Sketching out alternatives
International Viewpoint #255 April 1994
AMONG the obstacles encountered in the difficult but necessary mobilisation against unemployment, there is the following question: is it possible to get out of the crisis without a radical shake-up in the very way we think of work? This article charts out some possible approaches. MAXIME DURAND 10 March 1994
E VERYONE now agrees,
more or less, that there is no longer hope of a spontaneous end to the unemployment crisis. This alone explains the return of the question of the length of the working week to centre stage. Many erroneous theses have thus been abandoned, which referred to three central notions: compensation, Toyotaism and chosen time.
The compensation theory was based on the idea that jobs destroyed through automisation and restructuring of the productive apparatus would be created elsewhere. In such conditions, unemployment appeared as the price to pay for a fundamental technological change and a generalised adaptation to a new model of economic growth. The unemployed are seen as people who are not adapted (and even inadaptable); they do not have the required qualifications to be integrated into the new organisation of work, in which skilled employment is said to play the decisive role. Time is therefore required to absorb this unemployment: time to train workers, to recycle them, or more simply for them to age and be sent into retirement.
This compensation dogma reigned supreme throughout the 1980s, but nobody believes it any more. In the current phase of capitalism, it is clear that links between accumulation employment have been decisively thrown off balance, through the growing absence of opportunities for profitable accumulation.
The theory of the post-industrial society is in some ways a variant of the
### WORK compensation theses. In its simplest version, the analysis consists of saying that there is a transfer of human activity from industry towards services, analogous to the previous transfer from agriculture to industry. But at the same time, it is not a simple transfer, insofar as services have specific qualities, the most noteworthy
We are said to be entering into society where work that transforms materials would bit by bit be replaced by activities that circulate information. The proletariat is said to be subject to a twotrack process of dissolution - with the industrial worker occupying a more and more marginal place in productive human activity, and with the direct application of physical effort itself tending to disappear. The very notions of merchandise and work are supposed to be becoming more and more blurred.
Often, this approach is paired up with an idyllic extrapolation of a world in which the rise of mass unemployment has the historical function of creating the foundations for a new relationship to the
The contradictions of this analysis are striking. On the one hand, these approaches do not hide the reality of unemployment and insecurity. There is very little free choice in this free time! It is an insult of those excluded by the market system to make their defeat the sign of a new society in the process of being born. But, on the other hand, one senses that this analysis is correct, insofar as it spells out what is indeed possible and is within arm's reach.
### Toyota
According to the Toyotaist analysis, the computer revolution is leading us into the post-Taylorist and post-Fordist era. It means the end of assembly line production, the hyper-specialisation of employment, the end of mass production and the advent of quality manufacturing and worker participation. The firm of the future would be based on new positive values such as cooperation and versatility. A new social model, founded on new work relations, is said to be in the process of being born.
It as if one were dreaming when all these projections are matched with reality. What do we really see? Massive and violent lay-offs, the intensification of the work process, the individualisation of salaries, job insecurity, the growth of contracting out, the rise of forced part-time work for women, the freezing of salaries, work through "temp" agencies for youth, and so forth.
Once again, on the level of the workplace we see the same ideological approach as in relation to the role of work: a regressive reality, but also objective elements which are taken out of their context to justify an optimistic
In the same way that unemployment potentially challenges the wage relationship, new technologies contain within them the seeds for a radically new organisation of the work process. In both cases, there is confusion between their potential and their actual social reality. The argument relies on an automatic generalisation of good solutions, in which the array of potential is harnessed in the most optimum fashion. It is on such an argument that should be examined, in order to understand the two sides of the crisis of work.
Only Marxism can clear up this contemporary paradox which sets the "good news" of productivity gains against the social tragedy they engender. The only way is to use an essential concept of materialism, that of the social relationship.
### Rigid
Every society is dominated by a mode of production that determines the way in which social needs will be met and the division and sharing out of work. This structure works according to relatively rigid rules; elements of social change - whether in the field of technological innovations or in relation to the emergence of new aspirations — can only become real within the mould of the given social relations of production.
In other words, the crisis that we are going through today is a text book case that illustrates the validity of a perfectly classic Marxist analysis. How can we ignore that the development of the productive forces tends to come into conflict with capitalist relations of production? How better to express this
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International Viewpoint #255 April 1994 feeling that everything is possible (to work less, to get everyone working, and to meet basic needs) and that at the same time the laws of the capitalist system separate us from this possibility?
Indeed, it is the thrust given to the development of the productive forces by capitalist social relations that prevents all the potential of technological change from being translated into social progress for all of humanity - and which in fact turns it into a force for social regression.
Today, this phenomenon is intuitively understood by a growing segment of the working class, so glaring is the difference between the hyper-sophistication of techniques and living conditions for the majority.
### Hesitation
This feeling, however, is often accompanied by a number of hesitations. The positive interpretation is that of saying that we have to finish off capitalism in order to liberate the potential that it has accumulated while perverting its social effects. The slow process of consciousness-raising on this score is related to the difficulty of crossing this hurdle and grasping all the consequences of the fact that there is no alternative to a radical break with the system.
Of course, nothing is ever impossible, and this observation is relative. Things can be put in another way: never in the history of capitalism has capitalism proven itself to be so incapable of meeting social needs.
It is better to produce less than to produce in an insufficiently profitable manner. This basic rule of capitalism has created a massive phenomenon of exclusion - the exclusion of working people, whole sectors, regions and countries. Capitalism tends to align itself with the most high-performance sectors, while excluding the rest. This is why we insist on the idea that the marginalisation of the majority of the Third World is the same as the rise in unemployment, and that the Third World is now present in
Capitalism has not collapsed, but the system of accumulation that has progressively been put into place is intrinsically unstable, since it implies growing inequality in the sharing out of revenues. Today it has reached limits compatible with the current social relationship of
When we examine economic projections, we see that maintaining current unemployment rates is an optimistic 34 goal. However, to do so would in no way mean keeping to the status quo. It would actually mean deepening
- and not stabilising - the phenomena of social decline that we have experienced over the last 15 years.
In the best of cases, capitalism will not be able to achieve anything more than medium growth, leading to limited job creation, enough to absorb growth in the active population. We would have the same "stock" of unemployment and under-employment that we have today.
The only way to both reabsorb today's unemployed and employ future candidates is therefore through a massive and immediate reduction in the length of the work week.
This argument does not convince everyone. After all, why not aim for more sustained growth and resign ourselves to limited prospects for employment? There are two answers. In the first place, there has to be an understanding of why economic policies currently being pursued do not go in this direction, in spite of calls for a major
The first reason is that the public debt, which presents an easily understood contradiction.
You cannot at one and the same time hope to reduce the budgetary deficit and want to jobs create through public spending. This obstacle is the product of the gifts have been handed to the wealthy over the last years;
public debts are held in the main by social have benefited fiscal counter-reform.
They have been double winners - having had to pay less taxes and having been offered profitable investment opportunities.
But as a result the budgetary margin for manoeuvre has been reduced to a very narrow one indeed. This is an important factor - as much as globalisation - behind the inability of European States to adopt even nominally autonomous policies.
### Power
The second reason is more deepgoing. A distribution of buying power only makes sense if this buying power is spent where it needs to be. But nothing guarantees that it won't go towards imported products or, what amounts to the same thing within capitalism, towards services outside the realm of the hard core where capitalist logic is the most unrelenting — that is, consumption of goods not produced in sectors with the highest gains in productivity. This thesis will not be disproven so long as partisans of European revival explain why what has not been possible for ten years should all of a sudden be so today.
It is possible to overcy
International Viewpoint #255 April 1994 pursued within a national framework will lead to growth rates that could provide an alternative to the reduction of the work week. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Given the degree of openness of economies, such a policy would mean hoping to export unemployment from one country to the next.
It could be said that this is a policy of aggression, insofar as one country cuts it own unemployment by handing a rotten apple to its neighbours. In response to this protectionism that seeks to win against the others, we must propose the right to protect social innovation - a protection that would disappear if others adopt the same policy, for example that of a 35-hour work week. The idea is altogether different: to win alongside and not against one's neighbours.
### Growth
The mirage of a shining path of growth drifts increasingly into the distance. The rise of an unemployment which spares neither degree-holders nor qualified workers has been a spoiler for those who promoted the idea of merely adapting to the new order, people who believed that the curse only affected unskilled workers.
Little by little, the idea of a radical break is gaining in currency. But there should be no illusions: we are still very far from a situation in which there exists a clear social alternative to the bourgeoisie's projects. We are at a point where a growing section of working people understand that there is no third way between continuing the decline and establishing a new economic system with new
This is a strong negative dose of consciousness-raising regarding what can be expected from employers and the government. What remains is to organise this negative consciousness so that it becomes something positive. And this is where the greatest difficulties lie - and there is what could be called generalised social hesitation to draw the lessons of a widely-shared observation.
The situation is thus wide-open, and the stakes are high. Because the alternative is a naitonal-populist programme which appears coherent because of its simplicity, and is based on the failure of liberal policies. Confronted with what should be seen as a very serious threat, projects advanced around the demand for the 35-hour work week should aim to define an alternative which is a clear break from the capitalist mess.
The notion of a radical break is deci-
Sive. Once again, it is not possible to entertain ideas of a way out of the crisis through step-bystep measures which supposedly inject elements of change into the sick body of capitalism. There is no continuity between the current situation and a different mode of economic organisation.
The need for a radical break also flows from the global character of aspirations towards the reduction of work time. On the macro-economic level, it is accompanied by two fundamental challenges. On the one hand there is the sharing out of wealth and revenues — through recuperating financial revenues. On the other hand, there is a re-orientation of production according to social needs. On the level of the firm, it challenges the employer's demand to control management, in particular in relation to the organisation of work and the people employed.
This necessary radical break is what makes a lot of people wary. Is there really no other way that would lead to similar results at a smaller cost? By hoping to turn things upside down, do we not run the risk of being the sorcerer's
Shift The way in which these reservations are expressed show that a growing proportion of working people are ready to shift to a position that overtakes lingering hesitation. This shift will not solely be the product of theoretical demonstration and neatly ordered proposals, but moreso that of an association of these arguments with practice.
Concrete experience is showing millions of working people that the economic machine is not only out of control, but that it has gone berserk and that it has to be stopped - even if one would have preferred to peacefully watch the world go by.
The fact that the struggle for a massive reduction in the length of the work week is starting rather late in the game emptiness of other remedies to same time, the demand has changed in nature; it has become the expression of a broad aspiration towards another mode of functioning for the economy and for
It is not only a technical measure of a purely economic character — but a sketch for another society. In a rightwing political landscape in Europe — where "left-wing" parodies in government betray and spoil all hopes for social change - the theme of a radical reduction in the work week points to a new anti-capitalist coalition.
This coalition is no longer formed around a clear project that aims to go beyond capitalism — all alternative models and reference points having been demolished - but around the defense of immediate aspirations. We have entered a period in which the elementary fight for the right to a job and to civilised living conditions have taken on a de facto anti-capitalist content, given capitalism's growing inability to satisfy these essential needs.
The coming together of social interventions that have remained dispersed until now could very well give birth to a relatively new form of socio-political movement. This is still only a perspective in the initial stages, but one thing is clear: in order to give rise to a contemporary form of anti-capitalism, today it is clearly enough to demand capitalism to provide what is possible - something it is not capable of doing.
To demand the possible — but stubbornly and with no illusions about short-
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