Part Five: A Modern Syndicalism
In this series of posts, I have been
sketching a common thread of left-wing thought which rejects both the
state-socialist/communist tradition (for its authoritarianism and focus on the
interests of the consumer over those of the producer) and the producer-only
focus of anarcho-syndicalism, Wobblyism, and pre-war French syndicalism. In
this post, I will bring together these different currents of thought (guild
socialism, De Leonism, the post-war CGT, the Workers’ Opposition) and propose a
synthesis based on the best ideas of each:
*The economy would be a mixed one,
resembling Tito’s Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union under the New Economic Policy.
The means of production would mostly be publicly owned, but workplaces and industries
would be self-governing by the workers employed therein, subject to a degree of
worker-consumer co-determination. Small businesses, sole traders, and private
agriculture would continue to exist, and much of the retail and distribution
sector would be taken over by consumers’ co-operatives.
*In the sectors of the economy in which the
means of production are publicly owned, the relevant union would be charged
with co-ordinating the activities of workplaces, by planning; procuring supplies
and raw materials; organising distribution, branding, and marketing; and
conducting research and development. In order to safeguard the interests of
consumers, each industry will also have a state-appointed regulatory body, whose
powers would be modelled on those historically exercised by the United States’
Interstate Commerce Commission with regards to preventing undue price rises and
restrictions on output.
*Workers would keep all profits made, and
workers in each workplace or industry would decide democratically how these
would be split among them or re-invested. (If the new economic system comes
about peacefully, a portion of the profits might be designated to compensating
the former capitalist owners of the means of production.)
*The United States’ National Labor
Relations Act would be adopted, in which a majority vote in a ‘bargaining unit’
is required to unionise the entire membership of the bargaining unit. By
adopting bargaining units covering an entire industry, class-conscious
industrial unions can secure compulsory unionism in their sector of the economy
by majority vote. (The National Labor Relations Board did something like this
in 1938, when it settled a jurisdictional dispute between the AFL and the CIO
by placing all West Coast longshoremen, from San Diego to Anchorage, in a
single bargaining unit.)
*The members of these unions would directly
elect local, regional, and national officials of their union, as well as their
union’s delegates to the All-Industrial Congress. The All-Industrial Congress
would settle disputes between the unions, plan the national economy, arrange
financing for new investment, and co-ordinate foreign trade. The unions, as
well as militant minorities within them, would retain all rights to engage in
industrial action.
*A number of consumers’ co-operatives,
modelled on the British co-operative movement, would be set up with state aid.
These would purchase products from the unions and agricultural marketing
boards, and operate retail stores, returning their profits to their members
through a ‘dividend’ weighted according to purchases made. Co-operative
officers would be elected on a one-member-one-vote basis, and co-operatives
would federate at local, regional, and national levels.
*To represent the interest of consumers of
public utilities and public services, the nation would be covered in a
patchwork of American-style special districts, dealing with subjects such as roads,
railways, water, sewerage, electricity, gas, telecommunications, schools,
health, and housing. These bodies would be elected for two-year terms of office
by all residents of the relevant jurisdiction, and would act as consumers’
co-operatives, procuring goods or services from the relevant union(s).
*To deal with the remaining functions of
the state (taxation, high politics, law and order, constitutional affairs),
there would be established at local, regional, and national levels a series of
soviets. On local soviets in each city, town, and shire, three-fifths of
delegates would be elected by local union branches, while the remaining two-fifths
would be split between delegates elected by local consumers’ co-operatives and
appointees of special districts whose jurisdiction overlaps that of the soviet.
Local soviets would send recallable delegates to regional Congresses of
Soviets, which would in turn send recallable delegates to the national Congress
of Soviets. All soviets would elect their executive committees, as well as
regulatory bodies acting in the interest of consumers.
*Domestic purchasing power would be
increased via the creation of extra scrip money, which loses value over time so
as not to cause inflation (as proposed in the early twentieth century by the
German-Argentine economist Silvio
Gesell). This scrip would be put into the money supply so as to make up the
shortfall between aggregate demand and aggregate output.
*Agricultural produce, both for domestic
consumption and for export, would be purchased in bulk by grower-controlled marketing
boards modelled on the Australian Wheat Board.
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