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Competition propels capitalism. Fear of it, or the desire to get on top of it drives capitalist enterprise. It gobbles up the small & weak and pushes towards a global economy ruled by monopolies & their supporting forces – ‘imperial-ism’. In this serious but stage managed ‘war of all against all’ many feel labour should ally with employers to protect national markets from ‘foreign’ competition - & their hordes of oppressed, servile labour. But the point of all this competition in a global economy is that employers around the world use it to spur their workers to higher levels of productivity and to push conditions down. The net result is for employers as a whole to extract ever higher levels of surplus out of labour i.e. their globally available workforce. So we must watch the ‘free trade vs fair trade’ debate does not quickly descend to ‘tariffs’ & ‘protection’. We don’t want to resist globalisation by fighting to protect ‘our’ capitalists against ‘other’ workers capitalists! We want to push beyond globalisation - so people, not profits are at the centre of the world economy! Look closely at the revolutionary perspectives put forward by F Engels & K Marx. Engels said those “who advocate the protective system never fail to push the well being of the working class. ... The intelligent among (workers) know very well this is a vain delusion .. whether protective tariffs or free trade or a mixture of both, the worker will receive no bigger wage for his labour than will just suffice for his scantiest maintenance”. “Not till only one class - the bourgeoisie - is seen to exploit & oppress - only then will the last decisive battle break out, the battle between the propertied & the propertyless, between the bourgeoisie & the proletariat”. M-E CW V6, p94. Marx: “Don’t imagine that in criticising freedom of commerce we have the least intention of defending protectionism. The protective system is nothing but a means of establishing manufacture on a large scale in any given country. We see that in the countries where the bourgeoisie is starting to make itself felt as a class it makes great efforts to obtain protective duties. But generally speaking, the protective system is conservative, while the free trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities & carries antagonisms of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In the revolutionary sense alone, I am in favour of Free Trade” (M-E CW V6 p465) This is awesome logic, but how many of us want revolution, or see it is needed or wanted? What does a revolution – ‘in economy, technique, science, family, morals, everyday life’ involve? Civil war? Peaceful reform? Isn’t a more ‘secure’ option of second best safer – to protect the system and hope it lets people keep jobs? Can’t we leave revolution for later? Many get caught in the dilemma - how to get reforms out of a national economy & national employers without pushing too far & having jobs & industry disappear altogether? So we reach for ‘protective’ tactics. But this feathers employers’ nests without them having to deliver anything to labour. ‘Old’ jobs are often dirty & low paying jobs. Employers don’t need to invest, they can keep skimming. When they finally do reinvest their aim will be the same – to use less labour or cheaper labour or both. Labour needs to front up directly to a more ‘far reaching’ priority – the need to forge international-global alliances that aim to confront and overthrow the ‘one class’ that is creating a crisis for humanity & the prospect of planetary scale mass extinction. We can only negotiate this – create a pathway to sustain-ability – if we can envision how labour globally & collect-ively can attain control of the global enviro-socio-economy. We must base society on justice & sustainability, not inequity & exploitation! Caught in national protection can easily become a fatal trap! Campaigning around shorter work hours is a central plank in any socialist, or even counter-hegemonic strategy. It is necessarily international, or global in scope, because imperialism is an international market where labour is divided & played off internationally. It addresses labour’s central question – how to starve capital of the surplus it must suck – expropriate – out of a global workforce to keep recreating itself – as capital, as a capitalist class, as a capitalist state. Shortening the working day is the basic prerequisite for labour to become free. It redistributes work – between the unemployed & unemployed, between men & women, among the workforce internationally. It allows a redistribution of wealth – accrued value – and a redirection of the economy from a global corporate hegemony to the world’s workers & the people; ie it creates economic democracy. The argument that ‘protection creates jobs in the first place – shorter work hours only improve them’ is wrong. Shorter hours create jobs directly, while stimulating competition between capitals to innovate & invest, just to try to retain their profits. They just need to find other ways than protection. Shorter hours start to equalise basic conditions among the global workforce. They reduce the options capital has being making for itself by creating the largest ‘potential difference’ between ‘high’ & ‘low’ cost labour markets. Not surprisingly lowest cost labour markets also have longest hours & least skills. Shorter hours as a world demand is a driver for equalisation in a way wages and protected national markets can never be. They put labour as a whole – the world’s workers - in a better position to rein in the despotism of capital!
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