It is vital to distinguish between jobs and work. A job involves providing one’s labour power to an employer in exchange for payment. A job, therefore, is part of a market, namely a labour market.
Work is productive labour. Much work is carried out without pay, such as subsistence farming and parenting. In growing food for one’s own needs and in rearing one’s own children, there is no employer. In producing cash crops and in undertaking child care for pay, one is also working, but it is reasonable to speak of having a job.
As well, jobs are possible that involve little or no work. Many people in high-paying office jobs do very little productive work. Many members of corporate boards receive high pay for attending a few meetings. So, in summary, work is possible without jobs and jobs are possible without work.
In a nonviolent economic system, people’s basic needs would be satisfied and there would be satisfying work for everyone who wanted it. The job system is not a good way to achieve either of these goals.
It is for this reason that campaigns for jobs are not a challenge to capitalism. In contrast, campaigns for satisfying work and for provision for those in greatest need are much more of a challenge.
2. Is the campaign participatory?
Job campaigns can be and often are participatory, but the participation is usually restricted to job-holders and their families, and perhaps a few others. The existence of a significant level of unemployment means that workers are pitted against each other for those jobs that exist. A campaign to retain jobs in a particular sector of the economy may not attract support from job-holders and job-seekers elsewhere.
Trade union bodies, though, can help to create a more general concern about employment, and in some cases there is mass action over job issues.
3. Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods?
The goal is more jobs. Work-ins, where employees stay at the workplace continuing to do their work in spite of employers seeking to terminate their jobs or to shut down the entire workplace, are quite compatible with this goal. However, the more commonly used methods, such as leafletting, meetings, rallies, strikes and pickets, do not directly incorporate the goal of more jobs.
4. Is the campaign resistant to cooption?
A successful campaign for jobs is itself cooption into the capitalist system.
In summary, job campaigns, like campaigns for better wages and conditions, are unlikely to be effective means for transforming capitalism in a nonviolent direction, especially because they do not challenge the foundations of capitalism. They are a type of cooption. They are essentially about making capitalism work a bit more fairly. Capitalism is retained but with some adaptation for people’s needs. Although they do little to challenge the foundations of capitalism, job campaigns are essential for the survival, standard of living and self-esteem of many people and communities.
Workers’ control
For a strong contrast to campaigns for better wages and conditions, jobs or the right to organise, consider a campaign for workers’ control, namely for the alternative in which workers collectively and democratically control all aspects of work in an enterprise, including who does what, who gets paid what, and what gets produced. With workers’ control, owners and managers are eliminated or made irrelevant to the actual operation. This is also called workers’ self-management.[4]
There are various ways a campaign for workers’ control could proceed. It might be by lobbying government to introduce it as a more efficient method of production. It might come about by enlightened owners turning a company over to the workers, as has happened on a few occasions, such as with the Scott Bader Company in Britain. It might come about when workers join together to buy out a failing company. Finally, it might come about by a direct takeover by workers.
The focus here is on scenarios in which direct worker action is the primary driving force behind introduction of workers’ control. Few governments have ever supported it and few private owners have relinquished their role. The exceptions most often occur during revolutionary upsurges, for example during the Russian Revolution when workers took over factories (making them into “soviets”). The Bolsheviks supported this while it served the purpose of helping overthrow the existing regime but introduced bureaucratic control once the party had solidified its power.[5]
So to the check list.
1. Does the campaign help to
• undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or
• undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or
• build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?
Most obviously, workers’ control is a nonviolent alternative to capitalism, since it dispenses with the need for owners and managers. One self-managed enterprise itself does not constitute an alternative, but as a model, workers’ control provides a fairly comprehensive alternative, typically along anarchist lines.
If workers do a reasonable job in running an enterprise themselves, this undermines the legitimacy of capitalism. The standard ideology is that organisational hierarchy is essential for purposes of efficiency. A functioning workplace based on participatory principles is a living rebuttal of this ideology.[6] This is one good reason why workers’ control is so often attacked by governments.
If workers’ control is introduced by workers buying an enterprise, or by owners voluntarily relinquishing their role, there is no challenge to the use of state power to enforce property rights. But if workers’ control comes about as a takeover of private property, without going through legal requirements — as in the case of a revolution — then this also becomes a challenge to the violent underpinnings of capitalism.
In summary, workers’ control satisfies point 1 extremely well.
2. Is the campaign participatory?
If workers’ control is brought about through the initiative of workers, it is almost bound to be participatory. On the other hand, if workers’ control is a “gift” from owners or imposed by government, participation may be much lower. Indeed, it may require considerable effort to convince workers that it is a good thing.
Participation of the wider community — namely, those who are not workers — is not automatic in workers’ control. If workers decide how to do their work, that doesn’t really affect others all that much. But what if workers decide what products to produce? That certainly affects others, and a fully partipatory campaign would involve community members in such decision making.
One of the most famous workers’ campaigns involved the British firm Lucas Aerospace in the 1970s. Responding to the possibility of job cuts, the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards’ Committee took the initiative to investigate and propose possibilities for producing alternative products using the highly skilled workforce. The alternatives proposed, including road-rail vehicles, kidney dialysis machines and artificial limb control systems, included some products that were socially beneficial even if not as profitable as other options.[7] The Lucas workers’ initiatives were repeatedly rebuffed by management but inspired many people around the world. They do provide evidence that workers, if given a say over what is produced, are likely to think more about community needs than a traditional management.
4.
Gerry Hunnius, G. David Garson and John Case (eds.),
5.
Oscar Anweiler,
6.
Seymour Melman,
7.
Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliott,