Book Review: Life Without Money

above: 'Life without Money'

The following book review explores the themes covered in the recently published book,               'Life Without Money'.  'Life Without Money' is edited by both Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman.  Anitra herself provides this glimpse at the themes explored in a book which seeks a way beyond market and money economies - towards a co-operative and sustainable future.  This review is reproduced with her permission.

By Anitra Nelson

When Time magazine announced “The Protester” as 2011 Person of the Year, we had to ask: Is this a signal of radical worldwide change? Did something special start to stir in 2011?

Certainly 1911 was such a momentous year: cities fell like dominoes across China so that, on New Year’s Day 1912, Sun Yat-sen became the provisional president of a liberal republic; civil strife was breaking out in Mexico, by May ending Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorial reign from 1877; and, in Russia, a brief restoration of conservative order was crumbling under the onslaught of Bolshevik and anarchistic activities. Lenin observed “increasing signs that the era of so-called peaceful bourgeois parliamentarianism is drawing to an end”.

Of course, it is only due to the dizzying events which followed through that decade and culminated in revolutions in all three countries – and more – that 1911 is now recognised by historians as such a momentous year. Still those alive at the time felt the winds of change. In some parts popular wisdom blamed Halley’s Comet, which had appeared in April 1910.

When New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered police to clear Zuccotti Park of Occupy protestors on 15 November he called on the protesters “to occupy the space with the power of their arguments”. Starting out in the North as a movement against corporate greed, the Occupy movement quickly developed demands for grassroots democracy. The economic became political. But right at the moment it seems to have fizzled out. Or is this the quiet before the storm? What arguments might fill this space?

Whether or not 2011 becomes known as the turning point will mainly depend on whether or not the “99 per cent”, as we have nominated ourselves, take up Bloomberg’s gauntlet. It’s rather hard to imagine, with mainstream politics focusing on unremarkable presidential electioneering in North America; a pretence by the Australian media that Julia Gillard must fall and a real (read “male”) leader, such as Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott, take her place; the UK and Europeans struggling with integration as a real, not simply nominal, Eurozone; and hard-fought-for “freedom” in the Middle East looking more and more like a mirage. Sorry, Lenin, world bourgeois parliamentarianism still seems alive and strong.

However, the 10 contributors to a new book, Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies, offer strong and radical responses to defenders of capitalism and the so-called “free world”. Most are activist scholars in universities in the UK, USA, Spain and Serbia. Both the book’s editors are Australian. They set out money-free models of community-based governance and collective sufficiency, arguing that production for trade contorts and destroys humane and natural values. They offer strategies for undercutting capitalism by refusing to deal in money, arguing that we need to replace monetary values and relationships by accounting directly in social and environmental values.

There are numbers of alternative communities, as well as movements such as squatting, freeganism and collaborative consumption, experimenting with non-market models. A decade ago they might have been considered marginal. However, their activities are gaining greater currency (pardon the pun) and coming into sharper focus as capitalists and workers alike fear more and worse instability in global financial markets. All this uncertainty, endemic to any market economy, threatens the viability of businesses, job security, house prices and home ownership, the worth of assets and superannuation savings. It makes people question the basis of our economy within which money is the operating principle, dominating value and determining so many relationships.

Even those of us who are not managers or workers are intimately integrated into the monetary system; everyone’s fortunes seem to rise and fall depending on satiating Mammon. The other failing of the economy is in not – or only very inadequately – accounting for environmental factors: increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere leading to global warming, heightening the frequency and intensity of bushfires and floods; the erosion of natural ecosystems from deforestation; and the exploitation and pollution of the world’s oceans.

Environmental crises – runaway carbon emissions being but the tip of the iceberg – pose a massive threat to capitalism by laying bare the simplistic and inefficient rigidity of a system of production and exchange that focuses on price signals and that depends on growth. For the North, overconsumption is a very real sustainability-cum-economic challenge: if everyone decided to live modestly capitalism would disintegrate. Growth is capitalism’s Achilles’ heel. While overconsumption in the North demands that we develop less materialistic ways of living, it is simply impossible to imagine either individual entrepreneurs or national GDP “degrowing” without a planned economy, at which point we have only two options.

There is the option of state planned economies, which are out of favour among left and right alike. The problem with planned economies is working out how everyone gets a say in what is produced. If distribution is more on the basis of need, it would appear that money has little function. If we were to have less we would be very concerned to make sure we had enough and the kinds of things we feel we need, or badly want. Could we really leave such decisions to the kinds of politicians we have today?

No, we’d like a direct say in how we live.

Non-market forms have the distinct benefit of offering individuals and neighbourhoods economic democracy. It is precisely the importance of such democracy that lies at the heart of Occupy movements worldwide. Occupy politics focus on general assemblies (GAs), allowing everyone a say in decision-making. Clumsy, you say, impossible, not feasible. You’re right, under current economic conditions, under capitalism.

But the economic infrastructure of a world in which we could all have a say in how we live our lives is sketched out in the final chapter of Life Without Money, which builds on key arguments and examples in previous chapters to offer a model of a “compact society”. “Compact” because all the main relationships and structures would be based on legally enforceable voluntary agreements, rather than monetary contracts.

Instead of establishing tiny self-sufficient households, we’d work collectively, with a range of connected local households occupying a basic unit of a neighbourhood, the size of which would be flexible and dependent on the local ecology. Local collective sufficiency would be the key aim of every neighbourhood, sourcing materials for, and making, food, clothing and shelter as well as other basic needs, through appropriate technology. Of course, there would be likely to be needs or wants that people could not source or create locally. Ideally, these would be obtained from a neighbouring area or through the least environmentally and socially expensive option available at the time.

Establishing and maintaining collective sufficiency would require every individual to work out what they would need over a year, assessing local potential, planning how to meet the needs listed, working out how surpluses might be generated, and negotiating with other units to fulfil their needs. The internet facilitates this kind of collective research, planning and negotiation, which would involve numerous compacts.

In 1990 the Global Commons Institute established the idea of addressing the problem of global climate change by a contract-and-converge strategy – contracting emissions and converging by demanding big reductions from the largest polluters so everyone ends up with a similar carbon footprint. A contract-and-converge strategy can be applied to achieve fair and equitable production and distribution in a money-free world. We’d need to redistribute power over the means of production in a radically fair way.

A main focus of the Occupy movement has been working out how to develop and embed processes for direct decision-making. Only by expanding such experience can we decide what practices work, are efficient, effective and really democratic. At the same time, as developments that stimulated the Occupy movement show, the economic systems by which we live have to be reclaimed as our cultural inventions.

A massive decade of engaging with our current economic, environmental and political challenges might well have just started.


Anitra Nelson is an Associate Professor in the School of Global Studies Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, and co-editor of Life Without Money. She will be a Visiting Scholar in the Economics Department of the New School for Social Research in New York, March to May 2012.

This article is an expanded version of a guest post, “Occupy! and Radical Politics Part 2 – Beyond Money”, which appeared in a series at the Pluto Press Blog on 21 December, 2011.

Socialism and the ‘Rebuilding of Capitalism’ – A response to Nigel Farndale

Above: Swedish Political Economist Rudolf Meidner was partly-responsible (along with Gosta Rehn) for the "Rehn-Meidner" model of the Swedish economy, and the radical attempt to institute democratic wage earner funds.

In the following article Tristan Ewins argues that capitalism must hybridise and adopt socialist aspects if it is to survive.  In criticising the position taken by writer, Nigel Farndale, he argues there is a different socialism than the Stalinism which imploded in the late 20th Century.

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 Just recently Nigel Farndale has had published an interesting article in ‘The Age’ concerning the future of capitalism.  The financial crisis of 2008 and the more recent degeneration of the US and European economies suggested a crisis – perhaps a collapse – not seen since the 1930s.   That being the case Farndale chooses to explore the means in which capitalism might be reformed – perhaps ‘to save it from itself’.

Addressing this question, Farndale explores a number of economic movements.  First the ‘decroissance’ or ‘decrease’ movement in France – which denies the centrality of General Domestic Product (GDP) to ‘economic success’ – pursuing ‘quality’ for all rather than mere ‘quantity’.  Hence (quoting economist, George Magnus “the need for a happiness index, or an economic and social well-being index”).   And secondly, Fardale mentions the “PARECON” movement – which promotes ‘participatory economics’ – with worker’s self-management and solidarity, and greater equality. (involving people in their status as consumers as well as workers)  These are all very interesting developments, and Farndale is to be thanked for drawing public attention towards them.

So far, so good.  But Farndale finds it necessary to pitch all this in the context of the dominant discourse.  Although otherwise sympathetic, he dismisses the concerns of the PARECON movement for equality in terms of economic power as “back to basics communism”.   And he damns communism as bringing genocide as if this were the inevitable consequence of seeking to creating of some “New [Soviet] Man”.  But the repressive Stalinist state was radically at odds with the spirit of the early Marxist movement; as well a variety of more liberal Marxist successors.

Farndale then returns to consider ideas of ‘noblesse oblige’ – as alternative to equality.   He argues that capitalism is a dynamic and evolving system; and claims basically that ‘capitalism is to thank’ for the welfare state.  He seems to agree that only capitalism – through competition and enterprise – can provide growth and recovery.   After all – what alternative is there if capitalism ‘has been [with us] through antiquity, feudalism” and so on?  And if capitalism is reducible to the existence of markets surely it is inevitable in one form or another…  Apparently, as with Churchill’s observations about democracy, capitalism is “the worst form of government [read economy], except for all the others that have been tried”….

 In response to Farndale, it is important to challenge his conception of both modern capitalism and socialism.  

To begin with, let’s look a capitalism. For Marx modern capitalism meant more than the existence of private ownership and markets.  Although these were surely important components, in some form or another they had been with us for centuries and centuries.  But the modern capitalism identified by Marx moved affairs to a different level.  Production for profit, and the rise and dominance of a specifically capital-owning bourgeois class came to eclipse the remains of feudalism, and the privileges of the aristocracy.   It also saw the demise of artisanship and craft labour and the marginalisation of old forms of self-employment. It saw the end of the guild system that had itself lasted centuries.  In their place capitalism brought mass production, mechanisation, deskilling, and an unprecedented commodification of labour. With access to ‘seed capital’ successful capitalists could well sustain profits even in the face of interest repayments.  This only expedited the overshadowing of the old ruling classes. 

These circumstances also involved the rise of a new proletariat – and consequently an increasingly conscious working class – who had nothing to sell but their labour power.  And during this early period this was basically in return for a meagre subsistence: workers realising little of the increased productivity for themselves.  What is more – unlike in the condition of artisanship and the craft economy, the product of the worker did not belong to him, but was expropriated for sale by the capitalist. (Hence for workers there was – and still remains - a degree of unpaid labour time and effort)  This was in addition to the alienation resulting from brutally demanding and unsafe work practices, involving men, women and children on 14 hour days, with night labour, and worse.

Increasingly, however, the capitalists who expropriated surplus from these workers were seen to develop into a ‘rentier’ class: who by virtue of their wealth could delegate matters of management and live a live of pure leisure.  Of course it wasn’t all like this: there were innovators and visionaries (as there are today); and there were the small capitalists who worked as hard as anyone; who often went bust in the face of competition; and more particularly in the face of increasing monopolisation. (which meant they could not compete)  These petty-bourgeois – or intermediatory classes – found themselves in a constant struggle for survival against the monopolists; and in those days there was no ‘social safety net’.  While Marxists such as Karl Kautsky appealed to the petty bourgeoisie that socialism would provide them with security, Conservative, fascist or economically-liberal forces (a mixed bunch) tried to turn their attention against the organised working class as a threat to their survival in the capitalist context.

But the boom and bust cycle – and capitalist crisis more generally - was more than the ultimately ‘creative destruction’ Farndale refers to.  There arose structural and functional unemployment – with a ‘reserve army of labour’ exploited to inhibit working class organisation; driving down wages and conditions, as well as inhibiting employment security.  There was immense waste as competition forced the premature and continuous modernisation of the means of production -  even when existing machinery had not yet been sufficiently utilised.   Only the monopolists with huge reserves of capital could survive in this environment – so this process hastened concentration of ownership - AND power. And in the event of cyclical crises immense amounts of capital and produce were destroyed because unprofitable in the marketplace– even where there was massive unmet human demand and need.  Inequality of wealth amongst consumers narrowed the market and thus actually inhibited the system.  Hence the ‘overproduction’ identified by the Marxists.

Moreover, in the modern day, with rapidly evolving technologies – there has emerged the practice of planned obsolescence: unnecessarily staggered release of technology intended to maximise sales. 

Farndale is right, though, that capitalism has evolved.  In different guises it survived the 20^th Century in the sense of becoming a HYBRID system.

On the one hand - From laissez-faire origins and the age of the individual entrepreneur there emerged the joint-stock company, the trust, the rise and interpenetration of industrial and banking capital.  There arose what ‘Austro-Marxist’ Rudolf Hilferding called ‘Finance Capital’ – with unprecedented centralisation of ownership, control, and hence political-economic power.  Capitalism evolved in diverging directions with the rise of imperialism, and the competition between nation-states and their constituent capitalist classes for control of markets.  At various times capitalism has adopted an ‘organised’ form: especially under conditions of total war.  And fascism comprised not a qualitatively different kind of system – but rather an authoritarian, nationalist, militarist and corporatist variation upon the capitalist theme.

On the other hand post-war hybrid economies saw the introduction of the advanced welfare state; of labour market regulation and rights for organised labour; of the mixed economy – with emphasis on areas of ‘natural public sector monopoly’.  In countries such as Sweden and the other Nordics there emerged some of the most extensive welfare states anywhere: where security was combined with efficiency to provide ‘the best of both worlds’. Innovative ideas also included collective capital formation and co-determination.  Even in 20^th Century Australia a compromise developed involving labour market regulation and strong unions, as well as socialised health-care, and ‘natural monopolies’ in energy, gas, water, communications, and other crucial infrastructure.  Also there was strategic public ownership in areas like banking and insurance to actually maintain competition in the face of collusion, and provide for consumers otherwise excluded or discriminated against because of lack of market power.  For a long time even political conservatives in Australia - in the Liberal Party and Democratic Labor Party - supported much of this compromise.

 In recent decades these variants have themselves been displaced by resurgent laissez faire capitalism.  Falling profits have been responded to with assaults on the rights of labour and labour’s share of the economy.  Hence exploitation has intensified with a mix of ‘labour market deregulation’ and increasingly draconian limits on the industrial action available to workers.  (so much for the ‘liberty’ held high by faux-liberals!)  Various forms of ‘corporate welfare’ have emerged.  This has involved an effective subsidy through maintained provision of infrastructure, education and training even in the context of corporate tax cuts, and increasingly regressive taxes for workers, consumers and citizens.  But the myth of triumphant capitalism has remained partly through the effect of technological innovation on peoples’ lives; and partly because of enduring myths about socialism; and the reality of Stalinist implosion in the late 20^th Century.

In the short to medium term capitalism must again hybridise if it is to survive, and if it is to provide security and happiness for citizens, consumers and workers.  It must again incorporate significant socialist aspects. That capitalism itself did not implode entirely in the 20^th Century was ironically due to the social forces Marx himself had helped mobilise for the cause of reform; and by reform spurred by the threat of a ‘Soviet pole of political attraction’. 

 A mixed system including economic socialisation and democratisation, here, is one possible response.  In Sweden socialists attempted to extract a greater share of democratic ownership in the economy as a trade-off for years of restrained wages; as compensation for resulting excess profits in some areas; and as a response to centralisation of private capital ownership.  That effort (for ‘Meidner wage earner funds’) failed because it attempted too much too quickly – and because it promoted exclusively wage earner funds rather than funds controlled by ALL citizens.  But many of its principles remain valid and instructive.

 Many of the problems identified by Marx still exist for modern capitalism.  There is a tendency for profits to fall – though ameliorated by the countervailing impact of qualitative technological leaps in productivity and material living standards. Labour and Nature remain the sources of all material goods: and regardless of objectivist and subjective interpretations of value, the reality of surplus extraction remains – even if it cannot be nailed down with precision. (there is the question of fair return on investment; considering the deferred gratification of small investors; as well as return for innovation and initiative)  For capitalists there remain uncomfortable questions about distributive justice – and the impact of plutocracy upon attempts to forge real democracy. 

 Capitalism remains unstable.  As well as demand management there is a need to capture the forces of innovation and efficiency that are unleashed by competition, while at the same time experimenting with more co-operative forms, and countering the effects of unnecessary and counter-productive cost-structure duplication and private monopolistic abuse of market power.  Hence strategic re-deployment of natural public monopoly and other appropriate forms of public sector extension.  Finally, collective consumption via the social wage and welfare state provide the most efficient and equitable means for citizens and consumers to access essential services in health, aged care, education, unemployment insurance, and other necessities.

Farndale mocks the idea of some ‘New Man’ he sees as embodied in the Marxism of Stalin and Mao.  But for earlier moderate and democratic Marxists such as Karl Kautsky one of the most noble aims of socialism was to democratise culture – to bring culture to the people. Since then we have seen the rise of universal education including a critical element incorporating the humanities and social sciences. For a long time the creation of public libraries further epitomised this vision.  Meanwhile abundance that Marx could barely dream of has brought music, literature and new information technologies to the masses.  Rather than some Stalinist caricature – the aim of socialists today is to further extend the democratisation of culture – through further extension of critical participation in the humanities and social sciences; through a culture of active citizenship; through the development of a participatory media and public sphere.   

Rather than repression, democratic socialists today seek the combination of a rational, innovative and participatory Democratic Mixed Economy.  There is a need to combine the efficiencies of markets, while doing away with unnecessary cost-structure duplication, massive overproduction, demand-crises rising from inequality, and other forms of excess and waste. 

In bringing our attention to the PARECON and ‘decroissance’ movements Farndale does readers a genuine service, however.  These movements continue to demonstrate some of capitalism’s greatest failings; and show that current-day crises can only be fought off with compromise – with a HYRBID system – as much liberal democratic socialist as capitalist.  But for radicals over the longer term there is still the dream of genuine democracy: of government by the people and for the people; where real popular sovereignty displaces the power of an economically and hence politically and culturally dominant capitalist class. 

Labor‘s Socialist Objective in the 21st century - principles for economic democracy and equity ?

From the author, Geoff Drechsler:  The following is an open letter to Australian Fabian News. I posted it here in the hope it will generate some discussion on some of the issues raised in the book 'Looking for the Light on the Hill: Modern Labor‘s Challenges.' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Geoff Drechsler

 One of the 'more' curious aspects of the current debate around modernising Australian Labor is the recurring proposal to abandon the party’s socialist objective, and commit Labor wholeheartedly to a neo liberal economic model. Troy Bramston‘s Looking for the Light on the Hill: Modern Labor‘s Challenges takes up this theme also. This is 'curious' because we are presently witnessing the greatest failing of free market neo liberal economics since The Great Depression, largely stemming from a lack of regulation and governance. So, it is a strange time to be advancing a position supporting free market economics, particularly in a debate about the future of a social democratic party, when one looks at the concrete realities of the current situation.

In this debate, the reality is that the choices being presented are between the principles of economic democracy and of equity of the socialist objective or a neo liberal agenda of privatisation and deregulation that has progressive social policy grafted to it, with the aim that the latter will mitigate the effects of the former. Since the late ‘80s, there has been a shift to the right in terms of economic policy by social democratic governments internationally, and all these experiences have shown the reality that such programs have meant less equitable outcomes for Labor’s people, and led to declining electoral support.

Locally, this approach is exemplified by the recent activities of the current Queensland state government and the former NSW government. Both have driven supporters away electorally, and are unlikely to deliver equitable outcomes in the long term.

Many of the opponents of the socialist objective use warnings of some grim imagined Sovietesque economic basket case, that they claim would be the practical manifestation of any implementation of the socialist objective too. This is disingenuous.

As a social democratic party, participating in politics in an advanced industrial country like Australia, it would be much more instructive to look to the labour and social democratic parties of Europe and their experiences, in regards to economic policy and programs.

In this debate, one country’s experience is informative, Sweden, because the Swedish social democrats developed an alternative economic model that achieved economic growth and equity in the post-war period. And the Swedish social democrats understood that free market economics were incompatible with the interests of working people and social justice, so attempted to develop their own economic model, rather than rely on existing mainstream economics. Just like the first Labor activists in Australia who drafted the original socialist objective here. The Swedish social democrats goal of economic democracy centred around 2 themes-industrial democracy and collective capital formation, which it was envisaged would lead gradually to the transformation of private ownership of the means of production to social ownership.

The Swedish economic model is also interesting because nationalisation as a strategy was rejected early on, and Sweden has also never had a large public sector either.

Practically, this alternative economic model lifted Sweden out of the Great Depression earlier than other advanced economies and, in the post-war period, led to high rates of economic growth and lower rates of unemployment than comparable economies. The Swedish social democrats themselves experienced an unprecedented period of electoral success over the same period.

The end result is a country with a high standard of living, more equitable distribution of wealth and a modern dynamic developed economy. All in all, an economic program worth further examination in any debate around the socialist objective.

We need to see this debate in terms of the need for an economic model that meets both the party’s economic and social goals, and clearly free market economics has already discredited itself, as recent history shows. Sadly, one only needs to look to the US to see the shrinking middle class, the product of a sustained neo liberal economic agenda over the last few decades.

A quote from Keynes’s is probably an apt conclusion at this point-“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

Important Book Review: Reviving the Strike

Over recent decades the right to strike  in Australia and elsewhere has been steadily eroded.   The consequence:  a lack of bargaining power for workers under pressure from aggressive employers and Conservative/neo-liberal governments.  In this latest 'Left Focus' article, life-long labour movement activist, Chris White reviews Joe Burns ‘Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America’ (2011 IG Publishing)  The implications of this review for Australian unions are obvious and important.

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A review by Chris White

Joe Burns has a stimulating analysis and conclusion in this readable and topical book on US strikes.

I conclude as well that we can revive the strike in Australia and working people can regain power and transform Australia.

Australia’s labour relations system differs historically and institutionally from the US, but working people experience the same repression of strikes (just recently Qantas, Victorian Nurses, Baiada Chicken etc) and the decline of the strike.

 Our corporate and state rulers dominate the labour law system, and as in the US, deny workers and their unions any effective right to strike.

PM Gillard’s regime the ‘Fair Work Act’ retains the ‘Work Choices’ excessive legalistic penalising of strikes and the Building Industry Act (2005) with the ABCC severely threatens and penalises building and construction workers organising. (See arguments on my blog http://chriswhiteonline.org and put in search ‘ABCC’ and ‘the right to strike’.)

 After reading this book, the same arguments apply in Australia - that unions have to revive the strike weapon.

 US and Australia has experienced the near disappearance of strike struggle, although there are some recent struggles.

 The task is how the strike revival is to be done. 

This is a serious challenge for Australian unionists in this era of capitalist instability, corporate attack, a likely Abbott government and more repression.

Yet resistance grows, the Occupy Wall Street movements and strike waves in many countries against severe austerity and/or dictatorships and strikes to improve workers economic and social lives.

 More workers power

Burns argues that US history shows the working class became more powerful and improved their lives by winning strikes.

“By wielding the threat of a powerful, production halting strike, trade unionists forged a better way of life for millions of working class Americans during the roughly fifty year period from 1930 though 1980. …The strike is by far the most important source of union power…Collective bargaining made little sense unless it was backed by the threat of a strike that halted production.”

Burns cites US labour relations scholars with stories of union leader militancy, solidarity and secondary boycott strikes, industry-wide and pattern bargaining strikes, mass pickets to stop ‘replacement workers’, sit-down strikes and occupations.  Such strategies are to cripple economically the corporations and force management to negotiate until union demands are met.

From the 1930s unions organised militant strikes in response to management’s serious class war. Unions defeated employer solidarity. Industrial action ensured wage increases and standardisation.

Unions defied unjust anti-strike laws. Despite key defeats some worker control prevailed against management despotism.

From the 1980’s, with capital’s fierce attack on unionism, union leaders retreated from these strike tactics. Unions became weaker. The employers’ counter offensive cut wages and conditions.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in the early 1990s,

“Unions need their only true weapon—the right to strike. Without that weapon, organized labour in America will soon cease to exist.” (p20)

The US labour control system, like Australia, allows only a limited lawful strike.

Arbitrators and judges interpret labour laws within the acceptably narrow ‘free market’ enterprise bargaining. Orders are made for strikers to return to work and legal sanctions against industrial action deemed “unlawful” are enforced. Corporate lawyers with the state’s legal forces penalise strikers and their unions. Withdrawing your labour is risky and largely ineffective.

The effective picket?

Burns gives one illustration with the legal restrictions on the picket line - similar to Australia, e.g. at Baiada – see posts http://chriswhiteonline.org).

 Due to the law, the picket as practiced is ineffective with protesting strikers having to walk around in a circle with placards, while watching scabs walk through taking their jobs.

Burns goes through the legal decisions that enforce for the employer the right to use ‘replacement labour’, scabs.

Pickets to be effective have to peacefully block all access for the strike to win.

But judges rule the effective picket line ‘unlawful’.  

In past strikes, winning meant defying judicial injunctions.

Despite the strengths of today’s union leaders, Burns argues they do not use the strike to seriously challenge employer power - stopping production and work is a fringe idea.

 Young radical union organizers today organize social campaigns with community support. But union leaders working within the system do not allow these organizers to plan industrial action to defy the law as being too risky.

Earlier, industry or pattern bargaining with mass strike pressure to make labour costs uniform was achieved. But this is union bargaining is also ‘unlawful’ and rarely attempted today – the same as in Australia.

The extreme Tea Party Republican Governors in 2011 passed legislation where the public service unions are denied the right to collectively bargaining at all, leading to mass protests such as in Wisconsin - but this movement, with some success, was channelled into community organizing for re-call ballots and Democrat politics, but not strike action. (See Wisconsin in http://chriswhiteonline.org ).

Solidarity strike?

Burns regrets the demise of the solidarity strike.  “Solidarity Forever” is indeed just a song.

“Solidarity is the heart and soul of unionism—the only force capable of confronting power and privilege in society. To revive unionism, we must recover labour’s long-lost tools of workplace-based solidarity.”

Today, union activists join each other’s picket lines and hold fundraisers for striking workers. While important, these acts of solidarity are largely conducted away from the workplace.

In contrast, labour’s traditional forms of workplace-based solidarity allowed workers to join across employers and even industries to confront bosses with tactics of secondary strikes and industry-wide solidarity strikes.

 What’s a secondary strike? Say workers at a small auto parts plant in Indiana walked out. If they enlisted the support of the Teamsters to refuse to transport the parts, the United Auto Workers to refuse to assemble a car with the parts, and employees of car dealerships to refuse to sell the cars, their power would be multiplied. The original strike would be a primary strike and the others would all be secondary strikes.

In the past, solidarity tactics allowed workers to hit employers at multiple points in the production and distribution chain. By impeding the flow of supplies into a plant, unions pressured the employer to settle a strike or recognize the union. Similarly, secondary boycotts pressured retailers to stop selling struck goods.

Solidarity tactics expanded the site of the conflict, allowing workers to confront employers as a class.” http://www.labornotes.org/2010/10/secondary-strikes-are-primary-labor-revival

 Burns documents how the US judicial system outlawed the secondary and solidarity strike.

“At a deeper level, modern labour law forces unions to bargain with individual employers rather than establish standards on an industry basis.”

Australia’s outlawing of secondary boycotts began in the 1970's through the Trade Practices law and remains a key part of the employers’ legislative armoury to weaken and penalise union solidarity actions. 

US labour control system

As I have a law degree and write on labour law, I learnt from Burns’ recounting the history of the US labour control legislation.  Burns discusses the Taft-Hartley 1947 Act know as the ‘Slave Labor Act’, the judicial cases against basic union organising such as allowing companies to move to defeat union drives and years of courts penalizing union action, such as employers’ rights to permanently replace strikers, see in Chapter 6.

The corporate lawyers and judges have indeed worked remorselessly to limit unions’ ability to have workers organize and win.

The US restrictive labour control shows how difficult it has been for unions getting workers to join - let alone assisting members to organize a successful strike.

Today union leaders do not risk defying judicial injunctions against strike activity because of the penalties.

But union leaders did so before - with some wins and some serious defeats depending on the contested conflict.

Burns makes this telling point.

“To be clear, the downfall of solidarity cannot be attributed solely to legal factors. Unions willingly agreed to no-strike clauses.

Over the years, many focused on just the needs of their own members, failing to embrace a social unionism that looked out for the interests of all workers. In the 1980s and afterwards, unions often failed to defend their pattern agreements, allowing special deals for particular “troubled” employers until the pattern was no more. And union officials all too often squashed rank-and-file attempts to join together across bargaining units, even at the same employer.”

What has occurred with current union leaders is an abandonment of the practice of the strike and class politics.

Although the AFL-CIO is strong rhetorically, the labour movement is trapped in no strike business and social unionism. 

Burns looks at inadequate union alternatives to the strike in chapter 4.

 "With the production-halting strike becoming a relic of the past, union activists of the last 20 years have had to turn to other mechanisms to try to pressure employers during collective bargaining. Thus, we have seen the rise of strike ‘alternatives’ such as the one-day publicity strike, the corporate campaign and the inside strategy. “

Each strategy, while supposedly an attempt to revive trade unionism, instead adheres to a system that has been established over the past 75 years to guarantee labour’s failure.

Without the traditional tactics of solidarity and stopping production behind them, none of these strategies had proven powerful enough to make an employer suffer economically.

In many ways, these strategies are a reflection of the current state of the labour movement.  

Rather than putting forth bold ideas calculated to challenge the current system of labour relations in this country, contemporary trade unionists have instead adopted a philosophy of pragmatism, of making do with what the existing system offers, instead of trying to break free of that system, as traditional trade unionists once did. (p71)"

“Nonetheless, in recognizing the limitations of these tactics, we must still acknowledge how creative and refreshing they have been in an era of union busting and decline. They have kept alive the fighting spirit in the labour movement, particularly in situations where a traditional strike would have meant crushing defeat.”

One-day publicity strikes

“In a one-day publicity strike, the union informs management that its workers will be going on strike, but will return to work in 24 hours. Due to the short duration of the ‘strike’ and the advance notification of the return to work, there is no opportunity for the employer to permanently replace the strikers.

However, due to their limited timeframe, one-day strikes have little impact on the operations of a company. Since the union announces its intention to strike in advance, the employer is typically able to make alternate arrangements to cover the work for the day that the workers are on strike. 

The main goal of the one-day publicity strike is, as the name implies, publicity, as the union tries to bring public and media attention to the grievances of its workers. Consequently, one-day publicity strikes have generally been used against employers who are susceptible to public pressure. Frequent targets have included hospitals, universities and public employers. (p72)"

The one-day protest strike strong in the public sector became the only strike action for many US unions, with some gains, but anti-union employers survived, as the union economic pressure was not sufficient.

“…The one-day strike supplies the illusion of struggle, distracting from the real problems facing the labour movement, which is the lack of an effective traditional strike. (p73)”

Working to rule keeps within employer boundaries but has limited success.

On the job go-slows or the ceaseless rolling intermittent strikes, in and then out and return and effective bans  - again made illegal - have greater bargaining force.

 Union strategists for decades used anti-corporate campaigns, with a range of community and public lobbying tactics to pressure the employers and governments. Despite some impressive wins, they are not as effective as the strike weapon.

 Social unionism ineffective

Burns supports the organising strength of social unionism with union and community coalitions, union media and public pressure on employers.

 But he argues such a strategy, without the strike, has not seen the union renewal promised.

“Social unionism is not a replacement for direct struggle against employers. In social unionism, the strike is abandoned, and in the process, the central role of workers at the point of production is lost.

Although appearing progressive, social unionism in fact represents a shift in power from workers to union officials and non-profit staff…social unionists also sidestep the key economic concerns that must be at the centre of labour’s revival, namely that any trade union strategy must be capable of redistributing wealth and power. Organization and community ties alone do not lead to power. (p81)”

 Burns’ criticism is levelled not only at the conservative and right wing ‘business unionist’ leaders but the left union leaders and progressive labour academics.

 As I implemented with other unions social unionism in Australia with many good campaigns, Burns’ arguments means I reconsider past practices.

Burns takes us through key examples of successful strikes with members’ democratic control of the union and the militant strike struggle. Strengthening unions relies on internal union democracy (p92). 

Organizing model not working

Chapter 5 “Why organizing cannot solve the Labor crisis” is important for the debate on new strategies.

Despite union leaders successfully shifting resources to organizing the un–unionized sectors from the 1990s until now, Burns argues this strategy has failed to revive unions.

“In fact, the idea that the labour movement can resolve its crisis simply by adding new members - without a powerful strike in place - actually constitutes one of the greatest theoretical impediments to union revival (p95).”

Burns does not reject the practice of increasing union density and organizing in the industry of competitors. He argues it is not sufficient without the effective industry or pattern-bargaining strike and the ability to have sufficient power at work to force the collective agreement. Unions may succeed at times with skilled or professional workers able to control the supply of labour in any industrial action.

But with the low levels of unionization continuing, union leaders - and I was one of them – just advocating organizing the unorganized is not good enough. I admit more clearly past weaknesses in my union practice.

Even when union density increases, the power to beat the employer does not necessarily follow. In the US, the labour laws allow aggressive employers to wage successful anti-unionizing drives and to defeat union elections.

Burns accuses the union reformers’ organizing model as “abandoning the goal of creating the type of labour movement capable of transforming society (p113).”

 He gives historical examples of militant strikes that had surges in workers joining unions. In 2011 during the Wisconsin struggles many workers joined unions.

In Australia, employers and particularly those powerful corporations that used AWAs under Work Choices still have in the FWA many legal weapons to weaken unionism.

 What about amendments to labour legislation?

President Obama promised unionists labour law reform ‘The Employee Free Choice Act’. Such a reform was to make it easier for workers to unionise and bargain. Burns argues that this is not sufficient for union revival. In any event, President Obama failed to even look like delivering.

Labour rights

In Chapter 7 Burns cites principles of labour rights.

“Labour must develop a working class perspective that establishes a set of principles that clearly justify the refusal to follow unjust and illegitimate restrictions on the right to strike. (p137) …it was labour’s agitation and the open and principled defiance of judicial orders, that won workers the right to strike and stop production.”

Unionists use key principles to argue the case - such as

“labour is not a commodity”,

“labour creates wealth”,

“the right to strike is a basic freedom that distinguishes us from the slave or bonded labour”

Regarding progressive principles from socialists and those political activists with a class analysis: these principles are returning.  But the struggle is to reform the labour relations system so these principles predominate over HRM ideology and employer power.

“Trade unionists need to envision a world where labour’s conception of striking prevails over that of management. Otherwise, labour can construct a solidarity grounded in weakness.”

International strike action

 The US government constantly ignores international labour rights from the ILO, but Burns does not take this breach up. Australia agreed to the ILO standards to protect workers’ rights to strike, but our FWA is in breach (see my posts).

With the power of giant US multi-national corporations, the unions challenge is not only to develop the ability to take strike action locally but internationally. International strike action is done but mostly limited to a day’s protest stoppages or across regions industrial action for collective agreements.

International labour solidarity has to challenge global corporate power. “The real question is whether a strike based on stopping production and international work-place solidarity could successfully combat global corporations.(p134)” Can the effective strike be organized across countries?

Where do we go from here?

 Burns in chapter 8 argues a labour movement in the US is possible if we learn lessons.

The details are instructive and the conclusion is critical - rejecting the whole labour control system is necessary.

I conclude by citing sections from Chapter 9  “Where do we go from here?” 

“After watching the labour movement—and the strike—wither over the past 30 years, trade unionists today need to answer several big questions if they wish to revitalize unions in this country. How should the labour movement deal with the current system of labour control? How should human labour be treated in relationship to capital? How can workers act as a class to advance their common interests?  What are the best forms of organization to carry on the fight for workers’ rights? And finally, what is the role of the strike?”

The answers—or non-answers—to these fundamental questions will shape labour’s future in America.”(p171)  

“To point the labour movement in a new direction will require a large group of people willing to challenge the status quo, people who have the ideas, organizational skills and self-confidence to give voice to a workers’ movement capable of transforming America.

This will have to start with the activists in the movement—shop floor militants, progressive union staffers and officers, worker centres’ activists, and friendly academics.

However, the debate over the future of trade unionism must grow beyond this committed, but small group if the there is to be a true labour revival in this country.”

 So how does one build such a trend? Again, we can learn from labour history.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the labour movement was stuck in a narrow form of craft unionism that was unable to win gains from employers. Craft unionists viewed only skilled workers as deserving of union representation, and they rejected attempts to organize all workers into one union.

 However, a counter current developed that argued that industrial unionism was the road forward for the labour movement. This trend industrial unionism toward was driven by the political left of the era (socialists, anarchists and communists), who had a program that, although varying in its approaches, shared one guiding principle: the strength of the overall trade union movement.

Eventually, the years of agitation paid off as the idea of industrial unionism gained popularity, first at a grassroots level, and then broadly within the entire working class. Thus, when the economic crisis of the 1930s hit, workers were ready to embrace a new form of unionism…

The task today is to build such a broad-based understanding within the labour movement of the need to change the present system.

 How can this be done? During the decades-long push to establish industrial unionism in the first half of the twentieth century, industrial union activists repeatedly raised their issues at union conventions.

 Following their historical lead, trade unionists today could adopt the position that the system of labour control is illegitimate, and support efforts to break free from it. Just as it was once official AFL policy to disobey injunctions, trade unionists today could debate whether or not to comply with the different facets of the system of labour control.

 No matter the issues, reviving the strike — and by extension, the labour movement — will require a single-minded focus by trade unionists.

 Right now, the left wing of the labour movement lacks a common agenda, as it advances a hodge-podge of ideas of what it will take to save unionism in this country. If one agrees with the analysis in this book, then the one unifying factor that can achieve the myriad goals of the labour movement is the revival of the effective, production-halting strike. This must become labour’s primary focus.

Additionally, if trade unionists ever decide to embrace a new militancy in order to smash the system of labour control, they will need the support of their union brothers and sisters.

Historian Nelson Lichtenstein, in the conclusion of his influential history of the labour movement, ‘State of the Union’, lists the failure to support militancy as one of the major weaknesses of the modern labour movement. Discussing what the movement needs to succeed, Lichtenstein writes,

‘The first is militancy. The union movement needs more of it, but even more important, American labour, as a whole needs to stand behind those exemplary instances of class combat when and if they occur.

The 1980s were a tragic decade for unions, not because workers did not fight, but where labour did take a stand…their struggles were both physically isolated and ideologically devalued.

Instead of being engulfed in the solidarity of their fellow trade unionists, workers today who choose to fight back often do so on lonely picket lines, with little support from the official labour movement. Without a broad trend that promotes effective tactics, striking workers are not exposed to ideas that can help them win strikes, nor are they supported when they engage in militancy.”

 While the strike might seem like a relic of the past too much of the contemporary labour movement, as labour historian Peter Rachleff writes,

“it would be a mistake to leap to the conclusion that strikes are on their way to the dustbin of history. As long as the capitalist economy rests on the employment and exploitation of labour, the organized withdrawal of labour is bound to remain a central expression of working class protest and power.”

Remember that the strike is only a means and work resumes with greater strength for workers. Whether workers control prevails is another project.

With militant right-wing management attacking workers with the lock out, then workers have to also learn militancy by winning the strike. Such education will take years – such as the preparation in Australia in the 1960’s that defeated the then penal powers with the O’Shea national strike. We can do it again.

If working people are to regain power and transform the US and Australia, the winning strike has to be revived.

Chris White was the Secretary of the United Trades and Labor Council of SA and worked for unions for 30 years.  He now lives in Darwin. Read his daily Left Union blog on http://chriswhiteonline.org