The view held by some trade unionists is that militancy is the key that opens all doors for the working class. The argument is deceptively simple: as strikes can gain wage increases more and larger strikes will gain more increases, seemingly without limit. How far is this true? There is plenty of past and current evidence though, as will be seen, some of it is open to misrepresentation.
When Marx wrote about this more than a century ago, he did not share the “militant” view about the extent to which trade union pressure could raise wages. In his Value, Price and Profit for example (Chapters IV and XIV) and in Wage-Labour and Capital (p.35 in the Whitehead edition) he took a somewhat pessimistic line based on his understanding of how capitalism works. While urging resistance to the efforts of employers to depress wages he thought it was largely a defensive struggle, with only occasional opportunities for the workers to secure “temporary improvement”.
Marx’s view was that the times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement were when the capitalists were doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. In the reverse phase of the “trade cycle”, with sales and profits falling and unemployment rising, he thought the workers could do little.
“The relations between the supply and demand of labour power undergo perpetual change, and with them the market of labour-power. If the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method”.
To bring this statement into harmony with the present period of fast-rising prices it has to be remembered that though money wages do not now sink, a pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall of “real wages”, i.e. a fall in purchasing power.
The Failure of Past Strike Action
It will be noticed that Marx talked of “testing” the situation when trade is bad. The militants, like the SWP, reject this. They think that if enough workers strike they can make big gains in spite of adverse conditions. As regards past experience the evidence is all against the militants’ case. Apart from 1921 and 1926, the record number of days lost through strikes was in 1893, when the total was over 30 million. This included Lancashire cotton workers who were out for five months, and 400,000 miners. Both strikes failed and wages generally did not rise.
Another outstanding example was the ten years 1921-1930. Unemployment was high, trade was bad and prices were falling –in all by 30 per cent. In those years, which included the General Strike of 1926, the number of days lost by strikes and lockouts averaged 31 million a year, but the strikes completely failed to prevent wages also falling by about 30 per cent.
In more recent times 29.9 million days were lost in the so-called winter of discontent in 1979 which resulted in 18 years of Tory government and the disastrous miner’s strike of 1984 when 27.1 million days were lost and within a decade most of the mines were closed.
Discontent & Resistance
The question arises to what extent experience of strikes today differs from the past. Various changes have taken place since the late 19th century and first two decades of the 20th century. There are more trade unionists, though still only a minority of the workers and workers on strike instead of depending entirely on their own resources and trade union and benefit society funds can now get Social Security payments for their families.
There is also a raft of anti-trade union legislation enacted by the Tory government of the 1980’s; strikes are more disruptive and inconvenient and employers are increasing using the courts to prevent them occurring on legal technicalities.
British capitalism in the past three years has been in depression with unemployment at one point topping 2.47 million. 455,000 working days were also lost to industrial action in 2009 a marked increase on 2008 but a fraction of days lost during the 1970’s and 1980’s reflecting weakness in the trade Union movement for prolonged strike action.
However, it would be wrong to suppose that the recent greater increase in strike action is a reflection of workers’ discontent but is also a reflection of stronger and better organized resistance by employers like British Airways. It is a truism that the most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production.
In recent years, with sales falling off, employers have taken a tougher line because they stand to lose less when trade is slack than when they have full order books and are hard pressed to meet delivery dates.
Thinking Politically
What then has been the outcome of the big increase in strikes? The current depression presents workers with a problem in maintaining real wages. The employers and their political agents know this and will exploit it to their own benefit.
Geoff Dicks, one of the three members of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), told MPs in July 2010 that British capitalism will experience “falling real wages” as pay rises fail to keep pace with inflation (Daily Telegraph July 21st 2010).
Public sector workers have already had their pay frozen for the next two years, while many private sector workers have had to accept similar deals or part time work in order to preserve their jobs.
Geoff Dicks went on to say:
“One statistic that really impresses me is that job losses in this recession from peak to trough were 740,000…In the recession of the 1990s, it was an extra million. In the 1980s, an extra million.”
Workers have been kept in jobs as many companies managed through the depression by cutting and freezing wages or moving staff to shorter hours. It is doubtful if these workers were impressed with their economic position but then Geoff Dicks is a cheerleader for the capitalist class and avid devotee of economic liberalism which has at its core a belief in a “flexible” labour market.
In the same newspaper report John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said:
“Employers will work those people harder during initial phase of recovery; to reduce unit labour costs…We’re starting to see some of that already.”
Mr Philpott concluded that as workers return to full time work they are likely to be asked to work harder. The economic struggle by workers to either maintain or increase their wages is, as Marx noted over a century ago, a defensive struggle on a playing field which favours the capitalist class.
To resist the intensity of exploitation and to maintain real wages against inflation workers will have no choice but to struggle for higher wages even if this means
using the strike weapon. The strike, during an economic depression, though, is a blunt instrument to wield. It is difficult to use the strike to gain more pay when
production is being curtailed, workers being laid off and the business facing bankruptcy.
A searching question has to be asked by workers. In the long term what has the day to day class struggle really achieved for the working class? Higher pay and better working conditions still keeps the workers within the exploitive wages system. The economic struggle is merely defensive, takes up great deal of energy and time in order just to keep pace with changing events. Workers are always at the mercy of adverse economic conditions or intransigent employers and their State. And success often turns into failure with gains made today lost tomorrow.
Workers should understand the severe limitations placed on the defensive nature of trade union action. Instead, workers should think and act politically. The class struggle has to be a political struggle or it is nothing. And that means workers taking conscious and political action in a principled Socialist Party to replace capitalism with Socialism.
