Back to Labour Values index
Back to tripartite talks index
Back to article index
Previous
WHISKEY AND TOURISM
The 'left' may well ask what cause had the British bourgeoisie to be worried. After all, as capitalists they are only concerned with profit and the British bourgeoisie could continue to earn that (l) by investing abroad and (2) by adjusting to the international division of labour so that in Britain what was produced was determined by what was profitable in the international division of labour: Scotch whiskey, luxury textiles for the ruling class around the world, fashionable foods like British biscuits and toffees and finally tourism, civilised holidays for stately-home and stability lovers. This "pure capitalist view" was put by an ex-Wilsonite member of the bourgeoisie in the Observer on 25.2.73 : "I see no reason to expect that there can be any upsurge in investment in British-owned industry. As the managing director of one specialist engineering company told me when he opened a factory extension in his works, 'I must be mad. I could treble the return on this land if I let it for offices'. But he is a professional engineer, backed by American capital. So, he invested. Investment is an American habit. It is unlikely that British-owned manufacturing companies, outside a few special cases like Scotch whisky (now a capital intensive affair), specialist engineering, quality textiles, and parts of the rag trade will offer much in the way of employment opportunity in the long term. Certainly not for the un-skilled or semi-skilled. As for the skilled workers, the relatively few products of our deficient education system will have to find their individual prosperity either in American-owned firms (if the Americans don't get disenchanted first) or in Europe. Freedom to sell your skills across the water will be the one solid benefit to the British worker from our entry into EEC."
In fact, since the l890s the British bourgeoisie have attempted to resist this solution. They have attempted to resist because they still had the desire and will to live and derive their profit from, and organise production in a national economy. A national economy means being in a position to continue to develop the productive forces within that nation according to the needs of that nation (competing against other nations): an economy which can produce its own means of production, can make innovations in technology on the basis of its own skills, can provide its own capital for social reproduction and accumulation. This should not be mistaken for the metaphysical concept of autarky: where a nation has no international trade, is totally self-sufficient and exists unto itself. It means in fact that a national economy competes with other national economies in providing the same commodities for sale on a world market and that the productive forces of each nation are developed on the basis of this competition.
If a national economy is strong, it keeps up with competition and keeps on developing its productive forces. If not, it starts producing hotels and whiskey. The choice is clearly between keeping up with the international development of the productive forces or falling by the wayside.
The 'left' may again ask, of what interest is all this to the working class. Why should it matter whether the working class produces pretty hotel rooms or machine tools: in both its surplus value is appropriated, it's still capitalism. Marx states in the Manifesto: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." (Selected Works, Vol I, p43)
A working class which wielded political power in a nation producing whiskey and biscuits would have very little ability to defend itself against capitalist nations, because it would lack the means of survival: the means of production and necessary consumption to sustain its workers. And to develop such productive forces is not only a matter of pure revolutionary zeal as the situation in the USSR after 1917 showed. It is a matter of generations of much effort and deprivation; of the acquiring of much skill and education.
Second, in a national economy producing whiskey and biscuits, the level of subsistence of the working class is more precarious than in a competing national economy. In the trade cycles which still occur on an international level, items like whiskey and foreign holidays are among the first to be cut back when other nations have to take their belts in. The ability to withstand the vicissitudes of the trade cycle by relying on internal resources is clearly weakened and the working class' consumption suffers as much as profits
Third, the level of consciousness of both working class and bourgeoisie must suffer. Consciousness reflects the reality around it. Britain produces scientists and educates its working class to a certain standard of literacy, numeracy and skill in order for production to continue; it is the needs of production which call forth consciousness. Without this need, consciousness of the productive forces and developing them becomes purely random and a matter of indifference to the society (read anything on the attitude of African nations to education).
It is certain that "falling by the wayside" for the British economy does not make a transition to Communism impossible. It is also certain that in this situation the chances of the working class developing the will and ability to wield political power and sustain its rule against the capitalist world are much lessened. To argue that these matters of national importance are of no concern to the working class is like arguing that it only a question of form whether the working class work l4 or 8 hours a day or that the working class in Northern Ireland should be strictly indifferent about whether they live under Southern or Northern Irish capitalism. [1]
[1] Written at a time when the difference between them was significant