MIA > Archive > Cliff > Incomes policy
It is doubtful whether any of the problems facing the labour movement of Britain in the 1960s is of greater importance than the two related questions of incomes policy and trade union legislation.
In this book we have tried to show how and why an incomes policy under capitalism must necessarily be an anti working class measure. In places readers may find some of the arguments a little complex and difficult on a first reading, but we feel it is important that all the arguments that have been put forward in favour of an incomes policy should be discussed in a book of this sort. As far as we could, we have backed up our statements with facts and figures that socialists and militants in the unions will be able to use in discussions with fellow workers.
Not many people will want to read the book right through in one go, so it might be useful to have a short summary of the book and what’s to be found in each chapter. That way it will be easier to look up the different parts of the argument as they are needed.
In the first chapter we give some of the reasons for the growing importance of incomes policy for the employers. As capitalism has developed, it has changed its form a great deal, and some of these changes are explained in here. In particular the great monopolies with their vast plants have become more and more central in the economy, and this has altered the whole face of capitalism, and altered too the forms of the struggle between the workers and the capitalists. Incomes policy wouldn’t have made sense at all in the capitalist Britain of the 19th century, or even as recently as the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Chapter One we show why it makes sense today, and why it has only recently come up.
In Chapter Two we look at the question, is it an incomes policy or is it really wage restraint? George Brown and the rest of the government all say that the incomes policy will be fair because it will apply equally to all forms of income. But this isn’t true, and in this chapter we show why. Under capitalism profits can’t be controlled. If you control wages under capitalism, profits will zoom ahead. That is what an incomes policy is supposed to achieve – wage restraint in the interests of better profits.
Chapter Three examines another argument that is often put forward in favour of the incomes policy: the argument that an incomes policy will contribute to economic growth. Here we try to show the assumptions that lie behind this argument, and to demonstrate how completely out of touch with reality those assumptions are. It isn’t high wages that hold back economic growth, but the capitalist class themselves, the organisation of capitalist society, and the way that resources are wasted under capitalism.
Traditionally socialists have always talked about a socialist society as a society in which the economy will be planned. And many workers are confused by George Brown’s National Plan, which we look at in Chapter Four. They think that, because there is some planning done in our society today, this must somehow be something to do with socialism. But it has nothing to do with socialism at all. There is such a thing as capitalist planning – indeed today, when capitalism is so vast and so complex, the capitalists need to plan ahead. Even the Tories (or most of them) believe in planning nowadays. And George Brown’s plan is a capitalist plan – what is more, it is capitalists who help George Brown to operate it. It has nothing at all to do with socialism, for it is planning directed against the workers and their interests.
In Chapter Five we turn away from the questions of planning and the changing nature of capitalism to look at the way that workers win their wages. This is important because one of the main arguments that is put forward in favour of an incomes policy is the argument that if only the higher paid workers would stop demanding such large wage increases it would be possible to help the lower paid workers. To show that this idea is nonsense we examine the way that workers really win wages under capitalism, and the way that the struggles of the strongest and best paid workers help the worse off. In particular, we show how a growing part of a worker’s wage packet nowadays is won through the struggle on the shopfloor instead of through national bargaining between the union officials and the employers’ associations.
This brings to an end the part of the book in which we explain incomes policy, what it is and what it means. In the second part of the book we look at the way in which workers can best fight against incomes policy, and what form the struggle against incomes policy is likely to take. This is the general theme of the last four chapters.
Chapter Six is about the trade union brass. Nowadays, more than ever before, there is a struggle inside the unions as well as between the unions and the employers. For the union officials are becoming less and less the leaders of the workers, and more their foremen. As they are drawn into collaboration with the government, they become increasingly alienated from the rank and file of the unions. The unions are tending to become more bureaucratic in structure, and democracy in the unions is decaying. The lesson of this is very important – to fight against incomes policy successfully, workers will have to rely on their own strength and organisation, for the majority of the union bureaucrats cannot be depended on any longer.
Chapter Seven, therefore, is about shop stewards and unofficial strikes. It is the longest chapter in the whole book, for this is the most important question of all. We show how useless the official negotiation procedure is, and how most strikes these days are unofficial. The number of unofficial strikes is growing steadily, and unofficial strikes are the biggest problem the employers have. The strikes show that the workers today are stronger and more self-confident than ever before. Unofficial strikes are led by shop stewards, and it is clear that the shop stewards are becoming more and more important for rank and file workers. There are more shop stewards nowadays than ever before, and they are the natural leaders of the struggle today. But it would be foolish to try to idealise the shop stewards, and we end the chapter with an examination of the weaknesses and strength of their organisations. We hope that this section in particular will encourage workers and their stewards to try to develop and strengthen their organisations, and the links between the different factories and industries.
In Chapter Eight we look at the proposals for new legislation against the unions and especially against unofficial strikes. If incomes policy is going to work at all there will have to be new laws to control unofficial activities. This can only further widen the split between the rank and file of the unions and the officials, many of whom will unite with the government and the law courts to attack the shop stewards’ organisations.
The last chapter is more general in scope. Here we move beyond the question of incomes policy to a wider discussion of the working class and the struggle for socialism today. Just as capitalism has changed enormously, so too the working class has changed, and in this last chapter we look at some of the changes, and the ways in which they can both weaken and strengthen the working class in the struggle for a socialist society. In particular, we look at the way the old ideology of “reformism” has been weakened by the new conditions of the class struggle, because of changes that have taken place in the ruling class, the state and the working class. The book ends with a few comments on some of the most important next steps for the working class in Britain.
We hope this book will prove useful. For workers and socialists today, as always, there are three tasks in the struggle for socialism: studying the changes in capitalism and the working class; making propaganda among other workers; and organising for struggle. If this book can help at all in these three tasks it will have served its purpose.
Last updated on 24.10.2005