Nonviolence versus capitalism

The goal is more jobs. Work-ins, where employees stay at the workplace continuing to do their work in spite of employers seeking to terminate their jobs or to shut down the entire workplace, are quite compatible with this goal. However, the more commonly used methods, such as leafletting, meetings, rallies, strikes and pickets, do not directly incorporate the goal of more jobs.

4. Is the campaign resistant to cooption?

A successful campaign for jobs is itself cooption into the capitalist system.

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In summary, job campaigns, like campaigns for better wages and conditions, are unlikely to be effective means for transforming capitalism in a nonviolent direction, especially because they do not challenge the foundations of capitalism. They are a type of cooption. They are essentially about making capitalism work a bit more fairly. Capitalism is retained but with some adaptation for people’s needs. Although they do little to challenge the foundations of capitalism, job campaigns are essential for the survival, standard of living and self-esteem of many people and communities.

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Consider now some other goals for workers’ struggles. One important goal is the right to organise legally, especially to form trade unions. Going through the check list, it turns out that the answers are much the same. The campaign doesn’t do much to challenge the violent underpinnings or legitimacy of capitalism, nor much to build a nonviolent alternative. Participation often has to be high in order to be successful, but it might only be to vote in favour of having a union. Cooption is a big risk, because with legal recognition of workers’ organisations, there is a greater possibility that trade union officials will act to dampen worker radicalism. The officials often find that their power is greater when workers “play by the rules,” namely obey all laws and regulations governing worker organisation.

There is one question for which the answer could be different: Are the campaign’s goals built in to its methods? The goal in this case is an official worker organisation. One way to seek this is to set up a “shadow” or parallel organisation — namely, an organisation that is run the same way a legal one would be. This is often a powerful way to proceed, since it gives participants ideal training for running an organisation.

Workers’ control

For a strong contrast to campaigns for better wages and conditions, jobs or the right to organise, consider a campaign for workers’ control, namely for the alternative in which workers collectively and democratically control all aspects of work in an enterprise, including who does what, who gets paid what, and what gets produced. With workers’ control, owners and managers are eliminated or made irrelevant to the actual operation. This is also called workers’ self-management.[4]

There are various ways a campaign for workers’ control could proceed. It might be by lobbying government to introduce it as a more efficient method of production. It might come about by enlightened owners turning a company over to the workers, as has happened on a few occasions, such as with the Scott Bader Company in Britain. It might come about when workers join together to buy out a failing company. Finally, it might come about by a direct takeover by workers.

The focus here is on scenarios in which direct worker action is the primary driving force behind introduction of workers’ control. Few governments have ever supported it and few private owners have relinquished their role. The exceptions most often occur during revolutionary upsurges, for example during the Russian Revolution when workers took over factories (making them into “soviets”). The Bolsheviks supported this while it served the purpose of helping overthrow the existing regime but introduced bureaucratic control once the party had solidified its power.[5]

So to the check list.

1. Does the campaign help to

undermine the violent underpinnings of capitalism, or

undermine the legitimacy of capitalism, or

build a nonviolent alternative to capitalism?

Most obviously, workers’ control is a nonviolent alternative to capitalism, since it dispenses with the need for owners and managers. One self-managed enterprise itself does not constitute an alternative, but as a model, workers’ control provides a fairly comprehensive alternative, typically along anarchist lines.