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International Socialism, Summer 1979

 

Forbundet Kommunist (Sweden)

Revolutionaries and ‘Alternative Production’

(Summer 1979)

 

From International Socialism, 2:5, Summer 1979, pp. 115–123.
Transcribed by Marven James Scott.
Marked up for by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

Introduction from the editors

In the last issue of this journal, Chris Harman drew attention to a substantial drift to the right on the part of some sections of the European far left. He mentioned, in particular, the Swedish organisation FK (Communist League) and their development of the idea of alternative production. We print below extracts from their pamphlet Questions and Answers About Alternative Production.

The arguments about alternative production clearly have a much wider audience than Sweden alone, and a great deal of inspiration behind this demand has come from the ‘Lucas Plan’ originating in Britain. However, it is in the writings of FK that these ideas have been most fully developed. They do not stand as a single isolated development but form part of a more general re-orientation on the part of this organisation. In this, too, they are not alone. For example, the Italian magazine Praxis, which has generally taken a very clear position, wrote in April 1978 that: ‘... it is possible to negotiate a truce over salaries and labour flexibility (subject of course to the right for a job to all) in exchange for nationalisation and workers’ control ...’

The most recent statement of the FK’s strategy is contained in the resolution There is Another Way adopted by their January 1979 Congress but it is more clearly stated in two articles by P.O. Olofsson published in English in their International Bulletin during 1978. The basis of current FK thinking is the need for ‘... structural reforms and alliance with reformists, as elements in a revolutionary process in a land like Sweden’. This process will take the form first of small-group propaganda for alternative production, followed by the development of a united revolutionary left and a left-wing split in Social Democracy. This will lead to a ‘left-wing anti-capitalist government’ which would develop into a socialist revolution or a counter-revolution. To this end, FK sees its current task as being to make propaganda for what a left government could achieve. Among the measures they propose is: ‘increased police and court resources’ in order to counter economic sabotage by the bourgeoisie.

Another substantial thread in their thinking is a developing nationalism. While it would be slanderous to suggest that they have abandoned either the idea of internationalism or the struggle against Swedish capital, they pay increasing attention to demands for controlling imports and to building up home industry. Although Sweden is an imperialist country – albeit a small one – one of the major dangers that they locate is that: ‘Sweden will become a puppet in the hand of international capital’. Thus a great deal of their detailed economic proposals are based upon the need to solve Sweden’s problems within the existing framework of imperialism.

The idea of alternative production plays a major part in this overall programme, both as a means to import substitution and since: ‘We want the idea of alternative production to be the main theme in the fight for full employment’. They develop the idea as follows



Companies have always been concerned to introduce ‘new products’ and ‘new ideas’. But on what basis? New products need merely be profitable to the company. Product development has been based on the interests of private profit. Put bluntly, it’s become a question of ‘new’ toothpaste (from plain white to striped) which is sold by dreadful adverts, or new fashion clothes whose sole purpose is to get people to buy more and more ...

When we talk about alternative production it is something quite different – alternative socially useful production, based on the needs of society and (thus the needs of ordinary people. And that is something new. At least, it is new that workers and other employees in different factories are beginning to make demands about what should be produced ...

In most places today, the struggle for alternative production derives from the need to save jobs at a factory. At first perhaps the fight is for the existing production. But if there’s no longer any need for the company’s products, then it’s a question of finding other things to manufacture which preserve the employees’ skills, the machines and the buildings ... Part of alternative production is, not only what is to be produced, but also how it is to be produced. How the work is to be organised so that it’s pleasant, how its environment is to be shaped.

The Lucas workers who are fighting for alternative production at an aircraft factory in England have summarised how they conceive a ‘socially useful product’. It is a good summary of what alternative production is all about.

Alternative production must not become a fashion, a religion suddenly given central importance, pushing other important questions into the background. The struggle for higher wages and many other questions is something that the union movement is permanently concerned with. But it should not restrict its activity to these. In today’s economic crisis the struggle for alternative production points towards a new direction in tomorrow’s working class struggle. Prosperity isn’t only higher material standards, but also the right to a meaningful job, job satisfaction and power in the workplace, the right to make things for which there’s a genuine social need. That’s why it’s important that the union movement broadens its activity and makes demands about what should be manufactured ...

The movement for alternative production has shed new light on something very old, namely the workers own capacity to develop sensible production. There are still trade skills left. But the current tendency of companies to attempt to concentrate knowledge in certain technicians and development engineers is continuously undermining trade skills.

Our respect for human ability is being suppressed by a mystique surrounding advanced technology. We easily forget the most valuable asset we have, the workers’ wealth of discoveries and creativity. If alternative production is built on the capability of workers, an endless wealth of ideas, knowledge and imagination will be released. These should no longer be suppressed by the mystique of the technician’s white coat. Research in industry should not take place in secret behind closed doors, but openly and as a direct part of the manufacturing process, by cooperation between technicians and workers. Here the trade union movement has an important task. Both in making available central research resources, and in encouraging local contact between scientists and workers groups ...

In the 20th century work has been mechanised and divided up into assembly lines and through component manufacturing. In this way workers have lost control, not only of the direction of production, but also of how it is carried out. Thus both the possibility of and interest in shaping work on humane principles on your own behalf disappears. That’s why we combine alternative production with different work organisation ...

A shining example of what can be achieved is the so-called Lucas Plan. At Lucas Industries in England the workers quickly worked out a whole new programme for ‘their’ industry. They started with society’s needs, and took advantage of the workers’ knowledge. While working on the plan they stressed heavily that socially useful production and stimulating work are two sides of the same coin. If you get involved in what is to be produced, the question of how the work is to be done is also raised ...

In recent years a small but growing school of thought has been advocating smaller scale production based on need. It has also addressed itself to environmental destruction, the plundering of raw materials, and high-technology development which makes ever more difficult ordinary people’s possibilities of controlling development. It is growing from below at present, in the work of environmental groups with alternative energy sources and the struggle for an ecological balance with nature ...

This is still a divided movement, with various ideas and class interests. On many occasions the leadership of established workers’ movement has tried to sew divisions between worker groups and environment groups. General anti-technology positions also exist within the movement.

But it is does not consist only of isolated phenomena. And the political debate, and the sometimes united struggle, are an important basis for a development of political consciousness and in the long run fairly common goals. It is just this that we must seize upon. To work for the movements to become coordinated, to take common initiatives, begin a political debate and exchange experiences. Only greater unity between workers who fight for alternative production, environmental groups, left political organisations, social democrats, union branches and tenants’ organisations can become a force which is the backbone of the so-called alternative movement. Such coordination and force is also needed in order that the movement achieves penetration and becomes interesting to wide groups within the workers movement ...

Today the state doles out billions to different sectors hit by the crisis. The trade union movement has no control whatever over this money. The right to decide how to use this support resides primarily with management. Therefore a precondition of the trade union movement winning influence over the future of threatened firms, is a struggle for union control of the subsidies. It is correct that in certain cases alternative production must get state aid to survive. In some cases nationalisation may be the only possibility. If it later becomes a question of avoiding state redundancies or manipulation of state aid, it depends totally on the unions’ possibility of controlling the money. And above all on the backing the workers in the firm concerned can get from other groups of workers. So it is a question of struggle where the strength of the workers’ front is decisive. The Social Democrats suggestion for a ‘structural fund’ to give support to industrial development can be good, provided that wage-earners’ organisations have a majority on the fund’s Board, and local unions have some kind of veto over the money’s use. But this fund is only the form of state aid. The most important thing is still what the money is used for ...

If it is only a stimulus to moulding Swedish industry to the new circumstances of the world market, this fund can work against a sound alternative production, and instead bring about a massive structural rationalisation with many workers forced to move, and many sacked as a result. Up to now the Social Democrats economic policy has been entirely directed towards giving exporting concerns more capital to strengthen their competitiveness. A fund which can support alternative production can inspire a wide debate in the union movement about what the country should produce. Thus a ‘structural fund’ can become an important aid to socially useful production. But it is therefore a political question, a struggle over how the money is to be used, and who is to control it ...

The struggle for alternative production and the struggle for workers control in companies are not contradictory. On the contrary they are intimately bound up together. It’s just that the leadership of the trade union movement today shows no great interest in what is produced. So every group of workers is left along in its struggle to keep rescued jobs and for alternative production ...

There are several ways in which the trade union unity today could support alternative production:

Workers participation agreements must give the union the right to veto anti-worker technology, investment abroad, to take the most important examples ...

If Sweden is going to be moulded to these new international conditions it would lead to high unemployment, sackings and enormous social costs. A struggle against this development is therefore a struggle against international capital, and not against workers in other countries. Traditional protectionist demands like new import duties and quotas are nevertheless not good. The international military build-up, with trade war as counter-measure, is greatest in these areas. Instead, we must demand state subsidies which give alternative production the chance to survive ...

Today it is not longer marginal industries which are on the verge of bankruptcy. The whole industrial base is in the balance. In Sweden the shipyards, the steel industry and the mines are some examples. Some form of international division of labour will always be needed. But this should be equal and not based on the profit needs of big capital. Every land must have the possibility of preserving the most important of its industrial branches. This is a demand which workers in other countries are making, and naturally we must also support them.

If Sweden is going to be moulded to these new international conditions it would lead to high unemployment, sackings, and enormous social costs. A struggle against this development is therefore a struggle against international capital, and not against workers in other countries. Traditional protectionist demands like new import duties and quotas are nevertheless not good. The international military build-up, with trade war as counter-measure, is greatest in these areas. Instead, we must demand state subsidies which give alternative production the chance to survive ...

Today it is no longer marginal industries which are on the verge of bankruptcy. The whole industrial base is in the balance. In Sweden the shipyards, the steel industry and the mines are some examples. Some form of international division of labour will always be needed. But this should be equal and not based on the profit needs of big capital. Every land must have the possibility of preserving the most important of its industrial branches. This is a demand which workers in other countries are making, and naturally we must also support them.

Without basic industries we lose the means to be self-sufficient in times of crisis, the whole economic structure is smashed to pieces and Sweden is driven into long-term dependency on international market conditions, the multinationals hunt for profit, and the plans of international capital. Sweden can be exposed to political oppression through economic pressures. The possibility of pursuing a more progressive economic policy is reduced, it becomes more difficult for the working class to win concessions. It also becomes more difficult to influence the quality and usefulness of deteriorating consumer goods ...

Therefore the struggle towards increased international independence is a life and death matter for the working class. The struggle means:

To allow multinational capital and world market forces to dissipate the world’s productive resources can never be an expression of solidarity with the oppressed of the world. That just means investment for profit with no thought to the social consequence. It means handing over the initiative to capital, and turning away from the struggle over production until a remote world socialist revolution. National liberation movements in the third world are demanding comprehensive industrialisation and reduced dependency. In the same way it must be self-evident that the Swedish working class should take up this international question in the same way, even if we are not on a par with a colonial state. In no way is it national egoism to struggle to keep jobs in Sweden. Likewise we must support a comprehensive economic development in other lands. This is one expression of international worker solidarity. Further, the union movement must take the international struggle of workers seriously. The international associations today are mainly a forum for the exchange of information, and not a leadership for a common struggle against multinational companies and international capitalism ...

We must ask ourselves this: is there any alternative for workers in firms in crisis today or is capitalism right that the textile workers at Algots are doomed to unemployment for the rest of their lives, that the textile industry must be shut down? Can we only advise that the solution lies in a future socialist society? Is there nothing we can do in the here and now? Today, the struggle for alternative production is in several places the only conceivable alternative in the fight to save the jobs. It is both crazy and incorrect to not exploit the possibilities which exist to wring concessions under capitalism. The development of capitalism is not so bound by laws, so pre-determined that it can’t be dislodged in any way ...

If you think it’s alright to fight for concessions, then obviously you work for developments which favour workers’ needs. Alternative production is a struggle against the crisis and unemployment, while at the same time working to create socially useful products which are produced in humane conditions. It is an offensive struggle. In the long term alternative production will become a form of struggle which is also concerned to achieve deep changes in the whole economic structure. A social change which benefits the struggle for socialism.

Alternative production based on need can never live in harmony with a profit orientated market economy. But the struggle itself to develop and defend it will become an important part of the struggle for a socialist society. Therefore from a socialist strategy we must also raise demands which are perhaps only achievable under socialism. Some can be won as concessions today, others in a more developed class struggle. What is essential is that we take up the struggle for values and demands which can give a preview of socialism and which at the same time strengthen the working class and develop the struggle if they are achieved ...

In a market economy alternative production will always be threatened by the market itself. This risk is always present. But the question of alternative production surviving is connected to political questions. Strong opinion within the trade union movement can force the state to give support (a minute part of the money doled out by the state in 1978 would be needed). Strong opinion, workers solidarity, and a readiness to fight in the neighbourhood can force the state not to withdraw support. So in the last analysis it is only the class struggle which can overcome the market forces and the spokesmen for these forces in different political parties. It is precisely the same at every decisive crossroads for the working class. The bourgeois class and capitalism itself’s way of functioning tend to undermine fought-for reforms. Only a more developed struggle on the offensive can defend achieved goals and also reach new goals on the road to socialism ...


Even from this drastically-cut document, the main lines of FK’s thinking emerge quite clearly. The debate over alternative production will clearly be a long one and we will return to it in these pages in the future. All that we can do here is to make some of our most basic objections to this sort of thinking.

FK has run together two quite different things. At one level, they are concerned about propaganda about the superiority of life under socialism. This is nothing new and has always formed an important part of the socialist case. The other thing that they have done is to suggest an alternative for production under capitalism. That is why their document is so hedged around with qualifications.

However, this is not only an elementary intellectual confusion but also a very dangerous political step. In taking it, they abandon a number of key political positions to the class enemy and end up firmly in the camp of reformism. For example, they suggest that there is no ‘need’ for some of the products of Swedish industry. That depends upon how you measure need. In terms of human need, there is certainly no need for Viggen fighters or Bofors anti-tank weapons, but the companies which produce these are not suffering a crisis. On the other hand, nobody in their right mind would suggest that there is no need for clothing throughout the world, or for ships, or for steel, or for power. The crisis of overproduction in these industries is nothing to do with an absolute overproduction of ‘needed’ use values but very exactly an overproduction of exchange values relative to the possibility of realising them on the capitalist market. Overall it is certainly not the case that the world has a surplus of either capital or consumer goods with respect to the real needs of the population.

Even if this were not so, it still does not follow that the only way to save jobs is to root around for alternative production. If they are subjected to sufficient political pressure, the capitalist class and their state are quite ready to maintain unprofitable production. The comrades do not seem to doubt the possibility of winning some concessions from the capitalist class, but seem very reluctant to fight for this particular type of concession. They should consider the question of the Common Market Agricultural Policy, in which vast sums of money are paid out for ‘uneconomic’ production and high food prices in order to maintain the political base of certain right wing parties. Under sufficient pressure from the working class, the capitalists can be forced to make exactly the same sort of concessions to the left.

But that sort of pressure demands mass militant action, and this is the thing farthest from the thoughts of FK. They have defined the struggle against unemployment primarily in terms of the intellectual exercise of workers dreaming up new ways in which they can be employed. They are prepared to admit that this ‘might’ involve nationalisation or state subsidies. They have made a colossal concession to the exploiters. The point they should begin from is the need to maintain employment. They should build their tactics on this basis and work out the sort of demands, up to and including nationalisation under workers’ control, in order to maintain the present level of employment irrespective of the type of production. If that is won, and it is only possible through militant action, then it is possible to begin discussing the type of production which is to be undertaken.

Because they do not recognise the need to fight the capitalist class in order to preserve our interests, there is a massive gap between the ideal picture of groups of workers making plans and their uneasy hesitation over the viability of such activities. In reality, every one of the eminently desirable objectives of the Lucas Plan, which they cite so frequently, cut right across the basic demand of the capitalist system. Even if alternative production is established in this or that factory it will not and cannot insulate the working class from the consequences of that compelling drive. Capitalists, capitalist states, even worker-directors, cannot break loose from the objective necessity of speed-up, sackings, replacement of human beings by machines, cutting corners on health and safety, etc., etc., for that is the logic of the capitalist system itself. The dream of alternative production is not a panacea which neatly skirts all of these real constraints.

In reality it is quite the reverse, for it does not take as its starting point the need to ensure the maximum organisation of the working class, the maximum unity, and the maximum readiness to fight for our interests. There are two disastrous results from this alleged cure-all. First, the question of commercial viability is introduced into the argument by the best working class militants themselves; that is the first pass sold to the bosses. Second, it hands to any half-sane management a golden opportunity for diverting the prospect of struggle into one of negotiation. And most managements are, at least when it comes to opportunities for profit, rather more than half-sane. Suddenly, a wonderful store of initiative and imagination is opened up to them, a host of new possibilities for profitable production are presented. They will grasp it.

But of course, they will grasp it in their own way: they will take up both of the above opportunities. And they fit together like nut and bolt. The argument is what can be viably produced. The workers are ready to discuss the matter. They propose a number of products and a number of working methods. For the management, it is a truly golden opportunity. They can examine the products, see which ones are likely to make a profit. Then they can start to argue about how they should be produced. They have a killer of an argument. Unless the workforce agree to their terms of production, then there will be no production at all. The workers, trapped in negotiations, their best militants bent over tables of production statistics, their best arguments conceded in advance, are without a prospect of victory. The threat of redundancy is back again in new strength. The outcome is alternative production and the same old profit.

The reason why this Utopian lunacy commands any sort of audience at all, and in Britain that audience is increasingly made up of reformists and bureaucrats who see it as a golden road to compromise, is that it has proved very hard to win struggles against redundancy. There is no argument against that. It has been as true in Britain as anywhere else in the world. But this is no reason for revolutionaries to abandon their principles. There are no easy gains to made in the class struggle and sometimes revolutionaries’ opinions are not very popular. That is no excuse for abandoning them.

The logic of this is, to say the least, very alarming. They start from a difficult situation. They locate the left reformists as a possible ally. They look for ways in which they can work with them. Then they begin to look for ways in which they can do the work of the left-reformists. The logic is unmistakeable and it leads out of the revolutionary movement: very soon they will start to become those very same left reformists.

 
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