The Generosity of the Working Classes

Whenever workers are accused of being greedy for wanting their wages to keep up with inflation – as RMT members, BT workers and train drivers are now, in common with workers generally in the late ’70s – it always puts me in mind of two Austrian economists.

One is the über free-marketeer, and also Margaret Thatcher’s favourite practitioner of the ‘dismal science’, Friedrich Hayek. He was adamant that society would benefit, and become immeasurably wealthier, if everyone was motivated solely by profit. “In fact, by pursuing profit we are as altruistic as we can possibly be,” he said, “because we extend our concern beyond to people beyond our range of personal conception.”

Another Austrian, Karl Polanyi (technically Hungarian but he was born in Vienna and lived there for many years), noted that this admonition to behave as selfishly as possible in economic matters pointedly didn’t apply to workers. In fact if wage earners didn’t act in precisely the opposite way – with admirable restraint and concern for the common good – the whole profit maximising system would rapidly fall apart.

If, Polanyi noted in his most famous book The Great Transformation, what workers are selling – their labour – is just the same as any other commodity produced for sale, like sugar or bottles of vodka, they should seek the highest possible price for it. If, that is, they are motivated solely by maximising profit, which Hayek and his predecessor Ludwig Von Mises thought everyone should be. Polanyi elaborated:

Consistently followed up, this means the chief obligation of labor is to be almost continually on strike … The source of the incongruity and practice is, of course, that labor is not really a commodity and that if labor was withheld in order to ascertain its exact price (just as an increase in supply of all other commodities in similar circumstances) society would very soon dissolve for lack of sustenance.

Naturally workers would not be allowed to continually renegotiate the sale of their labour in this manner. This is where the neoliberal solicitude for freedom crumples like leaves on a bonfire. Margaret Thatcher famously used the power of the state to destroy the influence of organised labour the moment it ceased to be a compliant partner of employers and tried to protect the living standards of its members. And in response to the actions of the RMT and others, Liz Truss, the favourite to be next British Prime Minister, wants a legal requirement to maintain “minimum service levels” even when public sector workers have balloted for a strike. If enacted Truss’s promise would return Britain to the salad days of the liberal utopia (coincidentally the original title of The Great Transformation) before disputes between employers and employees were made civil matters and when workers could be – and were – jailed for breaking their employment contract.

Liberal Fascism

And this, shall we say, fickle relationship with freedom is by no means a new impulse on the part of conservative-liberals. In the 1920s, one of the original economic liberals, Ludwig Von Mises, thought the merit of Italian Fascism would “live on eternally in history” for having “saved European civilisation” by smashing, quite literally, the workers’ movement in Italy.

It is illuminating that wage earners – flesh and blood people with bills to pay and other people to look after – are the only element of the economy expected to exercise restraint in economic matters out of concern for the common welfare. Nobody in power really thinks for one moment profit should not be maximised by corporations. And despite the propaganda that in these enlightened times, corporations ‘do well by doing good’, it certainly is being unashamedly maximised. Both Shell and Centrica (British Gas) recently posted record profits notwithstanding predictions that energy bills will soon triple. According to research by the union Unite, profit margins for the UK’s FTSE 350 companies (big business in other words) were 73% higher in 2021 than they were before the pandemic.  Despite Sir Keir Starmer telling us that “When business profits, we all do”, the bedtime story that high profits produce economic growth and rising wages like parched earth blossoms after a cloudburst just won’t wash anymore. Are we supposed to ignore the experience of last three decades?

Not selfish enough

The conclusion that economic selfishness is in fact a virtue when practised by those legal entities called corporations is defended despite the fact that excessive profits are a more likely inflationary culprit than high wages (which in fact have been stagnating or falling for years). In the words of the father of market economics, Adam Smith, “Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

One could argue that workers in Britain – and elsewhere – far from being too selfish, aren’t being selfish enough. The RMT is demanding a pay rise of 7% which when inflation is at 9.1% is obviously a real terms pay cut. And here lies the crucial difference between wage earners and other elements of the economy, or ‘factors’ in production. When employers seek sky high profits or when landlords raise the rent by way above the rate of inflation, they do so because they can and because the practice is socially validated. When workers submit to whatever wage they can negotiate (usually whatever they are offered, even to get a trade union recognised is an immense struggle) they do so because they have to. Because, lacking independent means, they have to procure the means to survive for themselves and their families.

Historically, this unequal ‘deal’ been accepted, partly out of brute power, and partly because it promised benefits – to consumers, to workers receiving rising wages – that seemed to accrue from submission to the demands of capital. But what if, as in happening now in the West, the bounty stops flowing. How long are we going to continue to oppress ourselves?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feeling invisible is the least of working class problems

“If I was of colour or had a disability or a different sexuality I just wouldn’t even bother turning on the television, because you feel invisible,” Times columnist and author of How to be a woman, Caitlin Moran, told the Radio Times last week.

“The lack of working class people in culture at the moment is notable,” she went on. “And when they are represented … Take Benefits Street. It’s the only time I’ve seen people on benefits on television, but you didn’t get to hear them talking about their ideas on philosophy or politics, you didn’t get to see them being joyful – it was simply about surviving, and that made them look like animals. It didn’t show them as human beings.”

This is true but something jars. Representation of working class people is not the same as representation of other so-called minorities. It’s far more troublesome because the implications of genuine representation are far less containable. Put simply, it’s possible to have a resolutely capitalist society that is authentically diverse, and comfortable with multi-ethnicities, equal representation of women, fluid sexuality and disability. It’s not possible to have a resolutely capitalist society that pays more than lip service to working class lives and experiences.

Merely on a superficial level, working class representation in culture is different. The problem is not invisibility but abject distortion and hostility. When the working class is heard in popular culture, it’s invariably with the prefix ‘white’ as if working class views can only be amplified in racial terms. Benefits Street, Benefits Britain, On Benefits and Proud, Benefits by the Sea, On the Sick, Benefits Hotel, Benefits Cat* etc (it’s quite a long list) are all fixated on looking down at people whose lives, intelligence and moral scruples are presented at a qualitatively lower level than those of the viewer. People live in ‘benefits’ houses, have ‘benefits’ babies and smoke ‘benefits’ fags.

These portrayals are dripping with condescension, stereotypes and malice. Invisibility would be a major advance. You could compare this representation with the way homosexuality or ethnic minorities were depicted in the 1970s but even that was less spiteful. It’s like the venom that’s now not acceptable to vent on other racial groups or non-heterosexual people has been stored up to be spewed on targets few will defend.

What does working class mean?

However these depictions are not of the working class per se but people on out of work benefits. The closer people are materially to those at the bottom of the heap, the more they may well want to differentiate themselves. “I don’t think I would want to be in the same class as somebody who takes what they can and has the attitude of ‘Well, I’m better off not working,” Lorraine, a fork lift truck driver, is quoted as saying towards the end of the book, Social Class in the 21^st Century.

Just under half of society, if you credit official definitions, are now working class. 10.6 million people in Britain can be described as poor (in work poverty has now overtaken out of work poverty), as their income is below 60% of the median. A further 760,000 are claiming Jobseekers Allowance and 2.3 million are getting either Incapacity benefit, or its successor, Employment and Support Allowance. The term ‘working class’ can be applied to all of these groups, or just one, depending on your intention.

It’s possible to react to working class stereotypes in the same way as racial stereotypes or homophobia. Just as there is sexism and racism, so there is classism. The solution is to fight an attritional battle on sexist, racist, homophobic or classist attitudes so that eventually society is free of them. In this ideal world, working class people have their voice heard equally in culture in the same way that women, ethnic minorities, non-heterosexual and transgender people do. The working class are not looked down on or stereotyped.

But this would be a false utopia. Being working class is not a collection of attitudes to be respected, or the spur behind an ambition to colonise the commanding heights of society, but a state of being that should not exist. The aim should be a classless society. The working class should be abolished. And that is a truly transgressive aspiration.

Diversity

It’s easier to see the distinction if you examine society’s acceptable and seemingly unstoppable radical edge, the push for diversity. Since 2010’s Equality Act it has been illegal to discriminate against job applicants on the basis of, not just sex or race, but sexual orientation, transgender status or disability. Discrimination obviously does happen but officially it shouldn’t. Government departments have been at the forefront of this drive. The Home Office has been recognised as one of the UK’s Top 50 Employers for Women and offers guaranteed interviews to qualified people with disabilities.  Secret service agency MI5 been has named ‘employer of the year’ by LGBT rights charity Stonewall. In the US, since the time of George W Bush, the US federal government has declared itself in favour of ‘workplace diversity’.

Allied to this, there has been constant pressure to make corporate boardrooms and the upper echelons of public sector bodies more reflective of society. The 30% Club campaigns for greater gender balance at board level in the UK. Groups such as OUTstanding claim business can benefit from greater productivity by enhancing representation of LGBT people at executive level.

It is, without question, a good thing that society, and its cultural expressions, reflect its actual diversity. Gay and transgender people, in particular, have suffered terribly from bullying and worse. The current stigmatising tone of coverage of benefit claimants prepares the ground for sanctions and cuts to sickness benefit. So a more realistic, and, gulp, sympathetic portrait may have tangible effects.

But cultural diversity and equal treatment by employers are profoundly inadequate tools for dealing with the inescapable inequality and autocracy of the capitalist organisation of society. This becomes apparent when you consider how the working class fits into the diversity agenda. The short answer is, it doesn't.

If an employer doesn’t want to discriminate, for example, against working class people, how are they to proceed? They could aim to ensure that people with working class backgrounds aren’t excluded. That would be difficult to define and enforce, but beyond these surface difficulties, whether a working class person even gets to the application or interview stage, is dependent upon innumerable factors. These elements, such as education, childhood experiences, parental wealth, ownership of assets, or cultural capital are produced by entrenched political and economic forces, and not within the gift of enlightened employers to bestow.

The result is that, despite the ostensible backing of Left and Right for greater social mobility and equal opportunity, the reality either gets worse or remains static. Two decades ago, Conservative Prime Minister John Major promised a ‘classless society’.  With impeccable amnesia David Cameron now claims the Conservatives as the ‘party of equality’. But class cannot be undiscriminated away.

A cooperative economy

However the incongruity goes far deeper. Genuine representation of working class opinions and experiences cuts against the grain of organisations built on hierarchy and career progression. For a telesales worker, a front-line nurse, a fork lift driver, a cleaner or a receptionist to have an equal say in the management of the organisations they work for presupposes an end to the arbitrary power of management, and the reaping of profits by senior management and shareholders. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Power should steadily accrue to those who ascend career ladder. So working class experiences and opinions are necessarily suppressed in favour of those of the upper middle class.

If, however, you wish society to genuinely listen to the experiences of working class people, you have to move towards a cooperative economy, in which the distinction between employer and employee is abolished. This doesn’t mean that a division of labour is no longer needed or that management disappears as a function. But it does mean that enterprises and public sector organisations become classless and democratic. The huge cooperative enterprise at Mondragon in Spain, which contains over 250 businesses, indicates this is quite feasible.

The implications of such a change are massive for a society increasingly defined in terms of status, seniority and inequality. But, like a basic income heralding a post-work future, a cooperative economy could be just as liberating for those convinced they benefit from the current make-up of society, as for everyone else.

*This one is made up but I’m hopeful Channel 5 will commission it

What would Sylvia Pankhurst make of the Suffragette film? Part One

In England, at the end of the nineteenth century, women, in legal terms, barely existed. Under a system known as ‘coverture’, they were the property of their father until they passed, when they married, to being the property of their husband. Their own property immediately became than of their husband and they were not allowed to enter into contracts. Until 1891, a husband had the legal right to kidnap and imprison his wife. Most careers were automatically disbarred to women. They also could not vote.

In short, society was so thoroughly patriarchical and sexist to a degree scarcely believable today.

It in this context that the rise of the female suffrage movement must be understood. Getting the vote was seen as symbolising and facilitating many other changes, such as legal independence, the right to divorce, to be educated and pursue a career. Sarah Gavron’s film, Suffragette, is about one strand of the women’s suffrage movement, the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), aka the Suffragettes. In particular, it is about the campaign of violence they resorted to, comprising arson, setting post boxes ablaze and window-breaking, when legal means of extending the vote were frustrated. It is also about the state repression they endured in response; the mass imprisonment and force-feeding. The films ends in 1913, when one suffragette, Emily Davison, ran out in front of the King’s horse at the Derby and was killed.

Class

But British society just before the First World War was not just patriarchical, it was also riven by class. About 80% of society was working class, and the lower element of that stratum, the unskilled working class lived in appalling conditions (In 1914, British army conscripts were on average five inches shorter than their officers). They undertook arduous and dangerous jobs without any unemployment benefits, old age pensions or compensation for industrial injuries which were a perennial hazard. There was no health service. What there was, however, was a distinct working class culture. Working class areas were marked by their own clubs, libraries, choirs and nurseries. And there were also two elements completely absent today: resistance to the way the economy was organised inside factories and solidarity with others in the same boat.

The problem with Suffragette is that its overwhelming concentration on one facet of Edwardian society – its patriarchy – leads it to misrepresent the other element, class. In fact, its treatment of class borders on the dishonest.

Pandering to widespread ignorance, the film gives the strong impression that the Suffragettes wanted the vote for all women and that all men could already vote, neither of which is true. At the time, because of property qualifications, only around 60% of men were allowed to vote, a proportion which dropped to under half in working class areas such as the East End of London where much of Suffragette is set. The WSPU – with the exception of one notable member - never wavered from aspiring to the vote for women ‘on the same terms as men’, meaning that a similar number of women would still have been disenfranchised had the government caved in to its demands. Mary MacArthur of the Women’s Trade Union League claimed in 1913 that less than 5 per cent of her members would have got the vote, had the Suffragettes been successful.

But Suffragette declines to confront this issue which was very real at the time. And in choosing to concentrate on a fictional working class suffragette, Maud Adams, who works in a laundry in the East End of London, the film completely parts company with historical reality. Although the WSPU did attract working class members in its early days, it was always dominated by upper middle class women and, as shown by its opposition to universal suffrage, had a distinct bias against working class activism. “It is not the toiling mother, the sweated worker … who can bear the strain and stress of the battle we are fighting for women’s deliverance today,” wrote one leading Suffragette in 1908.

One stand-out scene in the film has Maud’s husband, Sonny, sneeringly ask her, after she has become deeply immersed in the Suffragette movement, ‘What would you do with the vote if you got it?’

‘The same as you as I suppose,’ she replies.

Come again? That sound you can hear is a needle being abruptly snatched off a record. The problem with this conversation is that it never would have happened in reality. As an unskilled working class male, Sonny himself, in this immensely patriarchical society, would still have been disenfranchised. In turn, Maud, as a fully unpaid-up member of the bottom 40% of society, would have remained voteless even assuming the WSPU’s campaign had swept all before it. ‘What would you do with the vote if you got it?’ was a question they both could have asked themselves.

Syndicalism

What is historically much more plausible is that they would have been drawn to the syndicalist-inspired trade union movement which exploded in Britain, and across the world, in the very years – 1912 and 1913 – that Suffragette takes place. In 1912, 41 million days were lost to strikes, compared to less than less than half a million now. In 1920, future foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, described this as “a period which, if the war had not broken out, would have, I believe, seen one of the greatest industrial revolts the world ever had seen.” But this was not just an outbreak of industrial militancy. It was marked, firstly, by solidarity; the organisation of workers irrespective of their occupation - an aspiration, originating with the American Industrial Workers of the World, for ‘one big union’. But also, by the revolutionary belief that work should be organised democratically. “Every industry thoroughly organised, in the first place, to fight, to gain control of, and then to administer, that industry … leaving to the men themselves to determine under what conditions and how, the work shall be done,” proclaimed a famous document from the Welsh miners’ union.

But not only does Suffragette fail to make even the faintest nod to this movement (the non-suffragette working class are portrayed as either boorish, abusive or in hoc to monarchism), it elides the splits within the suffragette movement itself. There is one cursory reference to Sylvia Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst’s (Meryl Steep in the film) daughter who undertook a political and economic journey the WSPU never dared to. Sylvia Pankhurst was one of the WSPU’s most passionate members, imprisoned and force fed numerous times, but she was nonetheless expelled in 1914 for not taking instructions and ‘walking in step.’

East London Suffragettes

Sylvia Pankhurst had by that time formed the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), which intentionally organised among working class women in the East End of the capital. In fact, her real crime, in the eyes of her mother and sister, was to oppose the WSPU’s campaign of small-scale violence in favour of working with working class women. Thus Maud Adams, an East End laundry worker was, contrary to Suffragette, far more likely to have been in the ELFS than the mainstream WSPU. The ELFS, unlike the WSPU, was committed to universal suffrage, not votes for women ‘on the same terms as men’. But it was coming of the First World War that really exposed the chasm that existed with the conservative WSPU. The WSPU instantly backed the war, demanded conscription and changed the name of its newspaper to Britannia. Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst contributed to the war effort by handing out white feathers to men who they thought should have been fighting at the front (irony alert – many of the soldiers who did volunteer and were later drafted, were not entitled to vote).

Sylvia Pankhurst’s ELFS, by contrast, was opposed to war, which in the midst of an outbreak of mass jingoism took some bravery, and represented the interests of working class women whose lives were turned upside. Their husbands were frequently whisked away in a matter of hours leaving them with several children to feed and they were exploited in official sweat shop factories. The ELFS opposed rent and food price hikes and evictions and arranged deputations of women to put their case to the Prime Minister. It also set up cut price restaurants and a toy factory, which would nowadays be called a social enterprise. In March 1916, the ELFS, tellingly (and democratically), changed its name to the Workers’ Suffrage Federation and explicitly backed ‘human suffrage’.

But they were alone in that stance. When in 1916 the government indicated it was finally willing to extend the franchise after the war was over, women’s suffrage societies met to consider their response. Most were still in favour of a limited franchise for women based on a property qualification. Sylvia Pankhurst berated them as ‘comfortable middle class women’.

Human Suffrage

In the ELFS newspaper, The Women’s Dreadnought, Sylvia Pankhurst, criticised suffragists and suffragettes alike for refusing “to set themselves free to say that universal suffrage must be introduced for all, and hold, instead, to the merely negative course of opposing universal suffrage for men until women are enfranchised. “The suffrage question,” she went on “can never be disposed of until the entire adult population is enfranchised.” This eventually happened in 1928.

Here is a trailer for a recent documentary about Sylvia Pankhurst:

 

Meanwhile, the WSPU, transformed itself, at the end of 1917 into the short-lived Women’s Party. The party proclaimed itself in favour of “equal pay for equal work, equal marriage and divorce laws, the same rights over children for both parents, equality of rights and opportunities in public service, and a system of maternity benefits.” It also campaigned for a fight to the finish with Germany, the expulsion of those with “enemy blood” from government departments and the abolition of trade unions no less.

If one family embodied the Suffragettes it was the Pankhursts. But while Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst gravitated to the Conservative party, Sylvia eventually became a council communist, an anti-Leninist political current similar to syndicalism. The contrast could not have been starker.

Here is part two