual abandonment by most of them of socialism for humanism . Charles Taylor spells this out explicitly in his contribution where he calls for the abandonment of Marxism . The editors describe this somewhat oddly as 'provocative' . I would have thought that in the present climate only a defence of the socialist ideal in Marxist terms could be called that . By ignoring the social and economic determinants of human action the group lost the explicitly socialist aspect of their message and its relevance for people still caught in a repressive system . Taylor rejects such accounts as leading to apathy or worse . However, the danger of his humanist thesis is that it can be used to justify the Smilsean ethos of the self-made capitalist with its suggestion that those who fail to make it simply lack the will power or character to 'get on their bikes' - hardly a message to rally the forces of opposition to Thatcherism . The marriage of humanism and socialism is incoherent, as the retreat of most of the group into liberal platitudes amply demonstrates .

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Colin Leys Politics in Britain London, Verso, 1989 £9 .95 pp . 400, ISBN : 0 86091 954 4 Reviewed by : John Newsinger When Colin Leys' Politics in Britain was first published in 1983 it was generally welcomed on the left, and looking at the new 1989 edition it is not hard to see why . Leys is quite explicit about his intention to break away from prevailing conceptions of the study of politics as being concerned with the activities of important people and the celebration of British institutions . Instead, he interprets British politics as 'the contemporary struggles of the British people as a whole to determine their historical fate' and argues that the purpose of studying politics is to be able to play a more effective part in those struggles . The central theme of the book is his discussion of the nature of the British Crisis, a discussion which tries to combine the economic-historical analysis of Hobsbawm with the sociological, political and cultural analyses of Anderson and Nairn . However commendable his sentiments, and however enlightening much of his analysis of domestic politics, unfortunately the work is deeply and fundamentally flawed . What he presents as a Marxist account of the British Crisis completely ignores the fact that the British State was an Empire State and that

foreign, colonial and military policies were essential aspects of its functioning, activities that were necessary for its continued survival . That the British State has this century waged two World Wars and innumerable small wars is not something peripheral but something central to its history . How serious a problem is Leys' myopia? Let us briefly consider his analysis of British politics since 1945 . How seriously can one take an account that does not even mention the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and that is altogether innocent of any discussion of the Cold War? The loss of the Empire, probably the most important development in the history of the British State this century, gets a perfunctory mention . Not only does this involve presenting an inadequate and misleading account of the British State, it also completely ignores the context within which postwar domestic politics have been situated . The result is that however radical Leys' intentions might be, his achievement is very much contained within the ideological parameters of social democracy . Is Leys' myopia a mere oversight or is it grounded in his theoretical stance? Essentially, Leys rejects the traditional Marxist view of the capitalist state as an institution to be smashed through revolutionary struggle and instead accepts that it is itself the site of struggle, that it can be used against capitalism . Indeed, there is no such thing as the capitalist state, there are only the states of particular capitalist societies, each the product of highly specific historical struggles . His concern is to try and understand British politics and the British State in terms of their distinctive historical development . The trouble with this approach is that while it might have a certain amount to say about the class struggle in Britain and its consequences for the development of the British State, it completely neglects the

Book reviews

international dimension . Leys writes as if the world was made up of a series of distinct, self-contained capitalist states developing in isolation from each other, formed primarily by domestic class struggle, and interacting only at the level of international trade, a kind of super economism . In this sense, despite his liberal use of Gramscian phraseology, Leys approach can quite legitimately be seen as falling into the Kautskyite tradition as opposed to the rival Leninist tradition with its focus on Imperialism, War and Revolution . While a Leninist approach would certainly not neglect the role of domestic class struggle in the development of the capitalist state, it would also emphasise the role of 'rivalry in conquest', of 'predatory war . . . for the domination of the world .' This is not just a question of abstract theorising . In Lenin's day it involved confronting the terrible reality of the First World War and its implications for the Marxist understanding of the international capitalist system and of the capitalist state . Today such an analysis would have to confront the implications of NATO, colonial warfare, nuclear deterrence and the Cold War . Leys refuses this challenge . There is one important consequence of this refusal that is worth noticing . If the focus is on the role of the state in managing domestic class relations then it is clear that as far as British is concerned the Leninist view of the state as consisting of 'special bodies of armed men', that is, of the armed forces and the police is outmoded, anachronistic . The use of large-scale force to police class relations has only been a very occasional feature of British domestic politics . The military have not (so far) been called upon to play an active interventionist role . A domestic focus consequently leads to the British State being seen as primarily concerned with welfare, economic management, and ideological containment, as being concerned with hegemony . Indeed

this comes to be seen as its only concern 191 with other matters becoming peripheral, extraneous, being effectively excluded from the analysis . Of course, as Leys acknowledges, the means of repression are kept available in case of emergencies, but domestically coercion has only ever been necessary within strict limits. Even the great miners strike of 1984-5 which saw unprecedented police and judicial action still did not involve the banning of the union, the detention of its leaders or the shooting down of its rank and file - all of which the British State has done in various of its colonies at different times . In Britain itself, however, the emphasis is clearly on hegemony . This view obviously lends itself to reformist conclusions . Once this hegemony has been overthrown then the British State, suitably reformed, can be used to help carry forward the process of socialist transformation . There are immense obstacles in the way, but it is not impossible . If, however, we consider the British State's external history then the situation looks very different, and the concerns of Leninism suddenly seem more relevant . Indeed when one considers British foreign, colonial and military policies it becomes clear that the British State has this century had regular occasion to manifest itself as 'special bodies of armed men', both to repress opposition within the Empire and to defend the Empire against rival Imperialist states . It is only by altogether ignoring this dimension of the British State that Leys can so confidently hold his particular view as to its nature and potentialities . There is not the space here to elaborate an alternative history of the British State although a number of phases in its recent career do suggest themselves : Liberal preparrations for war pre-1914, the First World War, Britain's crucial part in containing the post-war revolutionary wave (Russia, Ireland, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt), the unsuc-

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cessful attempt at avoiding a new World War, the Second World War, the Cold War and Britain's attempt to maintain its great power status, the loss of the Empire and the acceptance of American primacy . With the end of the Cold War and America's relative decline we have obviously entered upon a new phase . If we cannot explore this schema let us look instead in a little more detail at one period that Leys considers of some importance, the period of the 1945-51 Labour Governments . Leys discusses this administration entirely in terms of welfare, nationalisation and economic management . What does he ignore? He does not discuss the Labour Government's part in restoring colonial rule in Vietnam or Indonesia . Its unsuccessful attempt to transform Britain's formal empire in India, Burma and Ceylon into an informal empire is ignored, as is its strengthening of Britain's hold over other colonial possessions such as Kenya and Malaya where nationalist and communist movements were repressed. While the Labour Government might well have had a close relationship with the TUC at home, in Malaya the PMFTU was banned and its President hanged for possessing a firearm and in Kenya the EATUC was banned and its general-secretary placed in detention where he remained for over a decade . He does not discuss the Government's very revealing response to Iranian nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company . Direct military intervention a la Suez was seriously considered only to be rejected in favour of a covert sis operation to overthrow the Mussadiq government . What of the Cold War? This surely provides the context for British post-war politics : the manichaean struggle between Communist Totalitarianism and Western Democracy has been the ideological foundation upon which post-war hegemony was built . The Labour Government was instrumental in establishing the NATO alliance, allowed the

establishment of permanent us military bases in Britain, introduced conscription in peacetime, established a permanent British military presence on the Continent, and provided Britain with nuclear weapons, with the British Bomb . These are hardly minor developments. Moreover, the Government waged the Cold War with considerable determination, witness the spectacle of Aneurin Bevan arguing in Cabinet for tanks to be used to break the Berlin Blockade . Covert operations were carried out in the Baltic States and in the Ukraine, and a serious attempt was made to mount a guerrilla insurgency against the Communist regime in Albania . Then in 1950 British forces were sent to fight alongside the Americans in Korea, taking part in one of the most terrible of post- 1945 conflicts . At the same time, the Labour Government introduced a massive rearmament programme that arguably played a major part in their loss of office. All in all, the British State played a significant part in reshaping the world into its Cold War bi-polar form and was itself changed in the process . Major developments took place, but Leys' account does not so much as notice them let alone discuss their significance . Moreover, although he goes out of his way to identify himself with the struggles of the British people, his failure to acknowledge that the British State is an Imperialist State leads to an unfortunate failure to identify with the struggles of other peoples against it . His silence on this question is reflected in his underestimation of the importance of racism and racist discourse as a factor in contemporary British society and politics . This is not, let me hasten to add, to suggest that Leys is anything other than an anti-Imperialist, but rather that this commitment does not inform Politics in Britain . The purpose or our brief rehearsal of the Labour Government's achievements is not to

Book reviews

expose its 'crimes against socialism' or even to suggest that alternative policies were possible . On the contrary, the actions of the Labour Government were, by and large, determined by the very nature of the British State and of the international system of which it was part . What it does serve to demonstrate is the inadequacy of Leys' discussion . The shallowness of his critique is shown yet again in his discussion of the Conservative Governments of the 1950s and early 1960s . Here he makes the conventional criticism of their maintenance of an independent nuclear deterrent and of an East of Suez military presence as so much posturing . The fact that these particular Tory peccadilloes were among the achievements of the previous Labour Government is overlooked . What he does not criticise is their continued membership Of NATO, indeed he does not even mention it! This is something taken for granted, assumed, more of a natural phenommenon than a political fact of fundamental importance . If this is not an instance of the ideological hegemony of the British State at work, then what is? One last point : Leys does briefly discuss the British military, but in terms of the class background of the officer corps rather than in terms of what they actually do . This sociological approach substitutes for a serious political critique . Put simply, which is more important, the fact that Bernard Montgomery was the son of a bishop or that he served on the Western Front in the First World War, in Ireland during the War of Independence, in Palestine during the great Arab revolt of 1936-9, commanded the 8th Army in North Africa and Italy, the 21st Army Group in Western Europe, was Chief of the Imperial General Staff under the 1945-51 Labour Government and lastly was Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO? Or for a more recent example, let us take Frank Kitson . Is it more significant that he is the son of an admiral or that he was involved in

counter-insurgency campaigns in Kenya, Malaya, the Oman and Ulster, before going on to command the 2nd Armoured Division with the British Army on the Rhine and later become Commander-in-Chief UK Land Forces? Which tells us more about the British State? The answer is obvious, but Leys' approach is incapable of finding it . What he has done is, in effect, to describe a tiger without mentioning its teeth and claws . This is not only inaccurate, but politically dangerous .

Socialist Register 1989 Revolution Today : Aspirations and Realities The Merlin Press E16 .50 & £7 .95 ISBN : 0226 301 082 Reviewed by Walter Gibson Contributors to the 1989 Register were given a somewhat abstract theme, Revolution as an idea and reality in today's world . By the end of 1989, having commissioned such a collection of essays appears as something of a coup by the Editors . They have made a clear attempt to cover major areas of revolutionary concern and experience over the 1980s, (the status of the Iranian Revolution

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and its meaning (V . Moghadham) the emergence of Liberation Theology (L . Littwin), the contribution of feminism (J . Brenner) as well as addressing a classical focus on struggles now covering several decades . The Writers have responded in widely differing ways, ranging from concrete analysis of experience where the authors have particular expertise (J . Saul on S . Africa, D . Mandel on Soviet reform) through reflections on problematic obstacles emerging from counter revolutionary strategies (C . Vilas on Cuba, T . Benn on limits to Parliamentary achievements) to considerations of a more theoretical nature (N . Geras on the need for ethical and legalistic considerations in socialist strategy, V . Kiernan seeking a rehabilitation from necessity of the revolutionary project itself. ) With the new year a book which allows us to consider the issues of Revolutionary aspirations in the face of the explosive hastening of popular mobilisations and counter revolutionary attacks, events not just in Eastern Europe but particularly in El Salvador, Panama, China, and S . Africa is an important asset . The virtue of its range and the shortness of the contributions should provide a maximum storming of a kind which the detail of daily involvement prevents . But this is an expectation the book largely fails to fulfil . The contributions are worthy but rarely imaginative . The events of the later part of the year makes academic caution appear as weak analysis . The possibilities of change, so clearly demonstrated, make the overall defensiveness seem an almost conservative attachment to a surface empiricism . E . Mandel furnishes one of the few articles which is not apologetic or which defines its task as overcoming failure . It is not of course the job of academics to furnish agitprop, nor do they operate in a revolutionary environment . Nevertheless an emphasis on

failure makes the studies somewhat static, blinding them to the progressive and positive movements which can be seen emerging in response to reaction . One example is the approach to the revolutionary situation in El Salvador by C . Vilas : 'Latin American revolutionary thought has not confronted the problem of how to integrate institutional political democracy with the problematic of socioeconomic transformation and non-electoral forms of popular participation .' ' . . . The revolutionary struggle is relatively stagnant . . . none of these movements has escaped the deterioration that is the inevitable cost of any struggle that continues over a period of decades .' Compare this with the assessment of the General Command of the FMLN : The FMLN does not have to incorporate itself into the life of the nation . It is already a force, it is already there, a part of the nation ." If we then look at the offensive, it seems possible to agree that despite the long term difficulties imposed by the imperialists, 'The FMLN in only 24 hours cracked the strategic defence system designed by the army high command and their us advisors . . . (troops) were useless in the face of multiple directions of attack and more than 50 "insurgent foci" . . .' 2 Far from the movement being unable to confront electoral reform or reach a strategy for transformation, it is the imperialist forces which are unable to permit a legalisation of its political-military apparatus allowing it to ' . . . dedicate itself to political struggle . . . which would generate a movement towards reconstruction such as has never been seen in this country ." It is also surely too timid to contend that the Sandinista Revolution cannot be judged successful in this area . Its imagination and achievements may be largely destroyed, but by acts of war, not ideological failure . A misplaced frustration with all Latin

Book reviews American armed struggle leads Vilas to draw out and come to terms with parliamentary counter-revolutionary strategies . However, this obscures a clear requirement to give full support for the armed struggle to create such space . Although other authors are more cautious in perceiving failure by radicals in armed and parliamentary struggle (J . Saul raises the apparent pathology of frustration in S . Africa) and tend at least to finish on an upbeat note, the supposed coming to an end of a certain road is something of a theme to the book . Although there is rhetoric and traditional examination of capitalist non achievements there is little sense of developing trends which are progressive and not marginal . This is not an approach which illuminates recent forms of radical action and class consciousness in national situations, (feminist and autonomia organizzata) and although Internationalism is directly addressed by Lowy, E . Mandel and Brenner it is not incorporated or is treated defensively in single country studies . Traditional forms of organisation are held to be in decline and the joining of feminism, new organisations and groups to the working class is portrayed as a growth in richness that is not much more than a reflection of marginalisation . This timidity before reaction becomes a highly tendentious observational approach . Both L . Panitch and V . Kiernan go a considerable distance in abandoning the notion of a working class becoming progressive and developing socialism through experience altogether. The assertion that trade unions are not of themselves schools for socialism becomes something of a trojan horse for locating the struggle out of the hands of that class . The experience of shop stewards and millions of workers who have developed class consciousness and been drawn into activism in the course of conventional trade union work

militates against accepting that ' . . . Associ- 195 ation for the purpose of collective bargaining is just that . . .' . The preparation and experience of working-class organisations retains too great an importance to be rejected because they have not always created of themselves a revolutionary situation or contain contradictions . In a number of contributions the alternative that seems to be on offer is reformism combined with building a hegemonic party apparently to be led by academics . In Geras's case this is guided by an ethics of Liberal Rights theory, verified by reference to personal opinion . For Kiernan it is one which will have to do without the brutish English working class who have found ' . . . the land of sunshine . . . on the Costa del Sol .' But will await the participation of a . . . far more alert and intelligent (class) than we have today .' The somewhat tired aspects of some contributions are relieved by some careful and thoughtful writing, J . Saul and S . Landau's in particular (although he perhaps ascribes too much responsibility for the Revolution to Castro . Despite his dominance the Revolution could well have taken similar paths even without him given its context, but perhaps not gone so deep or for so long .) Elsewhere, however, there seems to be a curious retreat from much revolutionary praxis, which appears as a little slack . Several contributors (Panitch Moghadham, Kiernan) produce a critique on aspects of classic Marxism focusing on the rallying cry of the Communist Manifesto rather than referring to more theoretical works such as Capital, consequently reaching a crude view of the dialectic method . Geras' criticism of Trotsky's morals and Panitch's comments on the supposed 'inevitability' of victory in The Manifesto fail properly to approach the role of 'necessity' in communist praxis . It is not possible to divorce the Manifesto

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or 'Their Morals and Ours' from their specific historical situation . They seek not just to approach the correct theoretical viewpoint but to ground themselves in practice . Marxism is based on the class struggle of human beings and relies on historic action by them ; nothing is therefore absolutely predetermined . The Manifesto is intended to have a role in the becoming of praxis . Its underlying drive is revolutionary anger at the situation of people which has produced the communist response ; it is critique, prescription and action . Such a quality of engagement is largely lacking in this collection . In 'Their Morals and Ours' Trotsky is not extolling the virtues of Red Terror in itself, but deriding the abstraction of bourgeois norms that had no validity or expression in the Civil War, as they do not in the genocide practised against the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador . Against Geras's abstract universal morals, Trotsky, who we are told must be rejected, writes : 'Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, . . . which unite the revolutionary proletariat . . . imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission . . . the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against another, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation . . .' 3 It is by following such advice that Cuban revolutionaries and the FMLN have attained such success and maintained such humanity against attack . Their quite different practise from that of the 20s is not worse or better Marxism or abstract morality but a process of development in a different situation with a corresponding difference in practice . Much of the angst over revolutionary prospects in this book seem to be based on an individual loss of confidence . To quote Trotsky again ; 'During an epoch of triumphant reaction . . . representatives of the "Left" camp begin to exude double their usual

amount of moral effluvia . . . the political base (of which is) their impotence and confusion in the face of approaching reaction .'3 This is certainly a reflection of the floundering of socialist parties and bureaucratic planning in Europe . It does often seem however that the failure discussed is one as much of the social democratic project as of a real decline in revolutionary prospects . Revolutionary movements are perhaps less struggling with a difficulty in dealing with the demands placed by democratic openings than they are by death squads . Also: where in this volume is the study of the growing collapse of the strategy of Liberal Democracy in a parliamentary system? The paucity of democracy and the crisis in legitimation within capitalist countries is now very near to the surface and forms of resistance are developing in wide and new ways . Of Revolution Today we are rarely provided with new insights . Events in the 'socalled Socialist countries' have largely overtaken E . Handel's prognosis . D . Mandel's study of reform in Soviet Factories examines the extent to which workplace democracy is of interest to workers within a limited democratic space ; emphasising anew that alienation is not overcome by state ownership . Perhaps developments in these countries and internationally since the Register was written may yet produce new forms of practice capable of restoring not just revolutionary aspirations, but a more convincing expression of their desirability from self-professed admirers of the Revolution .

Notes 1 . Eduardo Sancho, member of the general command of the FMLN, Barricada International december 23 1989 . 2 . El Salvador Solidarity Campaign, 20-21 Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN . 3 . T heir Morals and Ours', Leon Trotsky, 1938.

Book reviews

Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn The Fate of the Forest : Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon Verso, London, 1989, 236 pages ; hb . £16 .95, ISBN : 0-86091-261-2 Reviewed by Ania Grobicki The fate of the forest depends on the people of the forest, more than it does on national and international policy-making . That is the central message of this outstanding book, which succeeds in combining layers of history, biology, adventure and storytelling with scientific observation and political analysis . The Amazon forest is a complex subject, and as such it deserves a complex book ; one of the myths about the Amazon that is confronted head-on by the authors is the idea of an 'ur-forest . . . unchanged until the axe and firebrand of modern times' . This myth promotes a 'catastrophist attitude to any form of human intervention', the policy consequences of which are the formation of national parks or reserves from which the local population is expelled and excluded . The Amazon described by Hecht and Cockburn is an historical entity - a living forest - containing an enormous number of plant and animal species, which have been subject to floods, wildfire and human intervention for thousands of years . The current extent of destruction and deforestation is unprecedented, however, and the blame for

this is placed squarely on the 'development' 197 of the Amazon, designed as a vast strategic plan by the generals who took power in Brazil in the 1964 military coup . The authors examine many of the individual causes of the destruction which have been identified by other writers, and conclude that they each contribute at most a partial explanation . The activities of international firms, and the intrusion of international markets ('the hamburger connection') are rejected as the main culprits, since deforestation is largely the activity of Brazilian capitalists, and the Amazon is in fact a net beef importer. Population pressure, particularly migration of landless peasants from the northeast of Brazil, has had little impact on the forest itself. Brazil's debt crisis and the pressure to export has only an indirect link to deforestation . But bad planning and policy-making, 'inappropriate technology', and the wrong subsidies, such as subsidised credit for cattle-farming, all had some role to play . The opening of the Belem-Brasilia highway, completed in 1960, inaugurated the first land boom . Soaring land prices were accompanied by violence, deforestation and the displacement of the local population, since clearing the forest was the most effective claim on the land . The generals' 'Operation Amazonia' greatly extended the infrastructure . With the help of millions of dollars from the World Bank, the development of the Amazon continued, using cheap credit, 100% tax rebates, free trade zones and incentives for industry and livestock projects, mining and smelting to create growth poles . 'Big Projects' (e .g . dams, monoculture) were especially favoured . By 1980 the generals' grip on Brazil was under threat because of the economic crisis, with high inflation, foreign debt and labour unrest . Their response was a programme of agrarian reform, which in turn prompted landowners to step up their continuing orgy of burning

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and deforestation, to protect their land claims from expropriation . The momentum of destruction has not slackened under the civilian government of Jose Sarney . The defenders of the forest (in the book's title) are the groups which have come together to form the Forest People's Alliance, largely made up of rubber tappers and Indians . They demand the establishment of extractive reserves to protect the forest and their own livelihoods . Their other demands include land rights, an end to debt peonage, local control of health and education, public investment in the processing of forest products, provision of financial credits to producers, the formation of co-operatives, and justice and legal protection against the onslaughts of the big land-owners . The violence of the response to these demands shows the depth of the conflict over the land : the land-owners' organisation, the UDR, sees the idea of extractive reserves as 'an attack on private property and hence capitalism' . In 1987 the Minister for Agrarian Reform, who backed the legislation allowing the formation of extractive reserves, was killed in mysterious circumstances . Since 1985 there have been over 1000 murders of labour leaders (of whom Chico Mendes was the best known), rural workers, church outreach workers, lawyers and teachers in the Amazon, of which less than 10 have been brought to trial . The role of the Catholic Church has been instrumental in providing an organisational base for the formation of the Forest People's Alliance and cataloguing human rights offences . The rubber tappers have a long history of struggle for control over their labour process, which perhaps explains how they have come to lead what Hecht and Cockburn describe as nothing less than a movement for the restructuring of the relations of production in the Amazon . The authors call this package of demands 'socialist ecology', which seems a rather lame label for what is

a vibrant exercise in (tree-roots) democracy and a socialist use of resources . In January 1990 President Jose Sarney approved a decree setting aside 2000 square miles in the Jurua Valley as Brazil's first extractive reserve (The Guardian, 26/1/90) . However, as Hecht and Cockburn point out, extractive reserves are vulnerable to sabotage by planners and to incursions by powerful groups ; the economics of extraction need to be studied thoroughly and improved, and social services provided so that this reserve and the ones yet to be established do not become ghettos . The destruction of the forest is mirrored in the violence against the people of the Amazon . This is the reality that needs to be put in the balance against Western concern for the greenhouse effect, against calls for the establishment of national parks, for the 'internationalising' of the Amazon, or 'debtfor-nature' swaps . Fortunately, the Forest People's Alliance have now succeeded in making their demands heard through the international media and multilateral development agencies . Many Western botanists and ecologists have become aware of the need to learn from the local people of the Amazon regarding the uses of plants for medicinal and other purposes, although Susanna Hecht is still very scathing of the attitudes of many of her fellow environmentalists : 'Many environmentalists are more concerned about trees than people . In fact, they see humans as essentially the problem ." In presenting the Amazon as historically shaped by human intervention, this book goes a long way towards challenging the myths that still prevail in the West about the virgin forest . Deforestation results from human conflicts over the use of land, and cannot be solved by simplistic, topdown policy making which attempts to depopulate the whole area. The only difficulty which I have with Hecht and Cockburn's book is that it starts

Book reviews off from, and hence inherently prioritises, the perspective of the 'developers', and more generally the North American and European experience and understanding of the Amazon . The story of the 'defenders' is compressed into the closing chapters and back pages of the book ; for instance, the appendices contain transcripts of interviews with (local) representatives of the Indians and the rubber tappers, which are very powerful and moving in their articulacy . The recent Latin American Bureau book 'Fight for the forest : Chico Mendes in his own words' gives a more detailed view of the struggles in the Amazon from the rubber tappei s perspective . 2 The Indians' long history in the Amazon, their often violent and tragic contacts with people from outside the forest, their knowledge and use of forest resources : all these deserve more than a few scattered pages . Perhaps that is another book that has yet to be written .

Notes 1 . Interview with Kim Hendry, Marxism Today, January 1990 . 2 . Chico Mendes, 'Fight for the forest', additional material by Tony Gross, Latin American Bureau, London, 1989 .

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