Voting for Ford: Industrial Democracy and the Control of. Labour. Peter Cressey and. John MacInnes. `There has never been such complete democracy in the ...
Voting for Ford : Industrial Democracy and the Control of Labour Peter Cressey and John MacInnes `There has never been such complete democracy in the management of industrial establishments as exists in our shops .' F. W. Taylor [ 1 ] Industrial democracy is a confusing subject : not only at a theoretical level, but in practical terms too ; for both the orthodox analyst of industrial relations and marxists as well [2] . This reflects the contradictions inherent in the concept : it offers control of the dictates of capital on the one hand, and submission to its logic on the other . Industrial democracy, in the form of cosmetic work humanisation schemes, or the incorporation of worker representatives into certain areas of decision-making, appears as an important feature of the strategy of industrial capital in times of crisis to `regain control by sharing it' [3] . Conversely, in the sense of collective workers' control of production, it appears as the ultimate aim of class struggle [4] . Any analysis of industrial democracy must therefore ground itself in an adequate theory of the relation between labour and capital at the point of production : the workplace . Yet, despite the wealth of material produced by the labour process debate around Braverman, the debate on the labour aristocracy, and the debate on the theory of the firm in the States, we think marxists have failed to present a convincing analysis of the relationship between labour and capital at this level, or the relationship between class struggle at the level of the factory and class struggle at the level of society as a whole. The consequence of this failure has been an inability to theorise the relationship between the two, opposed, conceptions of `industrial democracy', and beyond this a failure to theorise or develop a revolutionary strategy for the working class at the point of production within capitalism, as opposed to a general recognition that ultimately, a global revolution in the social relations of production is needed . This paper tries to analyse the origins of this debilitating `bifurcation' [5] .
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11
TWO APPROACHES TO INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
Industrial democracy finds the Left caught in a general mistrust of strategy it cannot adequately grasp . The response has tended to b a rejection at a general level of any `industrial democracy' scheme a incorporatist, whilst at the same time emphasising the need fog strong shopfloor unionism and aggressive (and therefore implicit ; more extensive) collective bargaining . A polarisation of views on the subject has tended to develop from this . The `incorporation app roach' sees industrial democracy as a strategy by capital to incorpor ate labour and its shopfloor organisation into a system of workplac : decision-making whose outcome is already decided by the domin ance of the relations of production at a social level, as t ransmitte . to each firm by competition and market forces [6] . Meanwhile the `advance of labour' approach sees it as a strategy of labou whereby capital's power in the workplace is to be eroded by the en croachment of more and more participative and bargaining arrange ments which push forward the `frontier of control' . We see this as a sterile contrast . The implication of the firs approach (that of incorporation) is the impossibility of substantia internal reform at workplace level given the absence of a revolutioi in the relations of production at the social level . The attribution o primacy to market forces and external relations of production mean that any offensive by labour in the workplace is predicated on th, very revolution in production relations that such a strategy shout create rather than result from . The workplace dominance of capita is seen as essentially non-contradictory rather than as a proces marked by struggle and crisis [7] . The `advance of labour' approach conveniently forgets the wide . capitalist context from which the `incorporation' approach starts Underpinning it is the classic individualist idea that `power' lies with the person `making' the decision . Capital's `power' exists in number of discreet areas, each of which can be taken hold of ant re-fashioned to the aims of labour. Then, by progressively encroach ing on areas of managerial prerogative, labour will eventually define and decide all important questions of production, in contrast tc their present subordination to capitalist logic [8] . In practice many advocates of such an approach do not see the social relation ; of production as a problem and defend `industrial democracy' it the name of efficiency and (implicitly) valorisation [9] . Neither of these approaches contains the strategic link we seek between material workplace struggles and struggle at the level of society itself . The `incorporation' approach simply sees the forms a determined by the latter, while the `advance' approach reverses the direction of causality . `Incorporation' defines out the `space' for any, material as opposed to ideological struggle in the workplace, while the `advance' argument collapses socialism into job control [10] . The sterility of the contrast between `incorporation' and 'advance' has echoes in the other debates cited above which suggests ai common theoretical ancestry for this bifurcation . We believe this can be found in the way Marx's theory of the formal and real subordination of labour to capital has been taken up by contemporary marxists [11] . We believe that this has encouraged, and been rein-
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forced by, an emphasis on the study of bourgeois ideology rather than practice, which has resulted in theorisations of the capitalist mode of production which are formalist and ahistorical . The fetish of capital has been mistaken for its reality . MARX'S THEORY OF THE FORMAL AND REAL SUBORDINATION OF LABOUR TO CAPITAL [12]
The concept of real subordination of labour (hereafter R .S .L .) describes the capitalist mode of production [131 when valorisation is fully in command [ 14 ] . It is only achieved at the point where capital obtains the necessary control and disciplining of labour from the production process itself. Whereas private ownership of the means of production, divorce of the workers from the means of subsistence, and the wage form give rise to a formal subordination of labour, it is only really materially subordinated when capital can control exactly what the worker does in the workplace, ensuring that the worker orders all his activities to one goal : valorisation. Thus in the R .S.L., capital employs labour, the means of production employ the worker in a material as well as formal sense : ` . . the conditions of work employ the worker . However, it is only with the coming of machinery that this inversion first acquires a technical and palpable reality .'[15]
It is a question not only of the relations, but also of the forces of production in a technological sense . R.S .L . requires a `specifically capitalist mode of production', which arising `spontaneously' on the basis of formal subordination (hereafter F.S .L .), reduces the worker to a `living appendage' [16] of the production process (instead of being its subject and author) . It does this not only in a formal sense, but in a concrete material sense also . The workforce plays absolutely no part in direction or conception, indeed if it did play any such part the real subordination of labour would be seriously incomplete : capital must appropriate all subjective elements to keep valorisation as the sole object of the production process . By definition, for the R .S .L. to be complete capital must abolish any space in the production process for the worker to do anything but valorise capital, it must therefore appropriate to itself all conception, design and ordering of the process, leaving to the worker only the execution of a pre-set task in a ` . . .large scale collective labour process which exists prior to and independently of their being brought into it by its owner/ controller' .[ 171 As a result of this development in the production relations at the workplace, the type of labour required becomes simple and homogenous [18] : it requires no `skill' (if we use the term as a convenient shorthand for the accumulated experience, knowledge, creativity and dexterity in particular forms of labour developed by workers) because all such elements have been appropriated by capital in order to complete its control : ` . . .there appears in the automatic factory a tendency to equalise and reduce to an identical level every kind of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines' . [ 19 ]
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 The crux of the R .S .L. argument is that capital employs labour materially as well as formally : the production process is created by capital, the worker is slotted into it . From the formal aspect of value, capital has always employed labour, and this is implied in the formal subordination of ,labour to capital . In the R.S .L ., however, the breakthrough achieved by capital is to root this `inversion' in the material production process itself : capital employs labour in its use-value aspect too [20] . The most graphic example of such a state of affairs given by the modern theorists is the assembly line, organised along Taylorist principles, where the organisation of the machinery itself paces the worker and forces him to perform a preconceived task at a certain time . Capital employs labour here, not merely because it pays it wages and therefore `owns' its performance, but because it also actually materially controls what labour does . R.S .L . brings the progressively greater development of deskilled, materially undifferentiated mindless jobs in the workplace . It is also intimately related with two other developments which go together to produce Marx's `General Law' of capitalist accumulation . Firstly, the forces of competition, produced by the development of R .S.L . elsewhere, force the directors or managers of all units of capital, whether or not they `own' them, to `personify' capital in order to survive . Only by enforcing R.S .L., maximising surplus value, and promoting the further accumulation of capital does each individual unit survive at all . As the `personification' of capital, the controllers of the labour process become as enslaved as the workers they exploit [21] . Secondly, the size and potency of the `industrial reserve army' feeds off these developments in another vicious circle . The progressive simplification of labour makes members of the employed working population more directly replaceable by members of the reserve army, since no specific skills are required any more, while the accumulation of capital, with its rising organic composition, sloughs off sufficient labour to keep the army up to size . The economic power of labour to resist the dictates of capital thus becomes progressively weaker ; as a result, its real subordination by capital intensifies still further . The significance of R .S.L . for the whole of Marx's theory is illustrated in the way he summarises the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation [22] . Here the concept of the material realisation of the `inversion' at the heart of capitalist society is revealed as a central idea of the whole book [23] .
THE STRATEGIC The strategic conclusions to be drawn from R .S .L. theory are made IMPLICATIONS explicit in Marx and Engels's writings (especially earlier works) on OF R .S.L . trade unions. Since labour is totally subordinated economically in the workplace, both by the production process inside it and the reserve army waiting at the gates, any fight here for meaningful economic reform, while necessary as a confidence-building exercise, is purely utopian if it expects real gains [241 . On the other hand,
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however, the real dominance of capital economically, digs its grave politically : for the increasing homogenisation of jobs, and interchange between employment and the reserve army which are created by R .S.L., provide a material basis for the development of the workers into a class for itself . All redress of their existing problems depends on the overthrow of the relations of production as a whole, this becoming a realistic proposition as the workers become more undifferentiated and united against their common enemy . Thus the real task in strategic terms is_ for political ideological battle to turn the working class to revolutionary politics . We could summarise the strategy by saying that the struggle for a `fair day's wage' is utopian, wheras the struggle for the `abolition of the wages system' is realistic 125] . If R .S.L . theory is correct, and advanced capitalism has achieved the real subordination of labour in the workplace, then any meaningful strategy must look towards a change in the social relations of production, not merely as an ultimate aim, but as an immediate political objective which capital has itself brought onto the agenda by its creation of a homogenised class-in-itself [26] .
FORMAL TO REAL SUBORDINATION AND CONTEMP . ORARY THEORY AND STRATEGY
R .S .L. theory, and the transition from F .S .L. to R .S.L., theorised as 'deskilling', lies at the heart of much contemporary marxist theory of the workplace, through Braverman, B .L .P .G . and the studies of Taylorism and scientific management [27] . The restatement of R .S .L . in relation to modern developments is Braverman's aim . He takes 'deskilling' as the dominant tendency in capitalism historically, while analytically the problem of `control' for modern management is precisely transforming the labourpower it formally owns into value creating labour. This is done by management adopting Taylorist policies of divorcing conception from execution in the deskilled labour process (in contrast to their former unification in the craft worker) : `The subjective factor of the labour process is removed to a place among its inanimate objective factors . . .the process is henceforth carried out by management as the sole subjective element'[28] . Braverman conceives of the working class as an `aspect' of capital : its variable part. Its `modes of work' and `occupational structure' are determined solely by capital which `habituates' the worker to the various pre-designed production processes among which he or she is flung in the course of a life-time's work (and non work) [29] . B .L.P .G . explicitly take R .S.L . as their starting point, arguing that it exists even where capital appears to grant a measure of autonomy to the workforce : `It does not need to exercise its power via a system of direct face-to-face power relations . . .Autonomy is only possible on the basis of an increase in the material basis of capital's power . . .Capital determines the form its own personification takes' [30] .
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 The work of Stone and Montgomery in the States can also be seen to follow the F.S .L .-R .S .L . theory . Stone does so in the context of an attack on the Neo-classical theory of the firm ` . . .which views all that takes place within the firm as an economically efficient adaption to market conditions'[31] and Montgomery in the course of analysing the link between craft consciousness and the movement for workers control . Stone describes the initially formal subordination of labour `skilled workers controlled the production process and made steel by using the employers' capital' and proceeds to argue that technological developments enabled the employers to smash the workers' organisation and then go on to create an essentially ` . . .artificial and unnecessary division of labour' which was devised especially to control the workforce, rather than for any economic efficiency as such (which is one in the eye for Neo-classicism) . Moreover this division of labour is one which ` . . no labour movement or reform group has yet developed successful means for overthrowing' [32] . Montgomery, too, argues from a conception of a formal subordination of labour in which craft workers directed the process of production while `The boss bought the machinery and sold the finished product, and set an aggregate price for the work of the craftsmen through negotiations with their representatives . That is all .' [33] The strategic conclusions drawn by recent work are a product of its roots in the F.S .L .-R .S.L . thesis, and, as such, echo those advanced by Marx and Engels : the material degradation of the workers in the factory will force them into a political revolt which, paradoxically their economic subordination has organised and prepared them for . Hence Braverman writes : `I have every confidence in the revolutionary potential of the working class of the so-called developed capitalist countries . Capitalism will not, over the long run, leave any choice to these classes, but will force upon them the fulfilment of the tasks which they alone can perform .' `It is only through consciousness that a class becomes an actor on the historical stage .' [34] B.L.P .G. argue that nothing has basically changed to call into question Marx's analyses, and so we might well infer that the same would go for the strategic conclusions to be drawn [ 35 ] . Contemporary theory has not stopped at this point, however : rather there has been a vigorous discussion about Taylorism, deskilling and R .S .L . which has focussed on the argument that capital is not as straightforwardly omnipotent at the point of production as R .S .L . suggests, but instead is subject to counter tendency and qualification [36] . Indeed, the work of Marx and Braverman already foreshadows much of this debate . Marx states that : `Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here .' [37]
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And Braverman warns that : the principle is itself restrained in its application by the `. nature of the various specific and determinate processes of production . . .in industry all forms of labour co-exist . . .The result is not the elimination of labour but its displacement to other occupations and industries .' [38] . It is precisely with the elaboration of such qualifications that the discussion around Braverman has concerned itself, with two main areas of qualification being developed . Firstly, it is argued that Taylorism and the realisation of R .S .L . is less widespread than it would otherwise have become because workers organised against it successfully, forcing capital to adopt other strategies, such as 'Responsible Autonomy' [39] . Elger added a further dimension to this argument in terms of the ability of capitals to finance a thoroughgoing Taylorist reorganisation of work [40] . Secondly, it has been suggested that capital faces a contradiction between the short run aim of maximum valorisation, and the long run aim of the maintenance of the relations of production as a whole which require it to divert some of its resources towards legitimating itself : `. . .the dilemma of capitalist control is to secure surplus value, while at the same time keeping it hidden .' [41] Stone's explanation of job hierarchies would fit into this category : they are an artificial device, put there to forestall the development of a united, anti-capitalist class by dividing it against itself [42] . Although such qualifications appear to take us beyond the notion of capital as omnipotent, they fail to lever us out of the sterile antinomies from which we started . Both in analysis and in the strategic conclusions drawn, they leap from one pole of the antinomy to the other because the tendency towards R.S .L. is still taken as basic, rather than as a process which is internally contradiction ridden . The first `qualification' to R .S.L ., that of worker resistance, begs the question of the material basis of that resistance . F .S .L.R.S .L . theor y resolves this in one of two ways : labour is able to struggle because in some areas it is still merely formally subordinated, so that craft-based resistance to deskilling is the progenitor of the movement for workers' control [431 . From this angle, the very existence of trade unions in capitalism is proof of the possibility of their further advance . The strategy follows from this : it is to generalise the `formality' of capitalist control, rolling back its `frontier' within the workplace : we are back with the advance of labour argument, and the corresponding pole of Elson's antinomy in which the transition to socialism becomes : ` . . .a simple extension of socialist forms considered as already co-existing with capitalist ones .' [44] The second way F .S .L.-R .S .L . theory can resolve this problem is to transfer the focus of struggle to the ideological rather than the material level : since labour cannot resist its real subordination
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CAPITAL & CLASS 1 1 materially, it must prepare for the `leap' to the socialist mode of production politically, by setting out to smash those artificial institutions which ' obscure' the appropriation of surplus value and protect capital by dividing the working class artificially : `The institutions of labour then, are the institutions of capitalist control .' [45] Once this is done, and real subordination becomes visible, the class is set to turn the relations of production on their head : the transition becomes ` . . .a leap between two fixed, pre-given structures .' [46] These qualifications to the R .S .L . analysis turn out to be no qualifications at all . They qualify the omnipotence of capital only by posing either the empirical fact of workplace struggle (and tend towards identifying socialism with job control) or labour's potential to appropriate the fruits of the development in the forces of production once it has overturned the relations of production (thus tending to rule out any connection between short-term material reform and the ultimate revolution) [47] . As we slip between poles of the antinomy we find an uncritical attitude towards craft consciousness (as the incarnation of the `formality' of capitalist control) metamorphosing into an ultra-leftist view of labour institutions : as `institutions of capitalist control' they are there to be smashed! [48] . As well as leading to inadequate theorisation of the capitallabour relation at the point of production, F.S .L .-R .S.L . theory also obscures the relation between the forces and relations of production . In the formal subordination of labour, the forces of production as such are taken as pre-capitalist : the dominance of capital does not exist at the level of the workplace (it is simply `formal' there) but elsewhere : we therefore have literally no material connection between the forces and relations of production specified at all, except at the level of `market forces' . [49] By contrast, with real subordination, the forces of production become the relations of production : they are collapsed into each other, so that depending on one's starting point, the forces of production or revolutionary consciousness become the motor of history [50] . We wish to argue that the concept of the development from a formal to a real subordination is inadequate to analyse the development of the capitalist mode of production : that instead the contradictoriness of capital's strategy in the workplace lies in the character of its material relation with labour . In pursuit of valorisation it faces the need to organise the forces and relations of production in a way which develops the social productivity of labour as much as it alienates it .
R .S .L . AND THE DUAL CHARACTER OF LABOUR
` . . .if the commodity has a double character-use value and exchange value-then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a two-fold character, while the mere anlysis of labour as such, as in Smith, Ricardo, e tc . i s bound to come up
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everywhere against inexplicable problems . This is, in fact, the whole secret of the critical conception .' ` . . .The best points of my book are : 1 . the two-fold character of labour according to whether it is expressed in use-value or exchange value (All understanding of the facts depend upon this .'[51] Marx has suffered enough from clumsy and ignorant `refutations' of his work, and we would stress from the outset that it is not our intention either to `debunk' him or search for a `pure' reading . But we do suspect that in the concept of R .S .L., as presented in the Grundrisse and Capital, Marx's own terminology got the better of him, so that at a crucial point in the analysis he did not take account of his own `best point' : the two-fold character of labour . The analysis collapses into an ahistorical formalism because it loses sight of the concrete, use-value aspects of the capital-labour relation at the point of production . `The means of production employ the workers' : it is a striking metaphor, a spare and lucid summary of the essence of a developed capitalist system, and the exact reversal of the definition of a socialist mode of production (52) . Literally speaking, however, it is a nonsense : it grasps not the essence of the capitalist mode of production, but the fetish that it throws up . For the logic of the `inversion` becoming real, and of production being totally geared to valorisation is that concrete society simply disappears into pure form : all real needs become nothing, the social form (valorisation) everything . Everyone, `capitalist' and worker, becomes a collective slave to the mere form which everywhere arises behind their backs . Conversely, the social form of production relationships becomes concrete (a `technical and palpable reality') : moreover, with capital as the dominant concrete entity, dead labour subordinating living . Hence we have the classic bourgeois fetish of conflating the means of production and their capitalist form : dead labour comes to life and becomes productive : it `designs', `controls' and `executes' [53] . And capital would need to be productive if it was to materially control labour for it would have to undertake the various tasks previously left to the initiative, creativity and dexterity of the worker . Only by doing that could capital abolish its dependence on the workers as a subjective force of production and reduce them to simple labour power : to a pair of `hands' . Such a reduction is nonsense : for in terms of Marx's own definition of labour-power and labour, to abolish dependence on the workers as a subjective force is to abolish any dependence on their labour as value-creating activity : it is to subordinate labour by eliminating it [ 54 ] . The key to the critique of R .S.L . theory lies in Marx's own comments about the dual nature of the labour process within capitalism . From the point of view of the social form of organisation of production it is quite correct to say that capital employs labour. However, even in the most highly developed capitalist society, from the point of view of material production, from the aspect of use-value, labour employs capital . Only by controlling the means
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 of production in the sense of subjecting them to its own physica and mental operations, its own will, does the workforce actuall , expend any labour and create use-value, and therefore exchange value as well . Marx himself defines labour power as : ` . . . the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilitie existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he prodl uces a use value of any kind.'[55] and in the celebrated `architects and bees' passage he makes huma, will a defining characteristic of all human use-value creating labour For even though capital owns (and therefore has the right to `con trol'), both means of production and the worker, in practice capita must surrender the means of production to the `control' of the workers for their actual use in the production process . All adequat: analysis of the contradictory relationship of labour to capital in the workplace depends on grasping this point. Although the `inversion' (capital employs labour) may becom . technical and palpable in the sense that the assembly line (rathe than the overlooker) may pace the worker, this does not represent any real or material control of labour beyond the formal rights & ownership already present in the wage relationship . Just as much a , before the workers themselves actually control the detail of the per formance of their tasks, and the importance of this, though it vane, with the production process, never disappears altogether . Even the smallest degree of subjectivity and detailed control of the directioi of the process by labour can be used as a weapon against capita in the workplace and is so used whether consciously or not [56] In the two-fold relationship of labour to capital in the work place lies the basis for the socialisation of production relation within capitalism pointed to by Luxemburg and others at the turf of the century . It is precisely because capital must surrender the use of its means of production to labour that capita must to some degree seek a cooperative relationship with it, unit labour with the means of production and maximise its social prod' uctivity and powers of cooperation. Here is the central point of ou critique of R .S .L . The two-fold nature of the relationship of capita to labour in the workplace implies directly contradictory strategie for both labour and capital which in turn represent the working ou ; of the contradictions between the forces and relations of productior at the level of the workplace itself . For capital, the tendencies outlined in R.S .L . theory grasp only, the exchange-value aspect of the relationship . Here indeed capital' seeks to reduce the workers as far as possible to the status of comm odities, enforcing the wage form and divorcing them from the meanof production in order to maximise the alienation of surplus valuc and abolish all dependence on the workers' own skill and initiative lest that frustrate the requirements of valorisation . However, the use value aspects of the relation of capital to labour are directly contra dictory to this . Valorisation has to be embodied in use-value : the capitalist must therefore always seek to maximise relative surplu-
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value by revolutionising the forces of production . He can do this only by seeking to abolish the constraints imposed on the forces of production by the capitalist form of the relations of production : he must actively seek to abolish the commodity form itself . Thus contrary to the implications of the R.S .L . argument capital has an active interest in suppressing its own dominance in the workplace to the extent that dominance flows purely from the social form of the relations of production and not from the requirements of production itself. To develop the forces of production capital must seek to develop labour as a subjective force to unleash labour's powers of social productivity rather than abolish these powers . Thus in the use-value aspect of its relation with labour capital will seek a purely cooperative relationship in order to abolish the antagonism between the worker and the means of production that its capitalist form throws up [ 57 ] . For labour there is a correspondingly contradictory relationship to capital . From the exchange-value aspect there is again a direct antagonism between capital and labour : the latter seeking to resist its subordination to the goal of valorisation through the reduction of labour to a pure commodity . From the use-value aspect, however, since labour can only gain access to the means of production through selling its labour-power to capital it has an interest in the maintenance of that relationship and therefore the viability of the unit of capital which employs it . Moreover, the degree of this interest will increase with the skill and scope for self-expression (distorted as it is within the capitalist form) that the job provides . Hence labour too will have a direct interest in developing the forces of production within the factory, but again in contradictory fashion, since it will not wish such development to be used solely to benefit valorisation, but also to increase wages or provide more pleasant jobs [58] . Consideration of this two-fold relationship of capital and labour in the workplace allows us to answer some of the problems thrown up by R .S .L. theory . F.S .L . and R.S .L . both tend to collapse the relations of production into the forces of production : the `skill' of the craft worker in its use-value aspect is taken as constituting control of the means of production, which annihilates `workers' control' . In contrast, in R.S .L . with deskilling and the displacement of all subjective factors onto capital, the means of production run both themselves and the workforce . The forces of production in a narrow, technological sense become the motor of history and capitalism appears as industrialism, albeit one which can ultimately be rescued by the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat [59] . An analysis based on the dual nature of labour and control thus suggests that the forces and relations of production are not mutually exclusive categories (with the forces as determinant) and that it is not sufficient (as e .g. Gordon does) [60] to present capital's dilemma in terms of what is technically efficient for production and socially efficient for control . Any production process will be a complex unity of the two, determined by the outcome of the various struggles between labour and capital about the form of both
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 technology and the production relations surrounding it : it will be . joint creation . Insofar as the nature of the production process is a joint creat ion, the progress of the trio of developments which constitute the `General Law' will no longer operate in the manner Vol . I implies The greater the extent to which valorisation is not in command it each unit of capital, then the less will be the progressive intensificat ion of the process of each unit through market forces . The effective ness of the reserve army will also be much reduced : since there ias much reason for capital to develop the producitivty and subject ivity of labour as to abolish it, then there is no necessary overall' tendency to simplify and homogenise labour . It therefore become less replaceable and less subject to `disciplining' by the reserve army, [61] . The imminent logic of capital becomes a less uniformly vicious circle .
MARXIST THEORY AND CAPITAL FETISHISM
It has been one of our themes that there has been a tendency it marxist analysis of the labour process to analyse the fetish of capital rather than capital in its concrete historical development, to treat if in an ahistorical fashion, and then reintroduce class struggle as 'deus ex machina', which effects the `leap' from one mode o' production to another. In part this can be traced to the reliance of most marxisl theorists on an analysis of the bourgeois theorists of capitalis' organisation, rather than any direct study of its practitioners . Management by its very nature works behind closed doors, and in a sense what is seen is by definition atypical . But to claim, as Braver= man does, that Taylorism represents : ` . . . nothing less than they explicit rationalisation of the capitalist mode of production' .[62] isi to invest capital's apologists with the ability to theorise capitalismi scientifically, an approach which leaves little room for theories ot, ideology or commodity fetishism . It also involves a careful choice ot, theorists . Why choose Taylor as fundamental, and the theorists ot, the `habituation' of the worker as qualifications to a basic theme?[63] It is not an exercise without precedent in Marx's work itself . He , took the self-acting mule as one of the clearest examples of capital's' ability to materially subordinate labour, yet Lazonick (1979)I suggests that Marx took his evidence for this from Ure, who in turns was quoting the inflated claims of the machine's maker . The mule spinners, rather than being homogenised into general labourers„ retained a superior position within the job hierarchy : `Marx committed an error that is far too common in the social) sciences. He derived his conclusion of the omnipotence of technology in the subjection of labour to capital from an uncritical acceptance of capitalist ideology . . .'[ Less forgiveable has been the emphasis laid on the work of Taylor, given the major inconsistencies in his work itself . As a wouldbe practitioner of real subordination, Taylor was adamant' that for his approach to work no improvement on the labour process
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by the workers themselves must be possible : it indeed represents the appropriation by capital of all the workers' subjectivity and skill, to prevent the exercise of their own initiative frustrating the valorisation process . It was to be left to capital itself to conceive design and control the production process . Could it do it? Sohn Rethel (whose own work has argued for the significance of Taylorism as capital's strategy) describes how Taylor's project at the Midvale Steel Company, with the aim of `obtaining a knowledge (i .e . powers of conception, PC and JM) at least equal to that of the combined machinists who were under him', took him not six months as he originally planned, but 26 years, resulting in the monster `Art of Cutting Metals'[65] . The failure of Taylorism, rather than its `success' is proof of the inability of capital to follow an R .S .I . strategy : as he failed to `control' the workforce fully, Taylor retreated into a reliance on economically induced motivation . Important as Taylorism may have been in developing management's awareness of systematic organisation of work, the emphasis on it in contemporary theory is unjustified . It fits in nicely with R .S .L . theory : but both belong to the realm of fetishism rather than material production . This raises the question of whether the tendency to theorise the fetish of capital is not a basic aspect of Marx's project in Capital, as a critique, not of capitalism but capitalist political economy, and whether it ends up, to use Thompson's phrase, as an 'anti-structure' . While Elger has argued that : `Marx's own treatment is ambiguous enough to be susceptible to varied interpretations'[ 661 and that Marx should not be read as a theorist of craft degradation and deskilling, it seems to us that ahistorical and determinist formulations inevitably creep into any F .S .L .-R .S .L . theory, and that the bifurcation of strategy is an inevitable legacy of such formulations . Once `labour' is formally subordinated, then its real subsumption has to follow-it occurs as the realisation of capital's `essence' : the `inversion' at the heart of capitalist society imposed by the logic of competition . Yet such market forces are produced by . . . the immanent tendencies of capital! [671 We get exactly the ahistorical conception of capital for which Burawoy takes Braverman to task : 'Braverman presents capitalism as a process of becoming, of realising its inner essence, of moving according to its immanent tendencies, of encompassing the totality, of subordinating all to itself, and of destroying all resistance' .[68] What is problematic is the adequacy of F .S .L. as a concept in the first place . There appears to be a lop-sidedness in `Capital' in that the recognition of the determinate role of force, of class struggle, at the level of the mode of production as a whole in terms of the expropriation of the producers and their divorce from the means of production, is never paralleled by an adequate conception of the determinacy of class struggle within production and the ability of capital to enforce the unity of the worker and the means of production within the workplace . The concept of F .S .L . cannot be a historical category, rather it flows from Marx's critique of classical
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 economics and his analysis of labour and labour power, and in this sense it appears as a 'Neo-Smithian' category parallel to Smith's conception of a `previous accumulation of capital' .[69] In his critique of Smith's notion of `previous accumulation' (the analytical trick which enables Smith to escape from the circularity of surplus value and accumulation pre-supposing each other) Marx argues that primitive accumulation was a process irreducible to the categories of political economy and explicable only in terms of class struggle and ultimately force . At first sight it appears that such a historical analysis of primitive accumulation explains the initial `formal' subordination of labour, in that in the workplace capital simply appropriates (formally) a production process bequeathed by pre-capitalist society . Such a conception, although it appears attractive, is theoretically absurd . To argue that the production process remains unchanged is to imply that no divorce of the worker from the means of production took place (since capital's control was purely `formal') . Yet the explanation of the arrival of capital (in the sense of an ensemble of social relations) through primitive accumulation starts out from the establishment of this very same `divorce' at a social level .[70] Are we seriously to argue that the production process, and the social relations of those within it, remained unchanged while capital subordinated it? The concept of the formal subordination of labour, like Smith's concept of the previous accumulation, is not derived from history but from political economy : they both serve to displace the theorisation of class struggle onto a Smithian circularity : the laws of competition enforce the drive for valorisation within each unit of capital, yet these laws themselves are only the expression of the development of capitalist relations at the point of production itself . Thus the development of a specifically capitalist mode of production in the workplace presupposes itself . Ultimately, Marx replaces Smith's ahistorical circle with another : the formal subordination of labour and primitive accumulation presuppose each other . We swap the free individual and free competition for the self-developing logic of capital, and neither appear `as a historic result, but as history's point of departure'. [ 71 ] We can see the critique of political economy developing its own `anti-structure' if we look back at Stone's work on the Neo-classical theory of the firm, which saw the hierarchy within the firm as a matter of neutral `economic efficiency' . Stone sees the job structure as created artificially by victorious employers, after the defeat of the craft steel workers . But Palmer (taking R .S .L. to its logical conclusions) points out that : `As much as the steel magnates desired to break the backs of the craft unions, this end would have been accomplished even without their active encouragement, the inner logic of mechanised steel making was itself capable of destroying craft distinctions within the industry' [72] . And so after leaving behind the idea of `economically efficient adaptations to market forces' we return to the `inner logic of mech-
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anised steel making' . Class struggle becomes tacked on as afterword : in the unilateral creation of `artificial' production relationships by the employer . For: `Once capital has emerged on the page, its self development is determined by the innate logic inherent within the category, and the relations so entailed, in much the same way as `the market' operates within bourgeois Political Economy . . .The postulates ceased to be the self interest of men and became the logic and forms of capital to which men were subordinated ; . . . But what we have at the end is not the overthrow of `Political Economy', but another `Political Economy' [73] . The lesson to be drawn is surely that we cannot take as a direct basis for producing a concrete class strategy a text (Vol I) which explicitly states in its preface : ` . . .individuals are dealt with here only insofar as they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers of particular class relations and interests . My standpoint, from which the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them' [74] . It is to argue that the `bifurcation' of strategy, underpinned by the theory of workplace struggle advanced by the debates around the labour process, has its roots in the failure of contemporary theorists to go beyond political economy to a historical materialism of workplace struggle, and examine the : ` . . dialectic of the concepts productive force and relation of production, a dialectic whose boundaries are to be determined'[75] . If we remain with `political economy', history resolves itself into the vicious circle of the logic of capital, and the virtuous circle of the logic of socialism, with the `leap' from one to the other effected by consciousness on the one hand and the `smashing' of state power on the other [76] .
CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE DUAL NATURE OF LABOUR AND CONTROL
The dual nature of labour within capitalism implies the dual character of `control' itself. From one aspect, the phrase `control of labour' implies capital's ability to enforce valorisation and the production of commodities, from another it implies the control labour has of the production process bequeathed by capital's continued reliance on its cooperation in order to get the work performed at all . It implies a rather different analysis of the relationship between class struggle and the production process : job hierarchies and authority relations can be seen as having their roots in the production process itself. In turn the precise form of that process is a joint creation [771, the outcome of class struggle rather than the `logic' of
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11
capitalist development, and as such capable both of further development within a capitalist social relation of production, and subversion of it, not only ideologically, but materially too . The object of class struggle can be seen as the form of the relationship between conception and execution, and the form of the overall `plan' to which it is subordinated . The unity of conception and execution has never been the exclusive property of the craft worker, never entirely disappears in any 'deskilled' labour-process and cannot of itself be an adequate definition of socialism . As Engels makes clear, authority will change its form not disappear altogether [78] . The material `space' for struggle at the point of production also cuts both ways, however. If we escape from the notion of a working class which prior to the historical break is merely an `aspect of capital' but exists politically as a universal force opposed to it, and open up the possibility for a `practical and prefigurative socialist politics' [79], then it must also be remembered that such a struggle roots itself initially in the workplace rather than in the class as a whole . Just as such struggles are not artificial and `incorporated', neither are they necessarily `spontaneously' socialist . They may take either form, and the task before us is surely thus to develop yardsticks for differentiating the two, and promoting the latter [80] . To do so must involve jettisoning a lot of categories and antinomies which we tend to work with at present . If there is no abstract measure of use value, and the `real' abstractions apparently imposed by the market are always mediated by workplace struggle, then what constitutes `skill' becomes itself an increasingly fluid category, capable of being defined and argued over in a variety of ways [81] . This raises the possibility of posing the question of what consists of `useful work' within the labour movement, and of the evaluation of the contribution of different groups of workers in a manner which prefigures `from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs', rather than the needs of capital reproduction . Similarly, in the analysis of trade unions, F.S .L .-R .S .L . analysi s portrays them from one aspect as the agent of capitalist control, the `reflection' of capitalist society as an institution committed to the sale rather than the abolition of labour power, and from another aspect as the forerunner of workers' control, either as a craft organisation able to `control' work, or as the `ever widening union of the workers' which in defeat becomes a school of revolution . This antinomy tends to get uncritically translated into theories of `betrayal' of the implicitly control seeking `rank and file' by the incorporated `bureaucracy' [82] . What has to be developed here is an adequate analysis of the terms of the sale of labour-power and compromise with capitalism which, coexistent with it in the short run, undermine it in the longer run, rather than simply tail-ending militancy for its own sake . We have to develop the categories of analysis which can illuminate how capital's contradictory aims in the workplace can be exploited to prefigure socialism, not by rolling back a `frontier of control' [83] but by subverting and changing the form of hierarchy and production relations within the workplace as well as without, to
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transform the `rebellious impulses produced by the situation capitalism has imposed on the working class into consciousness and revolutionary creativity' [84] both in a material and ideological sense . INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY AND WORKERS CONTROL
After what has been a tortuous but we hope fruitful detour through the theorisation of the relation between capital and labour at the point of production, we can return to our original question of the dangers and opportunities of `industrial democracy' and 'participation' as a concrete management strategy . The attempt to `regain control by sharing it' can be seen as the attempt by capital to solve its problems by offloading some of the contradictions it faces onto labour itself . Since attempts to educate labour in the need to exploit itself tend to be dismal failures, capital attempts to give labour a practical lesson : it is handed `control' over small areas of the production process formerly controlled in detail by capital, in the hope that labour's direction will be more efficient than the division of labour and authority previously in existence . Capital thus attempts to exploit labour's non-homogeneity, bringing to the fore contradictions of labour organisation and forcing it into an accomodative coexistence with capital. In giving labour a practical lesson in the need for cost efficiency, it also exploits labour's superior knowledge of the details of the production process itself . Examples of such a strategy would be job evaluation committees, where management often grants majority representation to the workforce itself, autonomous work group arrangements, and also higher level `consultation' schemes about new investment, organisation of work, etc . Following the `incorporation' approach, Marxist analysis has traditionally seen the correct response to such managerial overtures as a complete refusal to get involved : the implication is that such schemes are a question of capital `determining the form its own personification takes' [85], and that the only possible result is not `workers control of production' but workers control of production for production's sake, a pseudo-control that only serves to smash what autonomy the workers' movement has . Our analysis suggests that other approaches could and should be tried. `The Strategy of the Refusal' [86], the ultimate conclusion of any incorporatist analysis has nothing implicitly socialist or revolutionary about it : it can take such forms, but in practice it tends to the opposite-an acceptance that it is management's legitimate right to manage and discipline, since that is their job, while trade unions and shop-floor organisation is an equally legitimate `permanent opposition' to bargain and defend within the system . We arrive at the arguments of H. A . Clegg [871 : hardly a revolutionary figure! The same goes for 'anti-work' strategies which go beyond refusal to `sabotage' of the production process itself. While it is all very well to demonstrate the `rationality' of such acts, it should be recognised that they are an index of the weakness of labour's organisation rather than its strength, and can be quite conservative and reactionary in their effects ; directed as much against other sections of the workforce as against capital, and fostering the call for more 'dis-
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 cipline' from the only potential source if the workforce is unorganised : management. [88] In a sense, such `refusal' or anti-work attitudes should surely be what has to be tackled by socialists . For as long as : `The only thing that gives meaning to work for these men is the non-work of unemployment' [ 89] , then the only visible aim of struggle at the point of production becomes conservative and defensive and fails to raise the possibility that work could be different : `The notion of "workers' control" is one that is vaguely articulated . It has a sound ideological ring about it and it can also be located in their day-to-day plant activity . Even here, however, there has been no symmetrically developed policy of encroachment upon managerial prerogatives within the car plants . . . Although they control the line they do it because they have to : they have no real desire to control the car plant . . ."The car plants for the car workers" makes no sense to the lads who work on the line . They hate the car plant in a way the miners never hated the pit. . .' [ 90] . In contrast, our analysis suggests that, so long as : `We've always got the last card because we're running the jobs' [91] then there remains the possibility and `space' for organised struggles at the point of production to change the form of work and raise the question of its nature and purpose : the issue is not between autonomy and incorporation but the form of bargain that labour makes with capital. The fact that it is the employers' side which often makes the running on `industrial democracy' suggests at once the weakness and the strength of capital . It fears that the workers are less responsive to management discipline than before, it also knows that to be effective it must cultivate their cooperation . It is able to pose the solution in terms of `participation', `involvement', and so on, precisely because here it has gained the upper hand in the struggle over the form such cooperation could take, by working out its strategy, by searching out ways of displacing the contradictions it faces in the workplace onto labour in such a way that labour has to resolve them in a fashion favourable to capital . And in such a context, which has been prepared by the lack of attention given to the nature of work within capitalism by socialists, the `strategy of the refusal' is not only correct, but in practice usually followed by workforces who do not usually take delight in exploiting themselves when the fruits of `participation' fail to materialise for them : hence the short life or degeneration of most management schemes : `I never feel enriched-I just feel knackered' . [92] Such'a state of affairs is an indication of labour's weakness not its strength . Any adequate strategy must go beyond simple `refusal' and blanket support for militancy or the more exotic forms of resistance to work that workers practice . It must be capable of raising the nature of work and its purpose, with the aim of developing political prefigurative forms within capitalism that point beyond it rather than patch it up . The categories to develop such a strategy have yet to be produced, and this paper does nothing but point vaguely in the direction we should look . The growth of trade union
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organisation among `white collar' scientific and technical occupations poses even more starkly the alternative between sectional militancy and the strategy of the refusal, and the potential for strategies of alternative production rooted in alliances between heterogenous sections of workers around the demand for work of a more useful nature . Capitalism cannot be relied upon to dig its own grave [93] .
FOOTNOTES
The authors are research assistants, Centre for Research in Industrial Democracy, University of Glasgow . Earlier versions of this paper appeared at G . U . Sociology Department Postgraduate Seminar and C .S .E . Conference, 1979 . We would like to thank the editorial board and readers, and in particular Tony Elger, for many helpful comments and advice . 1 2 3
4
5
6
7
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Sociological Review : Vol . 7, 1914, p . 268 As the quote from Taylor shows, anyone can claim to be an `industrial democrat' . The phrase is that of Alan Flanders . See Ramsay (1977) for a historical analysis of industrial democracy as an anti-union employer tactic . It would of course be absurd to reduce socialism to this alone . There is the problem of just how universal the categories of labour and production are . Our arguments in this article therefore leave out such vital considerations as the sexual and national dimensions of oppression, and the question of the state and armed forces . However, workers control would be a necessary, if insufficient condition . See also Note 80 (below) . Elson 1979a and 1979b, uses this term to describe the existence of a break between the `analysis of what capitalist exploitation is, and analysis of the politics of ending it' (Elson 1979b, p . 173) . See also p . 5 (above) . e) . Thus Tom Clarke writes ` . . .industrial democracy proposals are likely to have the opposite of their supposed effect . That is, most schemes for industrial democracy will involve an absorption of workers' representatives into capitalist forms of control, not a transcending of these : they will bring about the more effective integration of workers into the existing economic and social relations rather than producing any basic alteration in the capitalist system .' (Clarke 1977, p . 375). A recent example of this is Nichols, 1980 . After emphasising that capitalist relations of production are both intra and inter enterprise relations, market forces are held responsible for the inability of cooperatives to subvert capitalist principles of organisation : `This is obvious enough perhaps in the case of the sole cooperative that seeks to stay afloat on the capitalist sea . But the same tendencies will assert themselves even if we consider the notional case of a society in which workers have appropriated all enterprises and seek to run them democratically, and on the basis of equality-unless, that is, they have had the foresight to abolish the commodity relations which formerly entangled these enterprises .' (p . 25) . See also Note 49 below . Anyone familiar with the TUC's teaching materials for shop stewards will have noticed the analogy they use of a brick wall . Collective bargaining proceeds by loosening management's hold on a brick called `discipline', `information' etc ., which is trans-
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 ferred to the growing workers' wall, showing the gradual accumulation of control . 9 Thus the Labour Party report states : `We would argue strongly the contribution to industrial efficiency that can come from an extension of workers' participation . . .' (1969, p . 21) . 10 Job control refers to control of a pre-defined job, as opposed to collective workers' control of production as a whole . 11 We will remain deliberately ambiguous about whether the major problem is Marx's political economy itself, or its interpretation by contemporary theorists . There are obviously other possible readings of Marx . See especially Elger, 1979 . 12 Different writers have used `subjection', 'subsumption' and `Subordination' . While subsumption probably describes the `real' relationship more adequately, and `subordination' the `formal' one, for the sake of clarity we use `subordination' throughout . 13 We use the term in both its senses . See Banaji, 1977 pp . 4-5 . 14 The phrase is BLPG's (1977, p . 9) . They use the term `non correspondence' to describe a situation where vestiges of workers' control of the production process prevent it being geared solely to valorisation . 15 Marx, 1976, p . 548 16 Marx, 1976, pp . 645, 548 17 BLPG, 1977, p . 11 18 We use the word `simple' here as a specific Marxist category rather than a straight forward adjective . The concept of simple labour is one of Marx's knottier hostages to fortune and lies at the base of the whole edifice of the theory of value and the current debate on its status . Here we take the term to mean labour that is undifferentiated, unskilled and average . The problem with Marx's approach is that it is never clear to what extent `simple' is a category existing at a formal level : 'A commodity may be the outcome of the most complicated labour, but through its value it is posited as equal to the product of simple labour . . .The various proportions in which different kinds of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measurement are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers .' (Marx 1976, p . 135) Or whether `simple labour' describes a variety of concrete labour that is typical of capitalist society : `The greater part of the labour performed in bourgeois society is simple labour as statisitical data shows .' (Marx 1970, pp . 30-31) Unfortunately Marx does not footnote his reference to statistical data . We argue below (p . 7) that R .S .L . requires simple labour to have both these senses . See Elson 1976b, pp . 7, 56ff and 144ff for the argument that they must be kept separate . 19 Marx 1976, p . 545 . 20 The basis of the distinction between F .S .L . and R .S .L . lies in the peculiar status of labour-power as a commodity which, unlike others, is not physically alienable . Exchange normally involves the physical transfer of use-values, things, along with the formal right to appropriate ('control') them, i .e . 'ownership' ; over which the will of the individual `owner' is sovereign . (Marx 1976, Ch . 2) . But labour power is an altogether peculiar `thing', comprising as it does :
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. .the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities, existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being .' (Marx 1976, p . 271) Its use, appropriation and control cannot be physically alienated to the buyer, for the worker must always set his own capabilities in motion, and : `The totality of the free workers' labour capacity appears to him as his property, as one of his moments, over which he as subject exercises domination' . (Marx 1973, p . 465) In a state of formal subordination then, the capitalist is able to appropriate the worker's product, but not control how it is produced . In real subordination the capitalist prevents the worker being the author of the capabilities he or she sets in motion, instead the worker must work as defined by the 'specifically capitalist mode of production' . Some writers have expressed this in terms of a contrast between market and production relations : `The formal subjection of labour to capital takes place through the market exchange of labour-power for a wage, as a result of which capital secures the right to make use of this labour power for a stipulated length of time (the working day) . The real subjection of labour to capital, on the other hand, takes place in the labour process itself . . . What the real subjection of labour to capital actually requires is that as much as possible the subjective will of the labourer conforms to the objective requirements of profit making . Hence there is inherent in the logic of capital accumulation a tendency to reduce labour to the status of a mere object, both formally as a commodity in exchange and in reality as a means of production in the labour process .' Lazonick, 1978, p . 3 . See Note 49 (below) and pp . This theme recurs in Marx from the Manifesto to Capital, in numerous passages . Marx 1976, pp . 798-9 The `inversion' being the control of the worker by the means of production, the domination of dead labour over living . Hence we have the whole tenor of Marx and Engels writings on the trade unions, from the Manifesto to Value Price and Profit . Engels in The Condition of the English Working Class describes trade union history as `a long series of defeats of the working men, interrupted by a few single victories' (1969, p . 243) . Unions were simply powerless against the law of capital . Marx in Value Price and Profit states : `I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities . By cowardly giving way in their every-day conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement . At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles . They ought not to forget that
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects ; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction ; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady .' (Marx 1899, pp . 92-93) 25 Hence Marx and Engels' optimism about trade unions (Hyman, 1971, p. 4) and their view of them as potential `schools of revolution' : their inability to reform would strengthen the case for the urgency of revolution . Therefore the struggle against CMP, both before and during any revolutionary situation, is loaded heavily onto development of consciousness given the impossibility of any material advance : `If the competition of the workers among themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end .' (Engels .243) 1969,P 26 Marx 1976, p . 929 describes how capitalist development `trains', `unites' and `organises' the working class for its revolt . 27 See the comprehensive bibliography in Elger 1979 . There have been many divergences of interpretation of course . Some American writers work in a problematic more rooted in Proudhon than Marx (e .g. Marglin, 1974, Hunnius et al 1973) . The work of Beynon and his colleagues is more complex . Although it uses many of Braverman's categories (see Beynon and Nichols 1977, pp . 17-18 and 108-9) we think their arguments go well beyond Braverman and contain many points we try to develop . 28 Braverman 1974, pp . 171-2 29 ibid p . 378 30 BLPG 1977, pp . 18-19 31 Stone 1974, p . 113 32 ibid pp . 114, 115 33 Montgomery `Trade Union Practice', quoted in Monds 1976, p . 86 . This formulation is of course interesting given the connection made between formal subordination and market forces (see e .g. reference to Lazonick, Note 20 above) . See also Note 49 below . 34 Braverman 1976, p . 124 . Braverman 1974, p . 35 . Compare this with Marx and Engels formulations in Note 24 above . 35 BLPG 1977, p . 24 : `There has been no change in the immanent tendencies of the capitalist labour process, beyond those analysed by Marx' . 36 See Elger 1979, for both the best summary of the debate, and a further development of it . 37 Marx, 1976 p . 798, discussing the `General Law' which has at its heart, the `inversion' become material in the real subordination of labour . 38 1974, p . 172 . See Note 54 below . 39 See Friedman 1977, and Palmer 1975 . 40 1979, p . 71 41 Burawoy, 1978 p . 261 . This is a central feature of the arguments by Gordon, Gintis and other writers . See also Note 46 below . 42 1974, especially Section III, pp . 117-141 . 43 Montgomery, 1974, is one of the more explicit examples of this . 44 Elson 1979b, p . 173 45 Stone, 1974 p . 168 46 Thus many qualifications of Braverman's approach end up
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locating the contradictions within capitalism at the level of consciousness and see the problem of the reproduction of capitalist social relations as situated there . Yet as Braverman's comments show (quoted above, p . 12) this is something he would accept . Indeed the emphasis on consciousness is but the other side of the coin of a determinist conception of the development of the forces of production : consciousness arrives to effect the leap from one frozen structure to another (via its organisation into a material force, the party, capable of smashing the last barrier to the leap to the socialist future : the state .) This determinate role of consciousness in the transition from an omnipotent but rotten capitalism echoes Marx's and Engels's views on trade unionism cited above (Note 24) . From one material aspect reform appears as impossible and irrelevant (incorporated), from the other it is everything (the logic of advance) . See also Note 84 below for the corresponding concept of party organisation . This is not to deny the important contributions made by Stone and Montgomery : it is the theoretical model on which they hang that we wish to question . Hence Monds, 1976, bases his attack on Montgomery's 'workerism' by arguing that market forces were `everything' (compared to Montgomery's description of the bosses' commercial role as `that is all' .) It appears that where revolutionary consciousness is not the `dens ex machina' used to escape the poles of the antinomy, then market forces pop up to play much the same role, though if revolutionary consciousness is the fairy godmother of socialism, then market forces are the wicked uncle . As we saw above, Lazonick roots the weakness of formal subordination in its reliance on market forces, rather than control of the production process, and Montgomery is clearly following this line of thought . Monds points to the significance of market forces in rendering workers' control of production fairly limited and incorporated : it represents job control not socialism . Yet this is precisely the argument we have come across (see Notes 7 and 8 above) in the context of the `incorporation' argument, which roots itself, not in the formal but real subordination of labour! (See also pp . 12 above) . The problem is therefore one of the origins of market forces . Depending on the angle from which we view formal and real subordination, they are each, in turn explained in terms of inter and intra enterprise relationships . E .g. real subordination while analysed in terms of a workplace `specifically capitalist mode of production', is in turn explained by market forces! See Elson, 1979b, pp . 171-2 on the fragmentation between a `politics of circulation and production' . See Note 46 above and Note 59 below . This duality is posed sharply in the `Preface' . Marx uses the phrases, the `material productive forces', the `productive forces' and the `social forces of production' without specifying their content . We are left to guess whether he characterises these as technologies--steam, electrical, nuclear processes : or as different forms of work organisation--assembly lines, continuous flow processes or even levels of knowledge, skill and forms of labour potential . The form of labour, its skill, activity and potential seems able to be characterised as either a force or a relation of production, thus leading towards a bifurcated analysis ; as a relation of production
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 it is its `ideological form' that premises conflict, whereas as a force of production its material pre-ideological aspect is stressed, then it is precisely the development of the productive forces `within' the old relations of production that bursts the fetters of the old ideological form . 51 Marx to Engels 8 .1 .68, 24 .8 .67 . 52 Within the limitations noted above (Note 4) we mean workers collectively controlling the means of production, following goals set by use-value criteria ('real or imagined') . 53 In this light Capital appears as finally `scientifically' proving what classical political economy failed to do : that capital was itself productive of surplus value . 54 It is in this light that Braverman's strange comments about `elimination' and `displacement' of labour must be seen (p . above) . He squares the circle by providing more and more `previously untransformed sectors of production' to be swallowed up by the `black hole' of R .S .L . 55 Marx 1976, p . 271, see also Note 20 above . 56 `Skill is not essential to control . It is possible for unskilled workers, sub-divided into routine repetitive jobs, to use their collective strength to oppose capital' Beynon and Nichols, 1977, p . 108 . In this context Baldamus' treatment of the `effort bargain' is superior to Marx's, and should be noted by those who see Taylorism as a major feature of modern capitalism : ` . . .who can define ability, restricted output, capacity ('fullest' or otherwise)? If the intensity of effort expected from the worker is left undefined, then, surely, everything else that is stated about wages, hours, and method of payment is equally indeterminate .the formal contract between employer and employee is incomplete in a very fundamental sense' (Baldamus, 1961, pp . 90-1) . 57 Beynon and Nichols, 1977, p . 176, talking of management in a chemical plant : `Their predicament is that in order to serve the ends of private appropriation they want to socialise production : to have it recognised, by workers, that production is collective, social, labour . But this development is itself held back by the end of private appropriation' . 58 This contradictory relationship extends to technology and the labour process itself, not just authority relations . Reid (1980) and McGoldrick (1979) have both shown that one important response of the British shipbuilding industry to crisis has been to drive down the organic composition of capital, and rely on the relatively higher skills of the workforce : ` . . . industrialists preferred the short term flexibility implied by the employment of a large and varied skilled workforce to the rigidities of heavy investment in plant, with the implied expensive overheads in periods of low output the most fundamental general point to emerge from this study is the emphasis on the complexity and diversity of the formation of the working class long after the transition to a mature industrial economy .' (1980, pp . 199, 198) . 59 See pp . 15 above and Note 50 above . This parallels the conclusions on strategy referred to in Note 46 above, in which economic determinism transforms itself into voluntarism . 60 Gordon, 1976 . 61 Hence the significance of the work that has been done on labour
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markets, both internal (job hierarchies) and external. 62 1974, p . 86 . 63 Significant here is Cadbury's article in Sociological Review . As an employer, he uses similar arguments against introducing Taylorism at all to those that modern theorists have advanced for its limited application : that trade unions would oppose it because it would relatively depress wages in the long run, if universally implemented, and because it confronted head-on , an increasing knowledge on the part of the workman of his lack of control over the conditions of his own life .' (1914, p . 105) . A crude Taylorist assault on joint-regulation was simply not on, in Cadbury's eyes, and instead he stressed the advantages of areas of cooperation : `We have always believed that business efficiency and the welfare of our employees are but different sides of the same coin .' (p . 107) . A preliminary extension of joint control by employers, he believed, could forestall more radical demands later on . 64 Lazonick, 1979 p . 258-9 . 65 Sohn Rethel, 1978 p . 151 . 66 1979, p . 66 . 67 Marx, 1976 p . 433 . 68 Burawoy, 1978 p . 249 . 69 For the term Neo Smithian Marxism see Brenner, 1977 . Burawoy also refers to Brenner's approach (1978, pp . 282 and 257) . It should be stressed that Brenner sees Neo Smithianism as a product of the misinterpretation of Marx rather than a critique of Marx himself . See Marx, 1976 p . 873-6 . See also Note 20 70 In this lies the role of market forces as `wicked uncle', above Note 49 . 71 Marx, 1973, p . 83 . 72 Palmer, 1975 p. 31 . 73 Thompson, 1978 pp . 252-3 . 74 1976, p . 92 . 75 Banaji, 1977 p . 2, quoting Marx, 1973 p . 109 . See also Thompson, 1978 sections IX and X . 76 There is a sense in which Vol . I leads on to `What Is To Be Done' and `State and Revolution' . Given this, it is perhaps worth examining how far Rowbotham's criticisms of Leninism apply to Marxism itself in its aspect as `scientific socialism' . 77 On this, compare Elbaum and Wilkinson's account of the struggles in the steel industry with that of Stone : (1979, pp . 288-293) . 78 Feuer, 1969 p . 520 . Engels could be accused of overemphasising the role of the forces of production in the dialectic : `If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, insofar as he employs them, to a veritable despotism' (1969, p . 521) . 79 The phrase is Elson's (1979a and 1979b) . 80 This means recognising that different sections of the working class have different, even antagonistic interests, whose resolution will be a political question irreducible to the `science' of political economy . Beyond this, it means a recognition that the factory and the `state' are not the only focus of struggle and that the demand for workers' control must encompass areas of `work' which under capitalism occur in the family and the home . On the recognition of divergent interests in the struggle see Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright, 1979 . C.C.- 1 1-0
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 81
See Elger, 1979, p . 64 n . 10, and Reid 1980, Ch . 7 : 'It seems then, that the commonly used dichotomy between the skilled) and the unskilled, and the other closely related pairs of opposites `Labour aristocracy' : `proletariat', `craft union' : 'industriall union' and `bureaucracy' : `rank and file', derive more from long, traditions of ideological conflict within the labour movement' than from accurate and critical investigations of the composition of the alliances which periodically confronted each other behind those banners' (pp . 201-2) . Rowbotham points to the lessons of the women's movement for how `skill' is theorised, so that `although the labour movement' has carried an implicit opposition to reproducing hierarchy . . these have coexisted with less democratic values . . .a vitals source of male working class dignity has been bound up withi having a skill . . .the destruction of skills, an important area ot, creativity allowed to some workers, has been countered by a passionate assertion of manhood .' Beechey, 1979, pp . 7-111 makes very similar criticisms about Braverman's treatment ot, the family to those we have advanced about skill : `the transformation of aspects of the family role under the impact of thei development of the capitalist mode of production does not' entail their obliteration . . . we need a concept of class as a historically instituted social relationship, and a conceptual' framework which enables us to explore concretely the forma which the relationship between labour in its various forms (wage labour, domestic labour) and capital assume in different historical conditions .' (p . 7, p . 25) . 82 See Hyman, 1979 . 83 The concept of a `frontier' of control is also obviously firmly) rooted in R .S .L.-F .S .L . analysis. It s first dimension is a zero sum one : a special case of the constant haggling between buyeri and seller in which the issue is how much labour is to be supp lied from a given amount of the labour-power commodity .. The 'effort-bargain' (see our reference to Baldamus in Note 56 above) then becomes a question of how `real' capital can make its `formal' subordination of labour . The second dimension of the frontier is of the struggle over the nature and purpose of work : its form and content rather than its amount (Goodrich, 1973, Ch . 1) . This is the dimension Gramsci attempts to capture when he contrasts the trade union which organises the workers as wage slaves, as commodities, and' which therefore in its `essential nature is competitive, not communist', with the factory council which organising the workers as a force of production constitutes `a denial of industrial legality' . Our analysis suggests that recognising the second dimension or the `frontier' casts doubt on the validity of considering either dimension as a `frontier' or of being able to separate the two . The dual nature of control means that conflict about work and' control is not zero sum . To equate unions with wage struggles,, job control and incorporation, and the factory committee (oi `rank and file') with political struggle, workers' control and the' struggle for socialism does not fit reality, and slips back into the bifurcated antinomy we set out to attack in the first place . This is not to deny that there are crucial differences between shop stewards' committees and trade unions, but too often arg uments derived from the notion of the frontier of control end'
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up with conclusions about the betrayal and incorporation of the bureaucracy, which as `struggle' fails to materialise, extends to the `rank and file' as well . 84 Hyman, 1971 p . 52, quoting Gramsci on the role of the revolutionary party . One implication of our argument is that the revolutionary left has one-sidedly emphasises the assault on state power, rather than the possibility of prefigurative material struggle, while the reformist left has remained caught within the logic of `advance' secured by reforms carried out by the state . This is exactly the point Rowbotham, Segal and Wainwright make in their book . See especially pp . 132-144, 'Prefigurative Political Forms' . They argue that `we can not assume that we will one day in the future suddenly come to control how we produce, distribute and divide goods and services and that this will rapidly and simply make us new human beings . They (i .e . pre-figurative forms) see the struggle for survival as part of here and now .' (p . 140) . 85 To paraphrase BLPG . 86 See, e .g . Tronti, 1979 . 87 Clegg is one of the foremost of the orthodox analysts of the industrial relations `system' in Britain, now head of the pay comparability commission . See Clegg, 1960 . 88 Thus the treatment of sabotage by Nichols and Beynon (1977, p . 141) and Beynon (1973, pp . 140-1) are to be preferred to that of Taylor and Walton (1971, pp . 219-245) . 89 Nichols and Beynon, 1977, p. 18 . 90 Beynon, 1973, pp . 318-9 . 91 Nichols and Beynon, 1977, p. 143 . 92 Ibid p . 16 . 93 To an extent this paper remains a prisoner of the formalism it has set out to criticise . No adequate analysis can be based on arguments (such as ours above) which deal in terms of `capital' and `labour' as fairly homogenous entitities . However, we would argue strongly that notions of formal and real subordination, and the theorisation of the labour process they inform are an obstacle rather than an aid to analysis .
:IBLIOGRAPHY
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CAPITAL & CLASS 11 Cadbury, M ., 1914, `Industrial Organisation', Sociological Revieu No . 7 . Clarke, T ., 1977, `Industrial Democracy : The Institutionalised Supp ression of Industrial Conflict?', Clarke and Clements (Ed .) Tradh Unions Under Capitalism, Fontana . Clegg, H ., A New Approach to Industrial Democracy, Blackwell . Elger, T ., 1979, `Valorisation and Deskilling : A Critique of Braver man', Capital and Class 7 (Spring) . Elbaum, B . and Wilkinson, F ., 1979, `Industrial Relations and Un even Development : A Comparative Study of the American anc British Steel Industries', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol . 3 . Elson, D ., (Ed .), 1979b, Value, C .S .E . Books . Engels, F ., 1969a, `On Authority' in L .S .Feuer (Ed .) Marx anc Engels : Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, Fontana . Engels, F ., 1969b, The Condition of the English Working Class Panther. Flanders, A ., 1965, Industrial Relations, What is Wrong With the System?, Faber and Faber. Friedman, A ., 1977, Industry and Labour, MacMillan . Gintis, H ., 1976, `The Nature of Labour Exchange and the Theory of Capitalist Production' Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 8, No . 2 . Goodrich, C ., 1973, The Frontier of Control, Pluto . Gordon, D . M ., 1976, `Capitalist Efficiency and Socialist Efficiency', Monthly Review, Vol . 28 No . 3 . Gramsci, A ., 1977, Political Writings 1910-1920, Lawrence anc Wishart . Hinton, J ., 1976, `Reply to Monds', New Left Review No . 97 . Hunnius, G ., et al 1973, Workers Control, Random House . Hyman, R ., 1971 Marxism and the Sociology of Trade Unionism Pluto . Hyman, R ., 1979, `The Politics of Workplace Trade Unionism' Capital and Class 8 . Labour Party, 1969 Industrial Democracy . Lazonick, W ., 1978, `The Subjection of Labour to Capital : The Rise of the Capitalist System', Review of Radical Political Econ . omics, Vol . 10 No . 1 . Lazonick, W ., 1979, `Industrial Relations and Technical Change : The Case of the Self-Acting Mule', Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol . 3 No . 3 . McGoldrick, J ., 1979, unpublished, The Labour Process in British Shipbuilding : Working Paper No . 2, Dept . of Sociology, Univer . sity of Glasgow . Marglin, S ., 1974, `What Do Bosses Do?', Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol . 6 No . 2 . Marx, K ., 1899, Value Price and Profit, George Allen and Unwin . Marx, K ., 1970, Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence and Wishart . Marx, K ., 1973, Grundrisse, Penguin . Marx, K ., 1976, Capital Vol. I, Penguin . Monds, J ., 1976, `Workers Control and the Historians : A New Econ . omism', New Left Review No . 97 . Montgomery, D ., 1974, `The New Unionism and the Transformation of Workers' Consciousness in America, 1909-22', Journal of Social History (Summer) . Negri, T ., 1979, `The Strategy of the Refusal', in Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis, Red Notes : CSE Books .
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Nichols, T ., 1975, `The Socialism of Managament', Sociological Review (May). Nichols, T ., 1980 (Ed.), Capital and Labour, Fontana . Palmer, B ., 1975, `Class Conception and Conflict : The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labour and the Working Class Rebellion 1903-22', Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 7 No . 2 . Ramsay, H ., 1977, " " Cycles of Control" : Worker Participation in Sociological and Historical Perspective', Sociology, (September) . Reid, A ., 1980, The Division of Labour in the British Shipbuilding Industry, 1880-1920 . With Special Reference to Clydeside, (Ph .D . Thesis, University of Cambridge) . Rowbotham, S ., Segal, L ., and Wainwright, H ., 1979, Beyond the Fragments, Merlin . Sohn Rethel, A ., 1978, Intellectual and Manual Labour . Stone, K ., 1974, `The Origin of Job Structures in the Steel Industry', Review of Radical Political Economics Vol . 6 No 2 . Taylor, F .W ., 1914, `Scientific Management : Reply from Mr F .W. Taylor', Sociological Review. Taylor, P .S ., 1979, `Labour Time, Work Measurement and the Commensuration of Labour', Capital and Class 9 . Thompson, E .P., 1978 The Poverty of Theory, Merlin . Taylor, L . and Walton, P., 1971, `Industrial Sabotage, Motives and Meanings', in S . Cohen (Ed .) Images of Deviance, Pelican .
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