For a future that works

It does not help the emancipation of the working class to deceive ourselves with distortions of reality?

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), has produced a report entitled  “A Job for Everyone” which argues says that full employment can be achieved without driving down wages.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Full employment is not a pipe dream. This report shows how through the right policies we can get there...”

Dream on Frances...

His mistake is to cling to the myth, exploded by Karl Marx, that full employment is the normal state of capitalism, and unemployment the exception. Marx  demonstrated that not only was a pool of unemployed workers the norm under capitalism, it was in fact intrinsic and essential to the workings of the wages system for there to be such a pool.  He referred to it was the “industrial reserve army”. For Marx, the relative size of this reserve had a direct effect on the level of wages – as it increased, wages shrank, and vice versa. The upward limit of wages was the point at which they began to unduly impact on profitability. High wages would lead employers to either discover labour-saving processes, or simply lay off staff and cut back operations. When unemployment is very low the workers are in a better position to push up wages and this combines with other boom developments to cut into profit margins; which in turn discourages capitalist plans to expand industry.

Belief in the ability of the right government to secure "full employment" at will soon comes up against a complication.  Unemployment has never gone away because the labour market needs unemployment to function properly.  The subordination of human beings to the law of "no profits, no work" means that we live in a society irreconcilably opposed to our interests. The presence of large-scale unemployment even in times of relative economic boom and super-high profits alone proves this.

Many believe that governments have almost complete control of the situation and can make unemployment as high or low as they choose. The anarchy of the capitalist market lies at the heart of the problem. Even during the long post-war economic stability, full employment was always taken to mean a margin (in the hundreds of thousands) of unemployed people. Of course  full employment means a much higher margin of unemployment than it previously did.

The dilemma of all trade unionists is that if they abandon the belief that unemployment and depression can be eliminated under capitalism, what can they do except face the alternative - fearful for them - of getting rid of capitalism?

The Socialist Party has consistently opposed a programme of reforms of capitalism. It is dishonest because those who do it know that the reforms will not solve the problem.  We urge workers to abandon these illusions. Only the removal of the wages system itself will free us from the threat of its inevitable consequence of unemployment.