Last week we established the existence of the bureaucracy layer own against those of the working class. This week we look at the political background to the emergence of bureaucracy.
Freidrich Engels wrote labour aristocracy to Marx in 1858. He said, 'The British working class is actually becoming HOTe bourgeois so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimatev the possession bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois Di viclallal as well bourgeoisie. Of course, this is to a cerlali extent Jusunable tor a nation which is exploiting the whole world'.
It was with this labour aristocracy that the political traditions of the bureaucracy born. The skilled WULACES remodelled their own family life in imitation of the capitalists, who made a national chauvinistic anil-irish racism part of neir own ideology were the same ones who formed the first, really stable trade unions, great Societies" and "Friendly Societies of the last century with their large and compacticave penera senemes ion The motto societies was Defence Not Delance"
AS !! affairs. politics. Their iphans pares, usual not crais.
Aul labour ing class and a privileged closely. interests this the and more WCIC outlook and 'Amalgamated upper these 4) 111 allegiance were some exceptions.
conduct franchise to the labour aristocracy and no further, cemented this alliance between ine lop section or ine workthe employers 1HI0IC Disputes did occur and strikes did happen, but by and large negotiations were enough to get a settlement for laver. C'onsequently although these unions bad salaricd staff thet were simosi entirely for the henefit and lactor" financial affair of the unions. There Those union which employ i salaried caft for the disputes marked hopsches oft trom the rag organisation of the later general The number of full-time trade union officials is tiny and insignificant in relation to the vast army that is the British trade union movement, two or three thousand bureaucrats in relation to twelve organised workers. The strength of the bureaucracy is not its social but its political weight as a transmission belt for the pressures of the ruling class into the working class.
The historical basis for this is a split in the working class developed in the second half of the last century, in the second phase of the development of capitalism. In the preceeding period the bosses tracted surplus value by driving down the general conditions of the workers.
Workers were forced to work very long hours for as small a wage as possible. All available labour power utilised labour outside the home became exlensive for the first time. Exhausted or sick workers were simply replaced the vast reserve pool agricultural labour Wages were clawed back by the "truck system in which the employees were forced to buy their goods from cores owned by their bosses at vastly inflated prices. fines whereby. for example, a worker could be tmed half a day's wages for being "diny'... or for washing in the All attempts to combine against these barbaric conditions were met wilin the most sicious state repression.
worker that in a period where the 'nation' grew enormously rich, a male worker in 1850 could only buy 90 per cent of what his ancestor could buy a hundred years earlier.
In these conditions there was a general levelling down of wages. In the advanced and dominant industry million wages fell faster than elsewhere, this created the basis for the mass politicisation of the working class. During the last decade of this first phase, the infant trade union movement and the which Radical movement led by bourgeois Emerged great, revolutionary Chartist movement. Strikes were transformed into political rebellions. It called strikes in support of political movements, and conceived the idea of the political General Strike, and sought political revolution.
The political tradition child labour bureaucracy born in the succeeding period, the second phase of capitalist development and as the polar opposite of revolutionary Chartist tradition. Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 which ushered in an era of cheap food first stalled the revolutionary movement, and then new methods labour exploitation extended to industry in general. division in function berween a minority et highly-skilled workers and the unskilled mass lay at the root of the development of machine-based production in iron, steel and allied industries. the work pace of the majonty and through a sysiem of pay differentials most technically material were used to form une As the aristocracy consciously was however The The of undermined The factory system was British capitalism, The skilled workers dictated workers Socialist Challenge ARGUMENTS for SOCIALISM by the bosses to establish work discipline in the factories and metal-working trades became the dominant industry the ruling classes developed this labour as an instrument general social and political contro The bosses encouraged this uppe stratum of workers to believe the more in the employer than with the working class protits the capitalists were deriving from their monopoly position in world markets and their superexploitation of labour in their vast colonial possessions gare them the capacity to create a privileg. ed minority whose loyality could be. quite literally, bought.
Pioneered in the organisations oi the labour aristocracy, the emerging trade union bureaucracy learned how to organise, and learned its collaborationist politics at the same time, Next week we will look at the third phase of when Brian los its monopoly position, the unskilled and the bureaucracy became practiced in the 11 February 1982 page 13