Objectives
Key Issues
European Socialism
The Problem of Power
Syndicalism
Wage Price Mechanism
Monetary Policy
Taxation
Immigration |
Syndicalism - A Third Way
 WORKERS'
CONTROL THROUGH INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
1. Syndicalism, or Guild Socialism, stands for social justice and recognises
the right of the individual to work for his family and himself, always
provided this does not conflict with the well being of others. Syndicalism,
therefore, will not interfere with individuals who own shops, who run
farms and small workshops: in particular those who launch new industries.
Teams of technicians may work on new projects in industry, but the initial
invention or, later, the guiding ability is almost always the work of
an individual or a leader. If the individual is destroyed, progress is
destroyed. Syndicalism, therefore, will leave the way clear for individual
initiative. All it demands is that such individuals observe the social
law of adequate wages and suitable conditions of work. The individual
shall be protected and, in fact, encouraged for the betterment of the
whole.
2. Industries which have grown too big for the management of one individual
will be Syndicalised. They will pass to the full control of those who
work in them. The workers will form an Assembly, to take the place of
the old shareholders:they will meet at regular intervals to elect the
industry's Chairman, Directors and other executives from their own ranks.
Each worker will have an equal vote after a probationary period. At the
end of each year the directors will distribute the profits among the members
of the Assembly. Similarly, the Assembly may be called together by a majority
point of view at any time during the year for questioning the Directors.
Chairmen and Directors will receive from the Assembly full executive powers
to conduct the industry through an agreed period, at the end of which
they will account for their stewardship to the Assembly, which will either
dismiss them or confirm them for a further period.
3. Although control of industry will be handed to the workers in the shortest
possible time, all cannot be achieved overnight. Therefore, some measure
of part-control will be given immediately to the workers until full control
can be arranged. This interim period will also serve to acquaint workers'
representatives with the running of industry at top level.
In this interim period, half the Board of Directors will be elected by
the workers from their own ranks. All qualified workers will vote equally
and can attend shareholders' meetings. Of all profit distribute five per
cent, will be shared among the shareholders, the remainder among the workers.
A similar system of part-control will be adopted in the future, whenever
new industries founded by individual initiative have grown to the point
when one man cannot manage them and they are in fact ready for Syndicalisation.
4. Syndicalism stands for Workers' Control of Industry. The term "worker"
covers managers, technicians and operatives, these expressions indicating
functions and not social position. It is from the ranks of these workers
that chairmen, directors and other executives will be elected by the Assemblies,
as against, under capitalism, by the shareholders.
5. Workers' Control of Industry means Full Industrial Democracy. The Government
will only interfere in this field if the people as a whole are being exploited
by the pushing up of prices in order to gain undue profits. Elected by
the people as a whole, the Government would act on their behalf. At all
times the whole must take precedence over the part. The tendency towards
unduly high prices would in most cases be checked, however, by preservation
of a large measure of competition within Syndical industry, by curbing
any attempt by speculators to rig the Stock Exchange against the workers,
and by asserting the mastery of the people over banks and other financial
bodies, thus forming them into true servants of industry and making more
capital available for investment, through Government Securities, National
Savings, etc. (See Point ii.)
6. Syndical Schools. Each industry will have sufficient technical establishments
for the training of new entrants from educational schools. These Syndical
Schools will also be available for the training of workers to fulfill
the duties of directors and other positions of industrial leadership.
Right of entry will be open to all who work in a particular industry,
to prevent a new hereditary class emerging. There shall be opportunity
for all, but privilege for none. Only worker-graduates from Syndical Schools
will be eligible for election to industrial boards.
7. Wages and Profits. Every worker in industry will continue to receive
the rate for the job as a basic wage, which will advance automatically
as the national production increases. In addition, workers will be entitled
to a share in the profits of industry: a worker's share will be decided
by service and position. By the award of points for service and position
Syndicalism will ensure that men and women are encouraged to remain in
and build up an industry, yet not be penalised when age slows down their
movements. Again there will be encouragement to workers to seek promotion,
so tending to give industry the best men for the job. Workers who have
to transfer from one industry to another will take their service points
with them, but position points will vary according to promotion or demotion.
8. Industrial Insurance. To Syndicalists it is a grim injustice to pay
a worker in sickness and old age a flat rate irrespective of his wages.
Thus better insurance benefits will be given to all workers to enable
them to maintain their normal standard of living. Sickness Benefit and
Compensation for Injuries should amount to at least 75 per cent, of a
worker's wage, and be payable immediately on incapacity to work. Industrial
Retirement Pensions should be related both to past service and wage on
retirement. These pensions will automatically advance with a rise in the
cost of living.
Contributions to cover these benefits would be paid into a State Industrial
Insurance Fund, part by the workers and part by the employer or industrial
syndicate. The contributions would be on a sliding scale, taking into
account a worker's wage and number of dependants. The scale of contribution
would start at a minimum below which a worker would be a non-contributor,
rising gradually for medium wages and steeply thereafter. Contributions
of the employer or syndicate would operate inversely to those of the workers.
In this scheme the rights of contributors to present superannuation and
National Insurance schemes will be adequately safeguarded.
9. Redundancy of Workers. Each worker will be entitled to one month's
pay for each year of service, if laid off through no fault of his own,
with a minimum of one week's pay for service of three months or less.
10. Compensation to Shareholders. Syndicalists are determined to liquidate
the hereditary burden of debt on industry. For this reason they will not
repeat the errors of the Labour Party by committing future generations
to a lifetime of sweating toil in order to keep the dispossessed shareholders
and their heirs in idleness. When an industry is Syndicalised the shareholders
will exchange both the privilege of electing the Board and their shares
in industry for an annual pension amounting to not more than 5 per cent,
of their share capital for their lifetime only. On the death of the pensioner
any dependant will receive a life allowance of not more than half the
original pension. Holdings by corporate bodies shall also be limited in
duration to 25 years. These pensions and allowances, furthermore, will
only be paid when the industry is making an adequate profit.
11. Future Investment.
(a) Private Savings. The public will not be permitted to invest directly
in an industry once it is syndicalised, but will be encouraged to invest
in Government Securities, National Savings, Municipal Stock and the like.
(b) Industrial Savings. Industry will be encouraged to lend at fixed rates
of interest to a National Industrial Investment Fund set up for industrial
development. To start the Fund an industrial levy of not more than i per
cent. of distributed profits might be made by the industry itself.
In the above way industry has two resources for borrowing capital for
investment at low fixed rates, either from the Government, through an
Industrial Bank, or from its own Fund, in neither method can a new set
of absentee shareholders emerge to control industry from the outside.
12. Development Council. Government will set up a Council of Syndical
leaders, Trade Union officials, technicians and scientists, to plan expansion
of industries, and, where necessary, the closing down of out-of-date industries
before redundancy causes unemployment. By studying and anticipating changes
in consumer demand, by arranging financial backing for new industrial
projects, waste of national resources will be kept to the minimum.
13. Trade Unions. Syndicalists are united when they say that the organisation
of the Trade Unions will not be altered in any way without the full consent
of the workers. Labour Organisation will be the basis of Syndical procedure,
and the support that Syndicalists must have in the future to be able to
fulfill the destiny of the working class. Trade Unions, therefore, will
play a vital part in assisting workers to take over control of industry,
administering many of its details, such as Industrial Insurance.
To make Trade Union organisation as powerful as possible it will be made
blackleg-proof by the introduction of 100 per cent. Trade Union membership
throughout industry. Syndicalists will have no other power than that of
labour.
14. Strike Action. For too many years this has been the only weapon left
to the workers when management became immovable in its attitude. When
industry is controlled by the workers, however, strike action and restrictive
practices of all kinds would be directly opposed to the interests of the
workers. But Syndicalism will always uphold the right to strike until
the workers decide for themselves to abolish this last link with the bad
old days.
PRIORITIES FOR SYNDICALISATION
Let there be no misunderstanding about the industries which will be given
workers' control after syndicating Nationalised industries. First the
workers in every monopoly and combine will be liberated in a pre-arranged
order of importance to the national life as a whole. The great Unilever
and I.C.I. combines, and all their ramifications, will receive early attention,
together with automobile and aircraft industries. The place of each industry
in the general pattern to be followed, after all monopoly undertakings
have been syndicated, will depend on the size of the industry in question,
as the declared intention is to syndicate in order of size and importance.
Sometimes an industry will be taken out of turn because of technical inefficiency
or lack of capital similarly, when an owner dies or retires, which will
be the time to advance the concern to workers' control.
EUROPEAN SOCIALISM
The greatest achievement of Syndicalism, however, is likely to be in the
European field. European Socialism, which is its modern form, stands for
the Union of Europe on a Socialist basis. This has become necessary if
the international operations of capitalism are ever to be overcome. Capitalism
is organised and entrenched on an essentially world-wide scale. The low-wage
countries of Asia are being exploited industrially for still bigger profits
than those made by capitalism in the West. As a result, British workers
face the certainty of 1osin~ their markets to sweatshops in Asia financed
by the money enders of Europe and America.
The International Socialism of the Labour Party has failed completely
to deal with this menace. British workers cannot wait until the exploited
coolies of the East reach a high enough standard of life which could cut
out unfair competition-if this ever happens, British workers have been
marking time too long. Meanwhile, Capitalism has gone ahead with its world-wide
plans and ambitions, expanding and consolidating at a far greater speed
than the growth of any international workers' movement.
Syndicalism, therefore, takes the more realistic way of European Socialism.
The workers of Europe have reached a common high level of political power
and development. They are able to elect Governments to power to carry
out their will. They have a common outlook on life: their standards of
living and social conditions, though varying today, can be made up to
a common European level in a relatively short time. By uniting now they
can achieve real Socialism over a large field of human life, and can deprive
the Western exploiters of the Eastern sweated coolie of their profits
by banning all Oriental manufactured goods from European markets, protecting
those markets for their own products meanwhile.
Through European unity they can defeat all attempts to bring blackleg
Asiatic products into markets that should be reserved for European products.
Where international solidarity has proved an illusion, European solidarity
can be achieved in the very near future.
The same goes for blacklegging in Europe itself. Workers' unity throughout
a United Europe can put an end to the low wages paid in many parts of
the Continent and so put an end to blacklegging in Europe. European solidarity
can stop the vicious practice of playing off one European standard of
life against another in order to bring both standards down. By solidarity
with their comrades throughout the Continent British workers can ensure
that their goods will sell in all European markets without fear of unfair
competition: if the full European Socialist policy is employed, with the
development of Africa for white man and Negro alike, and with close barter
agreements with the Syndicalist countries of Latin America, British workers
can ensure through European solidarity that their products will stand
a fair chance in these great potential markets also.
European solidarity is necessary if British workers are to have any profit
to share, since there will be no profits at all if Europeans continue
blacklegging on each other.
European solidarity is necessary in addition to break once and for all
the giant international combines, like Unilever and I.C.I., which at present
are a law unto themselves. Even the most revolutionary Syndicalist programme,
if applied in this country alone, would only succeed in driving the combines
to operate on the Continent and elsewhere through their international
allies and subsidiaries. They would certainly take revenge on British
syndical workers by undercutting their products in European and other
markets. But by European solidarity, and the rise of Syndicalism throughout
the Continent, the power of the international giants can be permanently
broken. The only way to deal with an octopus is to lop off ALL its arms.
It is realised that this cannot happen overnight. A certain transitional
period must be expected, though this must be as short as possible. A Syndicalist
Britain would, therefore, be prepared to co-operate within a United Europe,
whether the rest of Europe is Syndical or not. Naturally it would seek
the closest co-operation with other European Syndicalists as a means of
bringing a fully Syndicated Europe. But its immediate aim would be a common
high wages and profits structure and the extension of industrial Assemblies
to European level. It would also encourage the setting up of a European
T.U.C. divorced from party politics, and 100 per cent. Trade Unionism
in Europe.
The time has arrived for a decision that will transform the entire living
standards of the workers. Despite all the hopes engendered in two great
wars, Capitalism is seen to be as bad as ever and with the same repressive
hold on every day life. Bureaucratic Socialism has been tried but has
proved in practice to be Bureaucratic Capitalism. The workers have no
alternative now to endless frustration but to take over the means of production
themselves and bring real Socialism through Syndical Revolution.
The workers have to choose between a continuing wage-slavery and a wider,
freer life through Syndicalism. European Socialism expects full co-operation
from every man and woman, and makes loyalty the key-note of the revolution,
but this will give the workers all the greater strength for removing the
parasitic financial and industrial boss-class, for uniting with their
European comrades, for developing and settling Africa and for achieving
the closest co-operation with the Syndicalists of South America.
Through European Socialism the full potentialities of three continents
can be realised, on the one hand by freeing and encouraging the brilliant
individual to use science in transforming resources to produce new forms
of wealth: on the other through Syndicalisrn to share the wealth of continents
among those who work in industry. The workers of Europe stand on the threshold
of the greatest social advance of their history.
WORKERS OF BRITAIN AND EUROPE - UNITE!
This pamphlet was drafted by workers from many different industries after
prolonged discussion. It is a product of the working-class itself.
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