By Bill Ethell
[This article was sent to the South African Labour Bulletin in response to an article which discussed the politics of the Australian trade union movement. We have abridged it slightly.]
The article by Rob Lambert errs in presenting as uncontroversial matters which continue to be at the centre of political struggles within the Australian trade union movement, and working-class politics more generally. Two particular propositions deserve more detailed examination.
The first is that new forms of international organisation are necessary for "the success of (an) industry restructuring strategy". The second proposition follows from the first. It is that under capitalism one can have the global increases in productive potential which flow from internationalised production, as well as the possibility of improvements in living standards, without having the antithesis (impoverishment, diseases, pollution etc).
The principal objection to the first theme is its class-collaborationist political centre: that is, through cooperation between capital and labour the contradictory nature of capitalist accumulation can be overridden. After nearly 10 years of a social contract, or Accord, between the governing Labor Party and the ACTU, there are a growing number of working people in Australia who reject the collaborationist political direction adopted by much of the trade union leadership.
To restate Lambert's first proposition as a question: why should working people favour "industry restructuring", which in a capitalist world is a shorthand for raising the rate of profit? The question invariably goes unanswered by people who have pressed the strategy of class collaboration upon Australian trade unionists. Even when dressed up with all the language (e.g. "proactive and not reactive", "offensive not defensive"), the strategy presumes that the best of all possible worlds for working people is a healthy capitalism.
The most important index of health for capitalism is that the rate of profit continuously rises. Indeed, for capitalists there can be no rate which is high enough!
Australia provides an instructive example of the deficiencies of the strategy of capitalist reform through collaboration, which has dominated the Australian trade union movement in the 1980s.
Since the Accord was reached, there have been continuous reductions in real take home pay. In July 1992, official statistics of unemployment show that over 11% of the working age population is out of work. Youth erm unemployment are at post-1930s highs.
Probably of even greater importance, class militancy has been greatly reduced by a political strategy which concentrated power in ACTU and trade union officials and bureaucrats. Strikes are at historic lows, while trade union membership has been reduced dramatically. Out of this comes the most substantial problem for the future, a lack of confidence, morale and experience of militancy among working-class activists.
Further, without the creative drive and discipline which militancy forces upon the ruling class, there also has been a reduced pressure for the owners of factories to purchase more sophisticated machinery and increase output. At the same time as workers have been told by their union leadership to reduce consumption demands in the "national interest", Australian capitalists have taken substantial amounts of the higher profits which flowed from real wage cuts and squandered them upon unproductive speculative ventures.
The second proposition, that a healthy capitalism provides the best of all possible worlds, is especially seductive for trade union officials and other labour movement activists.
Only the owners of capital have an ability to fund election extravaganzas, and their resources are directed always at policies for increasing profits. For trade unionists anxious to hold directly the reins of government, to participate in a partnership with the capitalist class, the choice invariably crystallises into supporting one or other political party. In turn, each party striving to hold government seeks to frame policies which will raise profits in a particular direction.
Whether or not trade unionists develop organisations which are regional, national or, in Lambert's proposed direction, international through "borderless solidarity", the productivity of capitalism, the driving force behind "restructuring", is directed toward profit, not human need.
Throughout the globe there are massive stockpiles of food, and other forms of surplus capacity, on an unprecedented scale. Worldwide, the automobile industry has 8 million units of excess manufacturing capacity. Each day, while millions starve, food rots in warehouses and farmers are paid not to produce. For the next few years, the efforts of politicians everywhere will be directed as much at eliminating the surplus capacity as in developing new capacity.
Yet at the same time millions have inadequate housing, insufficient food, decaying transportation systems, unhealthy environments and governments which can keep their populations under control only by repression.
Borderless solidarity of trade unions driven by a politics of class collaboration will only facilitate the establishment of new productive capacity coupled with the constant destruction of less profitable ways of producing. This dialectical movement constitutes the international
The result of such a recovery, however much it raises living standards in the meantime, will be another downturn at some future period. The downturn will develop, once again, because raising the rate of profit and concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of a few, the basis of recovery, is also the source of the next crisis.
There are people in the Australian labour movement who do not see why humanity should be forced to endure the continued dominance of capitalism over everyday existence. There are trade unionists and others of the working class who welcome the globalisation of life, but reject the seductiveness of the capitalism.
Militancy be turned toward enlarged demands which have revolutionary, not reformist, consequences. Rapidly increased living standards for all working people joined with shortened working days should be immediate demands. These demands cannot be advanced through a politics of collaboration such as has failed working people in regional and national arenas in previous periods.
Production for need, at the highest possible global levels of productivity, should be our object. To develop a politics of production for need, rather than for profits, it is necessary to reject the advice of trade unionists and others who wish to entrap the working class in organisations which have a history of reducing demands and damping militant opposition to capitalism.
[Bill Ethell is president of the WA branch of the Construction, Mining, Energy, Timberyards, Sawmills and Woodworkers' Union.]