McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle
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Title : McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle
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You are now reading the article McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/09/mcdonnellnomics-and-class-struggle.html
Title : McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle
link : McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle
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Expropriating the expropriators wasn't a line I was expecting to come out of Labour conference, and it hasn't. Nevertheless John McDonnell's plan to hand workers 10% of the company they work for is entirely welcome. As he's pointed out in the round of interviews done this morning, it would encourage longer term thinking among (big) business, squeeze the imperative to maximise share holder value, give workers an income boost and ensure the state benefits from the productivity and profit gains by capping payments at £500 and returning the surplus to the Treasury. It might upset the FT and give the Tories the night terrors, but it has been universally welcomed across the party - Wes Streeting, for instance, was effusive in his praise.
As John has repeatedly pointed out, this is only radical in the context of British politics. Workers on boards, investment banks, key sector nationalisations and workers owning equity are commonplace in Western Europe. Germany remains the model, for instance. However, how does this help along the class struggle and enhance the position of our class beyond an extra 500 nicker in the pocket? Indeed, there is a subset of the left who are opposed to policies that introduce workers ownership and control this side of the socialist dawn because it supposes and encourages an identity of interests where there is none.
This implies an impoverished , zero sum and mechanical conception of class struggle whereas, in fact, we should see it as productive. What does this mean? To maintain its survival, the state as a capitalist state is compelled to maintain the class relationships underpinning it. Central to this is making sure there are a body of workers available to be subjected to wage labour, and there are innumerable strategies pursued by large numbers of institutions to make sure this is the case. But workers aren't drones. People who have to sell their labour power in return for a wage or salary aren't born that way, they're made. They - we - are continuously made. Proletarianisation is a process we are subjected to from birth and continues right through all the jobs and careers we do to the point we finally leave the workforce. It is (mostly) top down, and should properly be understood as force. But it is never complete. Proletarianisation always meets resistance, both of the individual and collective kind. It can be petty, like refusing to wear a compulsory lanyard or taking one's time in the loo, and it can be existential - like mobilising for an all-out strike. The point is capital confronts its employees as a tyrant stands above a free people and employs all manner of techniques to ensure compliance and acceptance. Resistance can be futile, but it is always inevitable.
Because proletarianisation is a process that begets resistance, its possibility proliferates with every new initiative and strategy that comes along. Of course, not all possibilities become opportunities, but what the McDonnellnomics programme promises are significant because they potentially amplify class struggle. On its own, the 10% stake puts into question capital's sovereignty over economic life by giving workers more of a stake, and where share ownership churns at a much higher rate than employees in and out the door it positions workers as the proper custodians of economic activity. It challenges the legitimacy of capital as an owner and of management as its custodian. Small wonder the CBI aren't happy - they instinctively know its against their class interests. However, it is only a potential. Strengthening workers at the point of production can be incorporated into the system. Capital can live with more worker involvement as, again, Germany and elsewhere testifies. It wasn't that long ago Britain chugged along with powerful trade unions who exercised their collective strength successfully against capital either. Our job is to make sure this is not the finished article but to push for more. Why 10% and not 20%, why not even higher? Likewise taken in conjunction with John's package of announcements, these would no doubt go some way to addressing the deep structural problems of British capitalism. And yes, it will make not a few business people and assorted Tories slick with fear, but in and of themselves they're not enough. A nicer capitalism it would undoubtedly be, but more importantly it gives us new conquests to defend and launch pads for further gains.
The right response to Labour's new economic plans isn't to tut, wag your finger and snottily decry it as not real socialism. It's to recognise it as something that is immediately tangible and realisable from our low point in the balance of power between capital and labour. It is to accept it as a set of measures that are productive of more possibilities of class struggle from a more advantageous position. And I'm sure this isn't something lost on John McDonnell himself.
As John has repeatedly pointed out, this is only radical in the context of British politics. Workers on boards, investment banks, key sector nationalisations and workers owning equity are commonplace in Western Europe. Germany remains the model, for instance. However, how does this help along the class struggle and enhance the position of our class beyond an extra 500 nicker in the pocket? Indeed, there is a subset of the left who are opposed to policies that introduce workers ownership and control this side of the socialist dawn because it supposes and encourages an identity of interests where there is none.
This implies an impoverished , zero sum and mechanical conception of class struggle whereas, in fact, we should see it as productive. What does this mean? To maintain its survival, the state as a capitalist state is compelled to maintain the class relationships underpinning it. Central to this is making sure there are a body of workers available to be subjected to wage labour, and there are innumerable strategies pursued by large numbers of institutions to make sure this is the case. But workers aren't drones. People who have to sell their labour power in return for a wage or salary aren't born that way, they're made. They - we - are continuously made. Proletarianisation is a process we are subjected to from birth and continues right through all the jobs and careers we do to the point we finally leave the workforce. It is (mostly) top down, and should properly be understood as force. But it is never complete. Proletarianisation always meets resistance, both of the individual and collective kind. It can be petty, like refusing to wear a compulsory lanyard or taking one's time in the loo, and it can be existential - like mobilising for an all-out strike. The point is capital confronts its employees as a tyrant stands above a free people and employs all manner of techniques to ensure compliance and acceptance. Resistance can be futile, but it is always inevitable.
Because proletarianisation is a process that begets resistance, its possibility proliferates with every new initiative and strategy that comes along. Of course, not all possibilities become opportunities, but what the McDonnellnomics programme promises are significant because they potentially amplify class struggle. On its own, the 10% stake puts into question capital's sovereignty over economic life by giving workers more of a stake, and where share ownership churns at a much higher rate than employees in and out the door it positions workers as the proper custodians of economic activity. It challenges the legitimacy of capital as an owner and of management as its custodian. Small wonder the CBI aren't happy - they instinctively know its against their class interests. However, it is only a potential. Strengthening workers at the point of production can be incorporated into the system. Capital can live with more worker involvement as, again, Germany and elsewhere testifies. It wasn't that long ago Britain chugged along with powerful trade unions who exercised their collective strength successfully against capital either. Our job is to make sure this is not the finished article but to push for more. Why 10% and not 20%, why not even higher? Likewise taken in conjunction with John's package of announcements, these would no doubt go some way to addressing the deep structural problems of British capitalism. And yes, it will make not a few business people and assorted Tories slick with fear, but in and of themselves they're not enough. A nicer capitalism it would undoubtedly be, but more importantly it gives us new conquests to defend and launch pads for further gains.
The right response to Labour's new economic plans isn't to tut, wag your finger and snottily decry it as not real socialism. It's to recognise it as something that is immediately tangible and realisable from our low point in the balance of power between capital and labour. It is to accept it as a set of measures that are productive of more possibilities of class struggle from a more advantageous position. And I'm sure this isn't something lost on John McDonnell himself.
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You are now reading the article McDonnellnomics and Class Struggle With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/09/mcdonnellnomics-and-class-struggle.html