Rise of the Left Thus, the Housing Finance Act is quite a clever mancouver on the part of the capitalist class. It is designed both to guarantee massive profits for that section of the capitalist class which operates in the land and house building fields, and at the same time ensure that lower paid workers will be able to get accommodation of some kind in the urban centres at the expense of other workers.
GROWTH OF THE 'STRONG' STATE Lastly we should see how the Act generalises the control of the state bureaucracy over the entire field of housing for rent - by generalising the concept of a "Fair Rent" which is defined as a) the rent realsable if there were a balance between supply and demand in an area; and b) as the rent to be charged having regard to what would be a reasonable return on a dwelling as an investment". In other words, these two typical mechanisms of capitalism - market price and profit rate — can no longer operate freely but must now be determined by the state bureaucracy. Since the free operation of the laws of capitalist economy threaten to produce a massive social breakdown, the state takes over, extending its bureaucratic apparatus into new areas, while at the same time abrogating PROLETARIAN FORCE any autonomy of the local apparatus in favour of the central machinery. This is how the "strong state" evolves to guard the capitalist economy under monopoly capitalism. Unless the 'natural" laws of monopoly capitalism are controlled by the bourgeoisie a social crisis will emerge which would open the way for a revolt against the capitalist system itself. Thus the state intervenes in an attempt to render these economic laws "harmless". Such intervention is not a submission of the capitalist class to the state, but on the contrary signifies the service rendered by the state in the long term interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. The intervention of the state, needless to say, does not solve the problem; it merely guards against the immediate effects of the problem while creating the conditions for the problem to appear in a different form. The forgoing analysis differs from those made by most others on the left. The latter tend to see the Act as nothing more than a rent increase, a means of squeezing all tenants for more profits for the ever hungry capitalists. Thus to achieve a united struggle against the Act they have to try to prove that everybody will face large rent increases. The Communist Party's folder "No Rent Rises" therefore has to tell us simply: "What is the aim of the Tory rent Bill?......To increase rents - double for council tenants and 2% times for private tenants". And what is the reason for the introduction of the Act? Not some important features of the crisis of capitalism but this: "The Tories'.....hatred of the working class and its hard won democratic rights." Similarly the IS pamphlet, "Tory Rent Robbery and How to Fight It", ever so anti-Tory, explains: "The Tory Housing Bill is designed to inflict massive rent increases on the five and a half million families who live in Council houses and also on the one and a third million families who rent from private landlords". As for the rent rebate scheme, this is a Tory conspiracy: "The truth is: the rent rebate scheme is a major con-trick by the Tories to dress up their rent rises."
This is also the analysis which the Labour Party has made of the Act, and in our view it is inadequate. In the first place, the government has made a number of 'concessions' on the actual scope of the rises this autumn. Crosland, the Labour Party spokesman has heralded this as a 'great victory' for the struggle of Labour MPs in the Commons, "driving a coach and four through the Act". This would indeed be the case if the purpose of the Act was simply a steep increase in rents this autumn. Secondly. a number of tenants, mobilised by left groups asainst the 'rent robbery' have discovered that their rents will not in fact be going up Thirdly, some rebated paper, have somewhat less to pay in reat in the short-term. For example, an internal document of one inner London Council, which has refused to implement the Act, reports: *We calculate that, under the basic national scheme, some two-thirds of present rebated tenants will be better off.... and one third will be worse off than under our present scheme". 8000 private tenants are expected to apply for rent allowances from Camden Council. (Of course, the "poverty trap', by which wage rises for the lower paid result in loss of rebate and other benefits, means that the rent act will not make the low paid richer. But this does not make the rent rebates a 'con-trick". The ruling class is not primarily concerned to convince the lower paid. It is concerned to exploit them in the big cities and to do that adequately, these lower paid workers must be got off the street at night. The rebates are designed to do that.)
Thus it is absolutely inadequate to organise the struggle against the Housing Finance Act on the basis simply of fighting a rent increase. While the Act will involve substantial rent increases for a large number of tenants, its basic purpose is much more far reaching: it is an attempt, as shown already, to provide a long-term solution to the housing crisis in the big cities in the interest of monopoly capital. It must therefore be fought as such, and not only as a fight to keep rents at their present BOURGEOIS FORCE VS The ruling class, to solve its problems relating to housing introduced the Housing Finance Act. The capitalists utilise the forces of their state, the bureaucrats, police, courts, etc. The job of working class leaders is to show the NOTES 1. Financial Times,7/8/72 - Sandy McLachlan, "Growing need for more adequate housing". 2. Action Group on London Housing chaired by Reginald Eyre, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. Department of the Environment.
Financial Times, 19/6/72 - David Bebb of The Government's White Paper "Public Expenditure to 1975-76", published 25/11/71, shows that for housing the average annual percentage increase 1971-72 to 1975-76 will be one-fifth of one percent, i.e, virtually nothing. 3. Labour Monthly, July 1972, article "Rents -LIme Is Shon.m... workers how they can utilise all the forces at their disposal against the Act. An example of this is when the republican workers in Northern Ireland, led by the IRA, built barricades and defended them and declared "no-go' areas. In most parts of Northern Ireland, unfortunately, it was the British army, the armed force of the British capitalists, who by setting up road blocks decided who should and who should not go through. In Free Derry however a section of the Irish working class decided who could pass. They laid down their law.
Some tenants associations in Britain have learned from this and have said they will make 'no-go' areas of their council estates if the council attempts to evict rent strikers. They will try to stop the forces of the capitalist state - a Housing Commissioner being appointed, to courts, bailiffs and police - from deciding in practice who does and who does not remain in their council flat.
So while we support each and every action of tenants against the Housing Finance Act, we think it is necessary for the struggle to be developed into a struggle against capitalism and capitalist law.
STRATEGY "The trouble", said several delegates at the National Association of Tenants and Residents Conference on July 29, "is that there are too many generals and not enough soldiers". They wete voicing the sentiment of many militants who are themselves prepared to fight the Housing Finance Act, but who feel that the problem lies in their lack of active mass support among une tonants.
Is it true that the potential 'generals' against the Act are stymied for lack of soldiers? If so, then the outlook for the fight against the Housing Finance Act would be bleak, However, the real problem in our view, is actually the opposite of that posed by the slightly despondent comrades of the NATR conference. The problem is that while even today there are thousands of people doing battle with the state because of capitalism's inability to solve the housing question, the labour movement and the British left have, so far, failed to work out a strategy for the successful waging of that battle. The soldiers, unnoticed by those who aspire to lead, ARE ALREADY FIGHTING. THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE LACK REAL GENERALS.
In London well over 200,000 families are on their local council's waiting list, and every day over one thousand families go down to their local council's housing department. They are homeless families, people on waiting lists, slum dwellers waiting for the bulldozer, council tenants thoroughly dissatisfied with their mediocre or downright bad housing. GROVESE majority plead with the council's officials in the ue dant ques in people who come to Their need remains unsatisfied despite ask, argue, shout, bang fists on desks and even physically assault the council officials. It is up to those who wish to lead a struggle against the act to see that these unsatisfied people are victims of precisely that urban crisis which a struggle against the Act has to take account of. The families who go in their thousands to argue with the council's officials struggle in an individual way, family by family. And because the state in the form of the local council is geared perfectly toward denying these individual approaches by bureaucratic trickery and administrative violence, the struggle of these people has for 25 years and longer been in vain. It is up to socialists to show tenants who are against the Act that they must solidarise themselves in that struggle with this mass of ill-housed people.
Every socialist agrees that the labour movement must be brought into the struggle, but it must be brought in on a broader basis than merely resisting rent increases. For instance, the CP sees little possible initiative for the trade union and labour movement. Instead we are to "back up the 300 Labour councils" if they take a stand against the Act. In other words, if by taking a stand against the act, they care to legitimise for the CP its own involvement in the struggle. The CP more and more is making its own fight dependent upon the possibility of it reaching an alliance with the Labour left. Where the Morning Star correctly reports that local government workers could play an important role in making the law inoperative, the CPs ability in practice to carry out this struggle is dreadfully hampered by its strategy of seeking alliancer which will take it into Parliament with the Labour left. Such a Labour "leftist" is Millie Miller, leader of Camden Council, who wrote the 'militant' article on the Act in the CP's "magazine of left unity", Labour Monthly&. This same fighter against the Act and contributor to the CP's magazine has instructed Camden's local government workers to comply with the law and obey a Housing Commissioner if one is appointed for Camden. On 2 August 1972 the same night as they voted, for the benefit of their local working class electors, not to implement the Act, the council of which she is Leader passed another less widely publicised resolution as follows: *That, in the event of take over some or all of the Council's housing functions, the Council will expect its officers to comply with the law in respect of any orders given by the Commissioner and will not discriminate against any officer for this action." The last ten words of the resolution are simply the go ahead being given by the "socialists" who run the Council to local government officials who want to implement the Act the they have nothing to fear from their Labour employers. Needless to say, the concept of "forcing the Labour left to fight" or of "putting pressure on hte Labour left" is inadequate. The attitude of the Labour left to the demonstrations and petitions launched to achieve such pressure is merely to use these activities as evidence of the "support of the people" for the Parliamentary Labour Party and its policies.
Mrs. Miller, her Labour colleagues and ultimately her suitorsin the CP, act like this because of their political conceptions. They believe that change is to be had through Parliament. This means that for them, extra Parliamentary activities, such as the mass action of tenants and workers are mere adjuncts to the Parliamentary process - that is, it may be useful to Mrs. Miller, if she becomes MP for Ilford North, that when she makes a speech in the House of Commons a few hundred people are standing outside waiting to present a petition in support of her speech. But direct intervention in politics by workers, such as the disruption of the state by local government workers working in the heart of the monster, this is taboo for Mrs. Miller, for if the working class can independently of Parliament achieve its ends what use will it have for Mrs. Miller? And what use will it have for those "communists" who have tied themselves to Mrs. Miller's apron strings?
LOCAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS We support rent strikes and the actions of tenants such as the setting up of "no-go" areas on their estates to defend their strike against bailiffs and police.
An immediate task for socialists is to extend the struggle to win support among local and central government workers. The struggle can be strategically strengthened by actions of these workers to make inoperable the law that the ruling class is attempting to use to solve its problems. And tenants on rent strike have far less to fear if they know that local government workers are refusing to produce rent records, refusing to collect rents, refusing to report who is on rent strike and refusing to be involved in any way against the tenants.
THE DIFFERENCE The working class in Britain has numerically and organisationally the strongest trade union movement in the world. But if suffers a crippling weakness: its reformist, social democratic ideology which restricts the direct intervention of the working class in the class struggle to the terrain of wages, conditions at work and rents, leaving the class battle on all other questions to be fought in Parliament -the terrain chosen and controlled by the ruling class. The difference between the sorts of struggles I have posed on the housing question and the sorts of struggles promoted by the Labour Party and the Communist Party is that both the LP and the CP ask us to wage our struggle on the parilamentary terrain - the terrain of the ruling class. They ask us to attempt to struggle within institutions such as Parliament and local councils which were created by the bourgeoisie precisely to prevent the successful struggles of the working class.
The Red Mole 2 October 1972 Page 5
From Rousseau to Lenin From Rousseau to Lenin, by Lucio Colletti (New Left Books, £3.75) This book is by far one of the most interesting to appear in the New Left Books series. It deals with a central question, the theoretical origins of the growth of reformism in the Second International, in a way which is both clear and thorough. The book then finishes by a clear statement of two of the fundamental principles of Lenin - the theory of the state and the rejection of Marxism as a classless "truth'. As it is precisely the theories of the classless state and of classless science which were at the heart of the revisionism of the main theoreticians of the Second International, Colletti's book as a whole can be taken as a systematic exposition of Marxist theory as developed in a struggle against the views of Plekhanov, Kautsky, Hilferding, Bernstein and the other representatives of classical Social Democracy.
AMBIGUOUS LEGACY I n developing his analysis of the theoreticians of the Second International, Colletti is forced to begin with an analysis of the profoundly ambiguous legacy of Engels. This is shown both in his great illusions in Parliamentatianism and his revisionist views on the question of philosophy. These two ideas, which in Engels always remained eclectically combined with revolutionary and Marxist views, were built upon by Engels' literary inheritors Bernstein and Kautsky. They lead to a complete fatalism and consequent passivity in the face of the class struggle. How frequently in the course of the development of reformism were Bernstein and Co. able to quote Engels when he said: "We can count even today on two and a quarter million voters. If it continues in this fashion, by he and of the cestury we shall conquer he greater part of the middle strats of society, petty bourgeois and peasants, and into the decisive power in the land, before which all other powers will have to bow, whether they like it or not. To keep this growth going without interruption until it of itself gets beyond the control of the prevailing government system, that is our main task". (my emphasis) In this one passage is the perfect combination of Parliamentary illusions and fatalism (growing "of itself") which lay at the heart of the ideas of the Second International.
The philosophical origins of this fatalism of course lie in those revisions of Marxism introduced by Engels in his later works. Here Engels reverted to the Hegelian idea of a "Dialectic of Nature". It is true that there are certain important passages in the Dialectio of Nature which go against this concept, but the general effect was to bring about a reconciliation between Marxism and classical materialism. Once this is done then of course man's action becomes a mere 'effect of "material causes. This leads to both Engels and Plekhanov resurrecting Hegel's ideas on freedom and necessity (see Colletti, page 69) and turning Marxism into a sub variant of Darwin's theory of evolution. Once this particular road has been taken, the way is open for every possible crude brand of determinism, fatalism and any theory which justifies passivity. As against this, Colletti reasserts the Marxist views that "Both subjectand object are part of an objective objectsubject process" (pl 0) and "Consciousness belongs to life insofar as it is one of its parts. Theory is practice insofar as it is one aspect or moment of practice". (pl 1)
JUSTIFICATION If all these early parts of the book sound so me what obscure and abstract, the justification clearly comes in the last two essays, and particularly in the essay on Lenin's concept of the State. This is a classic of clear exposition. Nothing could sum up Lenin's conception more clearly than Colletti's formulation that: "The destruction of the bourgeois State machine is not the Ministry of the Interior in flames, it is not the barricades. All this may take place, but it is not the essential point. What is essential to the revoiution is the destruction of the diaphragm that separates the working class from power, the emancipation and self determination of The General Electric Company Limited, an Anti-Report (Counter Information Services, 25p)
Counter Information Services have now published the second in a series of 'exposés' of big corporations, the first being a report on Rio Tinto Zinc, Their aim seems to be to build up casebook examples of what they call the evils of "monopoly power in a democratic society", and here they go to work to prove the popular (mis) conception that GEC is a peculiarly evil case. Perhaps there is comfort in the fact that the writers do not convincingly prove that GEC is so exceptional. The Anti-Report includes material on GEC's in vestments in Southern Africa and contribution to the American aggression in Vietnam. Comparisons between GEC profits and the wageg of the African workers they employ (from 10.7p to 21.5p per hour) and the various legal restrictions and penalties they suffer, are very effective; but they do not give any quantitative estimates of GEC investment to prove that GEC is exceptionally implicated in the build up of imperialist investment in what was, until the Sixties at least, an area relatively free from colonial revolution. GEC has certainly been exceptional for a British firm in winning military contracts from the Pentagon, but is still clearly a very small fish in this particular pond. And concentration on these 'dirty" aspects of GEC unfortunately creates the impression that these activities could cease if the company abandoned what they call the "GEC morality". "NATIONAL INTEREST"
In their anxiety to assert that GEC behaves contrary to the "real national interest", the writers make several complaints. We are told that GEC are unusually prone to pushing up prices in order to increase their profits, even though elementary economic theory can show that this often has the opposite effect. The writers also demand greater "public accountability; but as they point out, the Monopolies Commission (a body which exists to protect capitals from one another rather than the 'public' from monopolies) could find no cause for complaint since the majority of GEC's customers were nationalised industries, themselves monopoly buyers. Furthermore, to spend a whole chapter saying that the history of the electrical industry is marked by cartels, trusts, and price-fixing arrangements, is only to indicate what it has in common with every other major sector of capitalist enterprise since the turn of the century. There is more substance in the charge that GEC eliminated the TXE3 electronic telephone exchange at Woolwich because it would have made obsolete the Strowger switching gear which GEC manufactures elsewhere for the GPO; but such examples could be cited from every industry. Moreover, they are only a surface manifestation of the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and private property relations.
REDUNDANCY The central concern of the Anti-Report is the question of redundancy. Although the research team state in the Introduction that GEC is not exceptional in creating redundancy they do say that it has the worst record the former, the transmission of power directly into the hands of the people". (p21) It is at this point that we can see that Colletti's long explorations of the theoreticians of the Second International are not something abstracted from revolutionary practice. They are the essential preparation for a practice which can reject the narrow stereotypes of revolution which abound on the left. This, in short, is a book which everyone should attempt to read. The main obstacle to this is not going to be the translation or Colletti's style, both of which are admirably clear, but the absurd price. Colletti stresses the need to break down the diaphragm separating the masses from power, but New Left Books appear to be intent on erecting a diaphragm which separates the masses financially from the best Marxist literature. In a period of relatively mass interest in Marxism, what is wanted is a paperback publishing house, not a collection of beautifully bound books for a select elite of academics to pore over. Now that some of the earlier issues in this series are coming out as paperbacks, we can only hope that it is financially viable to bring this book of Colletti's out in the same way as soon as possible.
Robert Mossgeil. The General Electric Company Limited - an Anti-Report TEL 0203 53152 CONSTRUCTION DIVISION WOOLWICH SE 18 on this score, and the process of "dehumanisation" has gone further here than in other companies. In the space of six years, GEC has cut its inherited labour force from 245,000 to 181,000. This has certainly been partially responsible for the rise in profits from £49 million in 1969 to £77 million in 1972; but is Weinstock's concern really only with "chopping", to the exclusion of "long-range planning"? We also suspect that this kind of redundancy rate is common in British industry - the British Steel Corpor ation, for example, is cutting the labour force from 317,000 to 215,000 in 7 to 8 years. Another thesis seems to be that the GEC merger resulted in redundancies which would otherwise not have occurred. But, as the authors point out, AEl-Woolwich had already sacked 2,000 workers and it is likely AEl would have closed the factory even if the merger had not taken place". The fact is that every major sector of British capital is at present faced with the option of concentration (leading to redundancy) or a rash of bankruptcies (also leading to redundancy). International productivity and profitability comparisons would demonstrate this, but the writers do not give them, not do they give economic indicators for the pre-merger firms.
The failure of the unions to build a combinewide fight against GEC rationalisation, the cynicism of the leadership, (and the lies coming out of Weinstock's office) are well documented. But the line of some of the shop stewards was not much help either: Harlow should not have concentrated exclusively on the KV Electron microscope (many shop stewards seem to know GEC's interests better than GEC); redundancy was opposed not on class grounds but because it breaks up valuable research teams; and refuge was finally sought in that last gesture of despair, nationalisation by the capitalist state. The authors endorse these views, placing them at the centre of their own sheet of charges against GEC. The claim that the GPO could have taken over Wodwich and run it in competition with GEC lacks credibility. First of all, the state nationalises only in favour of monopoly capital. Secondly, state corporations derive much of their capital from the same banks which have interests in GEC. Some 20 to 25 per cent of European industry is run by the bourgeois state, the banks receiving interest direct from the profits, or, where they make a loss, from the state treasuries. Thirdly, it should be said in passing, bourgeois nationalisation RADICAL SCHOLARS OF SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES Second Conference at Imperial College, London SW7, 20-22 October, 1972 Friday 20th: 6-7pm Registration 7.30pm Continuity and Change in the Polish Working Class -Jerzy Kolankiewicz (Swansea)
Saturday 21st: 11am Marxist Theories of the Soviet Union - H.H. Ticktin (Glasgow) 2.30pm Transitional Economy -Ernest Mandel (Belgium) 7pm The Soviet State - Ralph Miliband (Leeds)
Sunday 22nd: 11am Political Change Since Stalin - Mary McAuley (Essex) 2.30pm The Legacy of Czechoslovakia - Jiri Pelikan (Italy)
Further details, including requests for (spartan) accommodation: CRSEES, 150 Elgin Avenue, London W9.
There will be a conference fee of E1 (students 75p) or 20p per session, any profit towards the costs of Critique, a new journal of Socialist Theory focussing on this area of discussion. G.E.C.:A.E.I. Telecommunications FACTORY NOW CLOSED ALL TRADE ENQUIRIES TO BE MADE AT GEC AEI TELECOMMUNICATIONS LIMITED PO BOX Nº 53. COVENTRY WARWICKSHIRE GEC AEI SUPERTENSION CABLE AND ENTRANCE AND ENQUIRIES AT GATE IN HARDENS MANORWAY.
AUTION GUARD DOGS ON PREMISES is only another form of concentration of capital, usually resulting, as with other forms of capital concentration, in redundancy (e.g. National Coal Board, British Railways, British Steel Corporation, etc.).
TYPE OF RESEARCH
It would be easy for CIS to produce a string of such Anti-Reports, but the exercise would lose interest as a string of exceptions turned into a picture of the normal, thereby undermining the premise of the exercise itself. This type of company research logically belongs in either the trade unions or a revolutionary organisation, The unions could pivot such publications around the sections on management closure strategy and tactics; the revolutionary organisation around the problem of the relation between capital and the state, using examples like GEC to attack the notion that the state is neutral or that its foreign policies, for example, are governed by pieties (this latter point escapes the writers who do not seem to understand that the repression in South Africa or counter-revolution in Vietnam, not to mention bourgeois nationalisation, are operations designed to create the preconditions for successful capital accumulation). The lists of GEC subsidiaries given in the report could provide a useful starting point for an investigation by the unions of GEC's locational strategy; and the lists of GEC's connections, via directorships, with other sectors of industrial and financial capital, provide the revolutionary organisation with a useful picture of the cohesion of the big bourgeoisie. Left to itself, CIS, having started out by saying some monopolies are worse than others, may well end up "proving' the (as yet not quite stated) idea that all monopoly is bad in comparison with longlost 'free market forces'. 1. E. Jenning.
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Meg Mansfield reports on two strikes which vividly illustrate the