Strength to fight

Workers Press no. 293, 4 November 1970 · scan pages 3, 4

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JUST OUT NEW PArR PURLIAIION STALINISM IN BRITAIN TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS ods are part of scientific and technological progress, and we don't want to oppose progress, do we?

So, they go on, the thing is to watch protes or at ty deal in, but to get the highest price, get what we can out of This is dangerous rubbish, from start to finish.

When the working class is unorganized, suffering from defeats and repressions, or weakened by unemployment, it is unable to demand more than a mere subsistence or starvation level of wages.

But where it has long-established unions with the strength to back up high expectations, and has a young generation work which has never experienced a major defeat (like most of the working class of America and Europe today, then it is able to insist on a standard of living higher than subsistence.

The strongest sections will fight and win (during a boom) enough to get holidays, televisions, plenty of food, perhaps a car and the ability to keep their children at school or university.

The working class's struggle for a standard of living, its organized struggle for wages, must therefore constantly battle against rises in the cost of living-food and clothing, prices, rents, fares, and rates.

But if workers accept that their wages are tied to the scientific measurement of productivity in the factory where they work, how can they combat the increased cost of living? How can they defend their standard of living from attack?

A basic principle is involved. The working class fights to place the highest value on the only commodity it can sell, its labour power.

That means it needs the right, historically fought for since the 18th century, to organize in unions and fight for wage increases.

The employers want that right abolished. They want the workers in every trade broken up into factory units, and if possible into sections within each factory, with separately negotiated 11.00 weather.

Ask the 9.00 9.10 9.30 9.10 10.10 10.40 11.35 12.05 12.20

Franco 'democratizes' Wednesday, November 4, 1970 PAGE THREE