The Anti-Water Alliance Is A Bourgeois Movement.

national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis Tuesday October 14, 2014 11:40 by Paddy Hackett

One Issue Campaigns Are Not A challenge To Capitalism

Single issue demands such as the movement against water rates hold back the class struggle by suggesting that capitalism can continue in the absence of these charges or taxes. This is because such demands are not embedded in a programme of an interlinked series of demands that challenges the capitalist system.

Wages as the price of labour power is a flexible form. It can fluctuate above and below its value. However on average its price corresponds to the value of labour power. In periods of prosperity when there is accelerated accumulation of capital it tends to rise above its value. During downturns the price of labour power tends to fall below its value. Overall it tends on average to coincide with the value of labour power. The wage struggle which tends to be strongest in an upswing is a factor in determining its price.

Now there are periods in which wages increase without correspondingly diminishing surplus value. This happens in upswings when there have been increases in productivity. Otherwise when wages rise surplus value is correspondingly decreased. If relative wages improve for the working class there may come a time when because of the consequent fall in the general rate of profit investment correspondingly falls off leading to a corresponding fall in employment. Under these conditions wage rise tend to slow down and even stop.

Wages can never rise to such an extent that it leads to an end to the surplus value production. Under these conditions capitalism would cease to exist thereby leading to the abolition of the wage form itself. Capital accumulation is the independent variable while wage is the dependent variable. It is capital that ultimately regulates wages --not the reverse. Wages is an effect not a cause. However there are those under the illusion that capitalism can be abolished by an offensive wage struggle that successfully raises wages to such degree that it brings the existence of surplus value to an end thereby bringing capitalism to an end.

The working class engage in defensive and offensive wage struggles to prevent the price of labour power relentlessy falling below its value. However it can never be turned into a revolutionary struggle to overturn capitalism. Because no matter how successful the wage struggle is its success only leads to growing unemployment and consequently the eventual end to rising wages. It is a struggle whose limits are contained within capitalist parameters. Wage struggles may be an indication of growing class consciousness and rebelliousness among the working class. However they can never serve as a form of revolutionary struggle. Nevertheless they are a form of class struggle. Furthermore they can be broader than strike action assuming a more political character in order to make their struggle for a wage increase more effective.

However beside wage struggles strike action can have a political character. Striking work can have a revolutionary character. Such strike action if strong and widespread enough can form part part of a strategy to overthrow capitalism. These are political strikes. Syndicalism views the sustained general strike as a key weapon in the overthrowal of capitalism. Political strikes can have more defined targets such as a fight for a reduction in certain taxes.

It is clear that generally strikes are an inherent part of the class struggle at its most local and defensive to its most universal and offensive. Strike action is a significant and important component of the class struggle at all levels. However it must be stressed that wage struggles in themselves can never effect the abolition of capitalism. The wage form is a capitalist social relation of production. This is the trade unions that lead wage struggles represent a narrow form of struggle that accepts the "boundaries of capitalism".

State Spending

The struggle against the cutbacks against state spending that benefits the working class form a legitimate part of the class struggle. It is a struggle to defend the current living standards of the working class. Such struggles must be conducted in the context of a revolutionary challenge to capitalism. This entails the combination of agitation and propaganda within the working class.

However struggles to socially expand the state suggests that the problems of the working class can be solved within capitalism --within a restructured capitalism. Such struggles dont form a challenge to capitalism and instead demonstrate support for the capitalist state. Parties such as the Socialist Party and the SWP are guilty of this and are thereby pro-capitalist. The point is that capitalism cannot solve the problems of the working class. If it could then communism would not be a historical necessity. There, then, would be no need for social revolution. Consequently calls for the expansion of the capitalist state are reactionary by nature because they create and generate illusions in capitalism. They pave the way for future defeats of the working class. The task is the abolition of the capitalist state not its expansion. Even the ruling class was to meet such demands as more state housing for impoverished layers of the working class this would mean more state borrowing and consequently more taxation imposed on the working class or cutbacks in other areas that adversely affect the living standards of the working class. Ultimately the working class would have essentially gained nothing. The upshot would have been merely the redistribution of wealth among the working class. This is because contemporary capitalism cannot expand the state sector due to its inability to produce sufficient surplus value. It needs to shrink the state as opposed to expanding it in order to redistribute surplus value towards the capitalist class. In that way it hopes that the scale of the accumulation of capital will increase.

The call for the abolition of water rates is a populist demand when presented on its own. Even if water rates are abolished the government will draw this revenue from other sources that adversely impact on the working class. Consequently the campaign to abolish water rates will have been just a waste of proletarian energy even if successful. Just the creation of another illusion. The fight against water rates must form part of a unified programme against capitalism and its state. This means that demands such as the abolition of water rates do not have a dislocated character. These demands must be organically linked together. In this way the fight against capitalism has a centralised as opposed to a fragmented form that culminates in the dissipation of the energy of the working class and thereby abject failure. The Anti Austerity Alliance fought the South West bye election opportunistically on the single issue of the water charge. The communist programme is an "interlinked system" as opposed to a thinly disguised collection of isolated demands. In this way no illusions in capitalism are promoted. The task of the communist is to present particular demands in the immediate struggles of the masses within the context of the fight of the programme as a whole. This will mean agitation within a particular struggle for a demand whilst making propaganda for this programme as a whole

On the other hand single issue demands such as the movement against water rates hold back the class struggle by suggesting that capitalism can continue in the absence of these charges or taxes. This is because such demands are not embedded in a programme of an interlinked series of demands that challenges the capitalist system.

A little of the above draws on the Manifesto of the LRCI.