The recent massive demonstrations against the Macron administration in France forcing through so-called pension reforms reveals the determined attempts of capitalist governments in all the major economies to cut real wages when workers are old and can no longer work. Workers are forced to work longer. The UK government is considering extending the pension age for those in their 40s to 70.
Pensions are really deferred wages, deductions from income from work to pay for a reduced income when workers retire. After decades of exploited employment, workers, male and female, should be entitled to stop and enjoy the last decade or so of life without toil without being poverty stricken.
Pensions have a long history; they were introduced by Bismarck in Germany (then set at 70 years of age) in the face of the rising Social Democratic Party. The Liberal Party, under Prime Minister Herbert Asquith introduced a pension scheme, devised by the previous administration under Lloyd George, in the UK in Jan 1909 under the guise of preventing the working class from engaging in what they erroneously believed was the revolutionary case for socialism.
The French government has used controversial special powers to force through a rise in the pension age. The president, Emmanuel Macon took a last-minute decision to avoid a parliamentary vote and instead enacted his unpopular plan to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. He opted to invoke article 49.3 of the constitution, which gives the government power to bypass parliament. So much for “capitalist democracy”.
Shortly afterwards, thousands of people gathered in a spontaneous protest at Place de la Concorde in the centre of Paris, as trade unions promised to intensify the strikes and street demonstrations that have taken place since January. The head of the CGT union, Philippe Martinez, said forcing through the law “shows contempt towards the people” (BBC News 23 March 2023).
Some, like journalist Agnes Poirier, see in the riots the “insurrectionary spirit of political extremes” (‘We French were born to confront Authority. Can Macron withstand the onslaught?’ The Observer 26 March 2023). #
They notice the rioters getting younger and becoming a new ‘1968’ by forming barricades, street fighting and attempting to seize public buildings. However, minority action was political suicidal folly in 1968 just as it is in 2023. Unless the immense majority of workers actively understand and want socialism there is no possibility of social change.
Even if an insurrectionist minority managed to gain control of political power, it would not alter the basic problems and processes of capitalism.
Remember, that after 1968, despite its radicalism and wall slogans “Soyez réalistes, demandez l’impossible. (“Be realistic, demand the impossible.”) and “Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin de lui.” (“The boss needs you; you don’t need him), the French President Charles de Gaulle, met secretly with the French military to obtain support if troops were needed to retake Paris from the rioters (shades of the Paris Commune of 1871). In any event the working-class in France voted for the conservative Gaullist, Georges Pompidou not for socialism nor the naïve politics of disaffected students.
The working class can only achieve its freedom from capitalism by democratically winning control of the machinery of government and using it to abolish class society by establishing socialism; a social system where production and distribution will take place solely and directly to meet human need. With the end of class society, the need for the State disappears and socialism will simply be a democratic administration for settling social affairs; locally, regionally and globally.
Macron and his politicians currently have a secure grip on the machinery of government, including the armed forces and the police. Riot police fired teargas and water cannon, charged the rioters with raised batons to disperse the crowd, as some protesters impotently threw cobblestones and burnt cars. Arrest and imprisonment followed.
Macron’s underhand use of Article 49.3 of the constitution to by pass Parliament raises the issue of the unintended consequences of bourgeois democracy and the constitutions on which they are based. Macron should be careful what he wishes for in using political technicalities to get his way. He narrowly defeated Marine Le Pen of the National Front Party at the last presidential elections. The ultra nationalism of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Barella’s Rassemblement National stand in the darkness of the side-stage of French politics. Fascism has not gone away.
It might not be the same again in the next French Presidential elections. A Victorious Le Pen forming a government could well use article 49.3 to bypass Parliament and implement a permanent prorogation of parliament – the classic move to dismantle the democratic process and establish an authoritarian regime.
Only a socialist vote made by politically conscious socialists counts for anything and has any revolutionary affect.
Macron claims that Pension reforms must happen because of “finances and future generations”. The finances of the State are not the concern of the working-class, and the need of future generations is the security and sanity of socialism; the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society.
Putting up the retirement age, which will see many workers die before they receive anything, starkly demonstrates that if you can’t work then you are no use to the capitalist class and its State so you simply become just an expendable burden on profits.
Macron states that there are not enough workers, and the current system would become bankrupt without the reforms. The profit system has nothing to offer the working class who we say are being exploited to keep a parasitical capitalist class in luxury and privilege. Yes, the capitalist class needs us; but we do not need them.
Weimar Republic
What of the the use by Macron of constitutional technicalities to bypass Parliament? We have been here before.
One of the detailed accounts of Hitler’s use of Article 48 and the Enabling Act to secure dictatorial power in 1933 is given by Richard J Evans in his book ‘The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis destroyed democracy and Seized Power In Germany’ Penguin 2005).
Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic of Germany (1919–1933) allowed the President, under certain circumstances, to take emergency measures without the prior consent of the Reichstag. This power was understood to include the enactment of “emergency decrees“. The law allowed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, with decrees issued by President Paul von Hindenburg, to create a totalitarian dictatorship after the Nazi’s rise to power.
President Friedrich Ebert, who used the Freikorps to murder Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 following the failed Spartacus uprising, used Article 48 on 136 occasions, including the use by social democratic and conservative governments.
The use of Article 48 by successive governments helped seal the fate of the Weimar Republic. Rule by decree became increasingly used not in response to a specific emergency but as a substitute for parliamentary democracy. The excessive use of the decree power and the fact that successive chancellors were no longer responsible to the Reichstag contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party.
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor. Lacking a majority in the Reichstag, Hitler formed a coalition with the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP). Not long afterwards, he called elections for the 5th March. Six days before the election, on 27th February, the Reichstag fire damaged the house of Parliament in Berlin. Claiming that the fire was the first step in a “Communist revolution”, the Nazis used the fire as a pretext to get the President, Hindenburg, to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree.
Under the decree, based on Article 48, the government was given authority to curtail constitutional rights including habeas corpus, free expression of opinion, freedom of the press, rights of assembly, and the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Constitutional restrictions on searches and confiscation of property were likewise rescinded.
The Reichstag Fire Decree was one of the first steps the Nazis took toward the establishment of a one-Party dictatorship in Germany. With several key government posts in the hands of Nazis and with the constitutional protections on civil liberties suspended by the decree, the Nazis were able to use their control of the police to intimidate and arrest their opposition, in particular the Communists and Social Democrats.
The 5th of March elections gave the Nazi-DNVP coalition a narrow majority in the Reichstag. Nonetheless, the Nazis were able to pass on 23 March 1933 the passage of the Enabling Act by the required two-thirds parliamentary majority, effectively abrogating the authority of the Reichstag and placing its authority in the hands of the Cabinet (in effect, the Chancellor). This had the effect of giving Hitler dictatorial powers.
Over the years, Hitler used Article 48 to give his dictatorship the stamp of legality. Thousands of his decrees were based explicitly on the Reichstag Fire Decree, and hence on Article 48, allowing Hitler to rule under what amounted to martial law. This was a major reason why Hitler never formally repealed the Weimar Constitution, though it had effectively been rendered a dead letter with the passage of the Enabling Act.
Who Benefits from Extending the Pension Age?
Trade unions in France say the pension reforms proposed by President Macron, will penalise low-income workers in manual jobs who tend to start their careers early. The change would bring France into line with other European capitalist countries, most of which have raised the retirement age to 65 or older.
So, who gains? It is not the working class since millions of workers will have to work two years longer.
It was Marx who explained why the capitalist State acted in the interest of the capitalist class and against the working class and why the class struggle is at the core of capitalist production. The capitalist state and the class struggle has a bearing on increasing the time period in which workers will receive their state pension.
Absolute surplus value can be increased by an extension of the working day; and in the case of French workers, it as an extra two years of exploitation. This extension depends on the relative strengths of the capitalist class and the working class.
Marx wrote:
“Hence it is in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is the working day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class” (Capital, volume 1, Chapter X, p. 235).
Marx stated that he did not invent the working class or the class struggle. However, he did reveal the key to class exploitation- the difference between the value of labour-power itself and the value which labour creates in the process of production.
The working class is divorced from the ownership of the means of production and distribution. As such, workers are forced onto the labour market to sell their labour power or ability to work to the capitalist class.
The value of labour power is determined, like any other commodity, by the socially necessary labour time required to produce this special commodity. It, therefore, depends upon the amount of labour necessary to produce the necessities of life – to feed, clothe, house and so on, the workers and their families. The labour time necessary to replace the value of labour power is less than the labour the worker performs, once they are employed, under the command of the capitalist class.
What the capitalist wants to do is increase surplus value. They do not want to pay more taxation in the form of additional money to pay for pensions. And by increasing the time to pensionable age the capitalist class can extract more surplus value from the working class. The working day can be made more intense by making workers work harder in a shorter time. Who now has a “tea break” in the afternoon. The one-hour lunch break has been reduced for many workers to half an hour.
And working on the train home or in the evening also extends the working day. The TUC recently said that workers put in £26 billion worth of work in terms of unpaid overtime during 2022 (TUC.org.uk 24 February 2023). Typically for the TUC who do not advance Marx’s labour theory of value and class exploitation, they call for “work your proper hours day”. They are completely silent on the unpaid surplus labour time workers undertake in the working day.
Marx gave the example of increasing the working day to extract more surplus value. However, there are limits to this. The health and productivity of workers begin to suffer if they are worked too hard. Sickness and psychological problems are rife.
However, the capitalist class in France is about to get the working class for another two years. If fifty per cent is necessary working time and fifty percent surplus working time that is a lot of surplus value.
Instead of protesting about pensions and unpaid overtime workers should be looking at getting rid of the power of the capitalist class to control worker’s time, forcing them into employment and extracting surplus value during the productive process. In socialism there will be no need for pensions. There will not be employment, labour markets or the capitalist class. Instead, labour will be free and people will have free and direct access to what they need to live whatever their age happens to be.
SPGB and Parliament
Can capitalist governments use political devices like article 48 (France) and 49 (Weimar Germany) to prevent a socialist majority from gaining control of Parliament?
We can take the example of the United Kingdom where Parliament has a complete and secure grip upon the armed forces, and government interventions in the strikes and environmental disturbances over the last two decades have shown on whose side they act. Whether it be the Labour government using troops to break strikes or the Conservatives passing repressive laws to enable the police to disrupt or prevent protests and demonstrations, is clear they use the forces of the State to attack the working class.
The use of state violence against workers, shown using police batons, tear gas and water canon against demonstrators in French cities underlines the necessity for the socialist working class to obtain control of Parliament before attempting to replace the profit system with socialism. The impotence of the reformers in the French parliament shows that the only way to obtain control is by sending revolutionary socialist delegates to Parliament backed by a socialist majority. It should not be forgotten that the demonstrators are not socialists, but workers, most of whom, voted for the reformers in Parliament and for President Macron as “the lesser evil” to Le Pen.
It has been suggested by our opponents that, when the socialist movement was large enough to challenge the position of the capitalists globally, they would abolish any parliamentary democratic governance and implement dictatorial regimes.
The abolition or suspension of a parliamentary democratic system would, in the first instance, prevent the right of socialist delegates to combine, and make illegal, all forms of working-class organisation, trade union as well as political.
However, at what cost to the capitalists of the abolition of Parliament? How would they enforce it? The State machine would be unable to function, owing to the political resistance among civil and military employees of the government.
And what can the capitalist class do? The size and complexity of the government, local and general, is so complex that it employs workers to fill all its functions.
These workers are members of trade unions and periodically are forced to strike for higher pay and working conditions. The government only exists by virtue of money coming into it through taxation or selling government bonds; functions undertaken by workers not capitalists.
The armed forces and the police, including the security services are all members of the working class. We are discussing a revolutionary situation where a majority in society do not vote for capitalist politicians and their parties. Workers would not have voted for reformist politicians and presidents. How could a determined minority impose its will in the face of a determined socialist majority?
The attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the necessity for a socialist majority to gain control of the political machinery has been logical and consistent. We hold the same view as Marx as to the need of workers to gain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, before they can establish socialism.
We also hold Marx’s view that in the industrially advanced capitalist countries, the vote will give that control. The one way to prevent the capitalists from using political power against the workers is to refrain from voting them and their agents into political power. Accordingly, we have always urged the workers not to vote for any candidate who is a supporter of capitalism.
