JPRS-UIA-87-025

26 MAY 1987

USSR Report

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

THE WORKING CLASS AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

No 1, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1987

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JPRS-UIA-87-025

26 MAY 1987

USSR REPORT

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

THE WORKING CLASS AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

No 1, Jan-Feb 1987

Except where indicated otherwise in the table of contents the

following is a complete translation of the Russian-language journal

RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR, published six times a year in

Moscow by the Institute of the International Workers' Movement,

USSR Academy of Sciences,

CONTENTS

Information on Authors (p 192)

iy86 World TU Congress on Issues of Peace, Social Progress (pp 3-13)

(S.A. Shalayev) 3

Problems, Development of Asian Working Class Analyzed (pp 14-31)

(E.Ye. Obminskiy, B.I. Slavnyy) 17

MATERIAL OF AN INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE CONFERENCE

Final Report on Conference on Working Class in Present Day (pp 32-115) 33

IN THE SOCIALIST COUNTRIES

New Forms of the Brigade Organization of Labor (pp 116-128)

(L.A. Gordon, G.A. Monusova, A.K. Nazimova) (not translated)

FOR MAN'S RIGHT TO LIFE

Danish Peace Movement, Organizations Described (pp 129-135)

(A.-V. Karlsen)

Reasons Against Shifting Military Production to Civil Rebutted (pp 136-l45)

(V.V. Potapov)

STRUGGLE OF THE LATIN AMERICAN WORKERS

Formation of Nicaraguan Mass, Vanguard Organizations Detailed (pp 146-153)

(A.V. Kuzraishchev)

- a -
TO ASSIST THE VUZ LECTURER

Poverty in the 'Rich' Capitalist Countries (pp 156-167)

(V.V. Lyubimova, L.I. Solovyeva) (not translated)

FÜR THE PARTY TRAINING SYSTEM

Effects of S&T Revolution on Capitalist System, Workers (pp 168-174)

(V.K. Malov) 79

NEWS

Sociopolitical Views of U.S. Youth of the 1980's (pp 175-179)

(V.M. Bykov) (not translated)

CRITICISM AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Book on USSR Working Class Reviewed (pp 180-182)

(G.N. Cherkasov, G.A. Silantyeva) 87

I.Ye. Gorodetskaya Review of Book on British Miners' Wives1Support for Strike

(pp 183-186) (not translated)

Ya.G. Rokityanskiy Review of Book on Pre-Marxist Socialism (pp 187-189) (not

translated)

Books in Brief

V.N. Sedykh Review of Book on Lafarge and French Workers Movement of Latter

Half of 19th Century (pp 189-190) (not translated)

Table of Contents in English (p 191)

- b
Author (s)

PUBLICATION DATA

English title : THE WORKING CLASS AND THE CONTEMPORARY

WORLD

Russian title : RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR

Editor : I.K. Pantin

Publishing House : Izdatelstvo "Progress"

Place of publication : Moscow

Signed to press : 6 January 1987

Copies : 10,000

COPYRIGHT : "Rabochiy klass i sovremenny mir", 19Ö7

c -
INFORMATION ON AUTHORS

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) p 192

[List of main authors in this issue with their positions and titles]

[Text] Shalayev, Stepan Alekseyevich—chairman of the AUCCTU

Obminskiy, Ernest Yevgenyevich—doctor of economic sciences, professor, deputy

director of the USSR Academy of Sciences World Workers Movement Institute

(IMRD)

Slavnyy, Boris Isaakovich—candidate of economic sciences, senior scientific

associate of the USSR Academy of Sciences IMRD

Gordon, Leonid Abramovich—doctor of historical sciences, professor, head of a

laboratory of the USSR Academy of Sciences IMRD

Monusova, Galina Alekseyevna—graduate student of the USSR Academy of Sciences

IMRD

Nazimova, Alia Konstantinovna—candidate of economic sciences, assistant

professor, leading scientific associate of the USSR Academy of Sciences IMRD

Karlsen, Aksel-Vladimir—candidate of historical sciences, scientific

associate of the USSR Academy of Sciences IMRD

Potapov, Viktor Vladimirovich—candidate of economic sciences, scientific

associate of the USSR Academy of Sciences Scientific Information on the Social

Sciences Institute

Kuzmishchev, Aleksandr Vladimirovich—scientific associate of the USSR Academy

of Sciences IMRD
Lyubimova, Valentina Vasilyevna—doctor of economic sciences, head of a

department of the USSR Academy of Sciences World Economy and International

Relations Institute (IMEMO)

Solovyeva, Lyudmila Ivanovna—candidate of economic sciences, senior research

assistant of the USSR Academy of Sciences IMEMO

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/246
1986 WORLD TU CONGRESS ON ISSUES OF PEACE, SOCIAL PROGRESS

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMMENNY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 3-13

[Article by AUCCTU Chairman S.A. Shalayev: "Pivotal Stage"]

[Text] The international trade union movement has entered a pivotal stage of

its development. It is characterized on the one hand by increased pressure in

the capitalist countries on the positions of the working class on the part of

the big monopolies and rightwing-conservative circles expressing their

interests; on the other, by the turnabout which has been discerned on the part

of the working masses toward more assertive actions and an expansion of the

social front of the protest movement. Under current conditions recognition of

the objective community of the fundamental interests of different strata of

the working class is growing, which is affording unprecedented opportunities

for constructive cooperation between various detachments of the international

workers movement, primarily on problems of preserving peace.

The results of the Soviet-American top-level meeting in Reykjavik have shown

convincingly that the key to mankind's survival in the nuclear-space age is

new thinking, the need for which must be obvious both for politicians and

public figures and for broad strata of the population and working people of

all countries. "The protracted feverish condition of international relations

contains the threat of a sudden and disastrous crisis," M.S. Gorbachev has

observed. "Practical steps away from the nuclear abyss are required. Joint

Soviet-American efforts and the efforts of the whole community are needed for

a radical improvement in international relations" (1).

An understanding of this simple and obvious truth is broadening with every

passing day in the ranks of the working class and its mass organizations,

including those which even recently were remaining aloof from the antiwar

struggle. As the European Confederation of Trade Unions observed, "the United

States and the USSR were very close to achieving an accord on appreciable

reductions in intermediate-range and strategic nuclear missiles. This is a

very positive fact, and the negotiations should subsequently be based on this

foundation.... Space must be used solely for peaceful purposes, and all

European government should put pressure on the United States for it to abandon

its 'star wars' program and thereby contribute to the achievement of mutual

accords." The conference of the Congress of Industrial Organizations section
of the American AFL-CIO union association held at the end of October 1986

adopted a resolution which calls this program the "main barrier" in the way of

the achievement of nuclear disarmament. The resolution also calls on the U.S.

Administration to comply with the terms of the SALT and ABM treaties, ban

chemical and ASAT weapons and suspend all nuclear weapons testing.

The 11th World Trade Unions Congress was held 16-22 September 1986 in the GDR

capital of Berlin.

It was the most representative workers' forum in the history of the

international worker and trade union movement, a truly world trade union

forum. Emissaries of labor unions of states belonging to different

socioeconomic systems took part. Some 1,014 delegates and observers from all

continents represented 432 national, sectoral and regional union organizations

numbering in their ranks 296 million working people and also 67 international

organizations, including the United Nations, the ILO and UNESCO.

It is highly significant that more than half the participants were delegated

by unions which are not members of the WFTU, at whose initiative the congress

was held. It may be said without any exaggeration that the delegates to and

guests of the congress expressed the will of the majority of the world's

working people organized in labor unions. It was no accident that, describing

the representation, journalists with good reason compared the 11th World Trade

Unions Congress with the UN General Assembly.

I would like to make particular mention of the open nature of the congress.

Despite the attempts of the leadership of the ICFTU and its prompters from the

American AFL-CIO to boycott the congress, the representatives of many unions

of the West, from the United States included, took part in it. They

participated as equals in the work of the congress and its commissions and

editorial groups and took part in concerned and constructive fashion in the

debates, which testifies to the changes which have come about in the alignment

of forces in the present-day international trade union movement and the

failure of the attempts of the opponents of worker unity to disrupt the ties

which have taken shape between different detachments of the unions.

The work of the congress showed that, in spite of the policy of exclusiveness

and self-isolation of the unions of the West from contacts with unions of the

socialist countries pursued by the reformists and anticommunists, a trend

toward the development of inter-union cooperation is strengthening. Life

itself is debunking the views according to which there can be no common ground

for joint action for unions operating under different social conditions. This

was wrong in the past and is doubly wrong now, when the course of world

development has led to the emergence of global problems affecting the working

people of all countries, primarily the problems of preserving life on earth.

The essence of practically all the speeches at the congress amounted to just

one thing—the need for the unification of efforts of the working people and

their professional organizations and the entire international trade union

movement in the struggle for the accomplishment of the urgent tasks of the

present day. In their speeches (and 350 speakers altogether spoke from the

congress' platform) the delegates observed that the world is experiencing an
extremely dangerous, pivotal moment in its history. The peoples, the working

people and the unions are profoundly concerned at the intensification of the

arms race. It was a question of the working people being unable in this

situation to reconcile themselves to a lack of unity in their ranks and of

their unions having to rise above existing ideological disagreements and unite

as quickly as possible their efforts in the struggle against the common

danger, against the threat of thermonuclear catastrophe.

It may be stated with satisfaction that this truth, albeit with difficulty, is

blazing a trail for itself toward people's minds and hearts, in whatever

country they live and whatever views they hold. The working people's thirst

for peace is overcoming the impediments of lying propaganda and

disinformation. They understand increasingly distinctly who the true culprit

of international tension is and who is for peace.

Wars are organically alien to working people. The giant expenditure on the

arms race, which is fraught with fatal consequences for mankind, is with every

passing day having an increasingly disastrous impact on the position of the

working people. Over $800 billion were spent on military needs in the world in

1985. According to the most guarded estimates, given the present growth rate

of world military spending, considerably more will be spent on military needs

in the next two decades than in the 40 postwar years (2).

Representing the greatest danger here is the so-called strategic defense

initiative (SDI), whose realization, American experts themselves estimate,

will in the first 10 years alone require almost $800 billion. The disastrous

socioeconomic consequences of another twist to the arms race spiral, extremely

dangerous for the cause of peace, are obvious. A growth of unemployment and

inflation, an increased tax burden, loss of most important social gains—such

is the price which the working people of capitalist countries will have to pay

for a new round of militarist preparations. It is this cheerless prospect

which imperialism offers the peoples. As the American General Rogers,

commander in chief of NATO, candidly declared, "the growth of military budgets

must be secured, however burdensome the socioeconomic problems...."

The working people cannot and are unwilling to be reconciled to such a fate.

This was shown by the speeches at the plenary sessions of the 11th World Trade

Unions Congress and, particularly, the debate of the "Peace and Disarmament"

Commission which operated within the congress' framework and whose sessions

were chaired by Campbell Christie, general secretary of the Scottish Trade

Unions Congress and president of the International Trade Union Committee for

Peace and Disarmament (Dublin). The current situation, the participants in the

commission emphasized, dictates the need for special study of the

socioeconomic consequences of the militarization of space, an intensification

of the struggle against those who are spurring the arms race and an

improvement in the knowledgeability of various detachments of the peace

movement. Such questions should be a subject of the special attention of trade

union organizations.

The participants in the discussion evaluated highly the study on socioeconomic

aspects of the arms race, which had been submitted at the June 1986 session of

the ILO General Conference as the trade union response to the resolution of
the General Conference 67th Session (1981) "Economic and Social Consequences

of Disarmament" and which had been published by the Dublin Committee. The

commission adopted the document "Trade Union Action for Peace and

Disarmament". It draws the clear conclusion that today the struggle against

militarism and the arms race is not only a struggle for the survival of

mankind. It is also a struggle in defense of the social, political and

economic rights of the working people. A stimulation of the unions of West and

East in the struggle for peace means the emergence of a new phenomenon—the

unions' peace movement.

A significant place at the congress was occupied by discussion of specific

initiatives aimed at curbing the arms race and preventing the militarization

of outer space. It was observed at the Berlin forum that the Soviet peace

initiatives, primarily the moratorium on nuclear explosions, are creating

fundamentally new, favorable conditions for the joint antiwar protests of

various detachments of the international union movement. It was emphasized

that it is essential that the unions and all peace-loving forces step up

pressure on the U.S. Administration—the main culprit of the arms race—and

force it to reconsider its positions and give a constructive reply to the

peace-loving proposals of the USSR.

It is the United States, Marcelino Camacho, general secretary of Spain's

Workers' Commissions, declared, that is chiefly responsible for the arms

race. Promoting realization of Soviet foreign policy initiatives means

expressing the deep-lying interests and cherished aspirations of working

people, who are tired of military preparations. The Soviet moratorium on

nuclear explosions showed the USSR's sincere aspiration to a curbing of the

arms race, M.G. Mendis, general secretary of the Ceylon Federation of Trade

Unions, emphasized. The Soviet peace proposals enjoy the growing support of

the working people of the developing countries.

Emissaries from the socialist countries and from Britain, France, Spain,

Cyprus, Greece, Canada, Congo, Ethiopia, Syria, Peru and dozens of other

states called on the union organizations to actively contribute to realization

of the Soviet foreign policy initiatives. Emissaries of the unions of

Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia spoke of the need for an

intensification of the struggle to make the Pacific a nuclear-free zone in

accordance with the proposals expressed by M.S. Gorbachev in Vladivostok. Many

speakers called attention in this connection to the colossal benefits which

would accrue to the working people from realization of the Soviet peace

proposals. Merely a simple freezing of military spending, which the Soviet

Union has proposed repeatedly, would make it possible to accelerate the annual

growth rate in the world by at least 2 percent.

Significant in this respect was the fact that the congress' first official

document was the unanimously approved message to M.S. Gorbachev, general

secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, U.S. President R. Reagan and UN

Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, which emphasizes the USSR's constructive

steps in the struggle against nuclear catastrophe and contains an appeal to

the United States and the Soviet Union and all members of the United Nations

for the "immediate adoption of measures for the conclusion of international

agreements on a halt to the arms race and all nuclear tests, the elimination
of nuclear and other types of weapon of mass destruction and a redistribution

of the resources released as a result of disarmament measures for the

acceleration of socioeconomic development. Measures should be adopted in all

countries to switch military enterprises to the manufacture of peaceful

products. The congress states its belief once again that a strategy of peace

and disarmament is now a decisive component of the strategy of international

development to secure a better life for all mankind" (3).

The strikingly expressed antiwar focus and support for peace initiatives and

the idea of the creation of an all-embracing system of international security

determined the political content of practically the entire work of the

congress. This imparts to it special significance in the subsequent

development of the international worker and trade union movement along the

path of unification of the efforts of the working people of all countries in

the struggle for peace and disarmament.

It is significant that the participants in the congress viewed the struggle

for peace and against the arms race as a most important prerequisite of the

solution of their urgent problems: unemployment and the consequences of

economic crisis in West Europe and North America; starvation, backwardness and

foreign debt in Africa, Asia and Latin America; and the offensive of the

transnational corporations and big capital against the rights and gains of the

working people in all regions of the nonsocialist world. It was observed, for

example, that the arms race is a principal factor of potential losses in the

sphere of employment inasmuch as military production is concentrated in the

relatively capital-intensive sectors. For the industrially developed countries

on average over the past 20 years the number of jobs "created" per $1 billion

spent on militarist purposes has declined by a factor of 2-2.5. Approximately

10 million persons in these countries fail to find work annually owing to the

militarization of production.

The arms race is also impeding the normal development of trade-economic

relations, primarily East-West relations, which, as representatives of the

unions of the FRG, France and Great Britain observed at the congress, are also

an important source of employment. Thus total employment created by these

relations is the equivalent of roughly 5 million persons. According to some

estimates, Soviet orders alone guarantee work in West European countries for

more than 1 million persons.

The arms race is also fraught with irreplaceable losses for the working people

of the developing countries, who currently account for three-fourths of world

weapons imports. They are spending on military needs approximately 6 percent

of the domestic gross product, whereas they are spending on health care only 1

percent, and on education, 2.8 percent. The arms race is deepening the

economic gulf between the industrially developed countries and the Asian,

African and Latin American countries. Given the present rate of military

preparations and military purchases, the economy of many developing countries

could find itself in an impasse from which it would be difficult and, in some

cases, impossible to extricate itself.

All this was discussed In their speeches by the representatives of the trade

unions of India and Australia, the United States and Canada, Nicaragua and
Argentina, Mali and Lesotho and other national organizations, including those

associated with the ICFTU. This position was reflected in the unanimously

approved documents of the congress. They observe that while procuring for

imperialism's military-industrial complex fabulous profits, the arms race is

inevitably exacerbating all the social problems of the developed capitalist

and developing countries.

The participants in the discussion in Berlin were unanimous that military

preparations had become the main enemy of socioeconomic progress and are

leading to the further impoverishment of millions of people, in the most

developed capitalist countries included. The working people are demanding of

their union organizations decisive action in support of peace and disarmament.

They are advocating the unions' extensive international cooperation in this

struggle.

Considering the positive features which have appeared in the approach of many

reformist unions to the problems of peace and disarmament, many delegates to

the congress called for bold new steps to be taken to overcome the situation

wherein the three main international centers (the WFTU, ICFTU and the WCL) are

operating along parallel, as it were, courses which are far apart. Required of

union leaders today not less than of statesmen is an understanding of the

realities of the nuclear age and a profound recognition that only the united

protests of the unions will compel even the enemies of peace to hear the voice

of the working people and make it possible to make it really powerful. And

although the path toward such cooperation has not as yet been cleared of

obstacles and various prejudices intentionally piled up by the enemies of

detente, there is every reason to conclude that the 11th World Congress

reflected the new way of thinking of the union masses and opened the broad

highway toward the organization of joint protests for peace and against

militarism and the arms race and, consequently, in defense of the working

people's social, political and economic rights.

An important place in the work of the congress was occupied by questions of an

intensification of the struggle of the working people and their unions against

the crisis phenomena in the capitalist world and against the antiworker policy

of the monopolies, particularly the TNC and the banks. The unions are

undoubtedly on the side of S&T progress if it simultaneously serves social

progress, as is the case in the socialist countries. As far as capitalism is

concerned, it is incapable of using the important changes which are occurring

in technology for the good of the working people. Furthermore, under the

conditions of capitalism S&T progress leads to increased exploitation, reduced

employment and a growth of unemployment. A. Krasucki, general secretary of the

French CGT, and many other participants in the discussion devoted their

speeches to this question. Particular attention was paid to the problem of

employment and the struggle against the policy of eliminating jobs on the

pretext of "modernizing" production in the course of the work of the

Socioeconomic Commission, chairman of which was elected A. Stern, a

representative of France's CGT. It was observed at the session that in the

most industrially developed capitalist countries the number of "superfluous"

people is currently over 30 million. There are approximately 500 million of

them in the developing countries. Many delegates demanded of the ILO the

adoption of effective measures against unemployment.
Studying this problem, the speakers of a number of countries (France, Mexico,

Portugal) who spoke at the session of the commission sharply criticized the

policy of the employers aimed at depriving millions of working persons of jobs

on the pretext of "flexibility of the labor market" and the "application of

new technology". They unanimously advocated the adoption of decisive measures

against the antisocial use of new technology to the detriment of wages, health

and vocational skills. A proposal concerning the creation under the conditions

of the S&T revolution of efficient, permanent systems of the general and

vocational training and retraining of the working people was submitted, inter

alia. The summary document of the congress' Socioeconomic Commission presented

a proposal concerning the creation of an intersectorial committee for new

technology and the social aspects of its application. On the basis of the

active participation of the sectoral international union movement the

committee could practicably contribute to an exchange of experience and

cooperation in the formulation of joint strategy in this promising sphere and

also involve itself in the ecological consequences of the application of new

technology and questions of its influence on the production environment.

At the center of the discussion in the commission was also the problem of

development and that of the developing countries' foreign debt closely

connected therewith. As the Cuban representative observed, the sum total of

the debt of the young states was in excess of $950 billion. The speakers

emphasized that the trade union movement, having united, would be in a

position to adopt effective measures against this plunder.

Th congress deemed it important to erect by the powers of the working people

and the unions a dependable barrier against all encroachments on employment

and the working people's living standard. The delegates advocated the

continuation and stimulation of the "Unions and Working People for Peace and

Work" world campaign announced by the WFTU within the framework of the

International Year of Peace. Proposals concerning the holding of an

International Day of Struggle Against Unemployment and the organization of

consultations between union experts from capitalist, socialist and the

developing countries on problems of the position of the working people of

various sectors of industry were supported unanimously. It was decided to

engage in joint, action in the ILO also, seeking the elaboration of an

international right to work convention.

The increasingly more complex socioeconomic position of working people of the

developing countries has become an acute problem. Many delegates emphasized

that this is largely connected with the growing expansion in the economy of

the young states of the TNC, whose actions are creating a direct threat to the

sovereignty and independence of countries of the "third world". Even now key

sectors of the economy in these countries have found themselves under the

control of Western monopolies. In recent years they have been attempting with

increasing frequency to impose development goals on the governments of young

countries, put pressure on their currency-finance policy and demand a change

in adopted social programs. Things are even going so far as attempts to oust

governments which do not suit the international monopolies.
Representatives of the trade union movement of India, the Philippines,

Mozambique, Ghana, Malaysia and other countries emphasized that the attempts

of the TNC and the international financial institutions of the We3t closely

connected with them to impose on the young states neocolonialist prescriptions

for a "recovery" of the economy are being reflected in an extremely negative

manner in the position of the working masses. The broadening expansion of

foreign capital is contributing, for example, to increased unemployment

inasmuch as at their enterprises the monopolies employ, as a rule, more

capital-intensive and productive technology than in national industry.

Ultimately all this is causing a severe reduction in employment not only in

the sectors where the capital-intensive technology is being introduced but

also in related industries. The increase in employment, on the other hand, at

enterprises built by the TNC is proving negligible compared with the

tremendous mass of people who have lost their job3.

The speakers called attention to the disastrous consequences for the working

people and the unions of the policy of the creation in the developing

countries of so-called "free trade zones" (they are sometimes called "export

zones"), where the international corporations are accorded a variety of

customs and tax concessions and privileges. For the working people of the

young states the "free zones" have become areas of superexploitation and

arbitrariness and sources of a growth of social tension. On the territory of

many of them unions have been banned, labor legislation is virtually absent

and the TNC consider themselves exempt here from responsibility for compliance

with safety equipment (sic) and concern for protection of the working people's

health. It is not surprising that wages in the "free trade zones" are

currently 10 times lower on average than in West Europe and the work day is 50

percent longer, while spending on social needs i3 four times less.

The historic duty of the international trade union movement, the congress

said, is unification of efforts against the most refined methods of the

plunder and exploitation of these countries and peoples. There is undoubtedly

a direct connection between the monstrous debt bondage which has been imposed

on the developing countries by international finance organizations and private

transnational banks and companies--and these countries' debt constitutes

almost $1 trillion—and the $1 trillion-plus growth of U.S. military spending

in the last decade. Emphasizing this, the emissaries of the working people of

the developing countries expressed demands for an immediate halt to the

payment of this debt to private capital and declared plainly from the

congress' rostrum: "We will no longer pay for the military spending of the

United States!" The congress unanimously supported these legitimate demands

and expressed itself in favor of the need for the speediest establishment of a

new international economic order.

As far as specific directions of the struggle against the TNC are concerned,

the participants in the congress advocated:

the establishment of all-around contacts between national trade union

organizations and their prompt coordination of joint protests against the

international monopolies;

10
a regular exchange of information on the activity of the TNC and also the

borrowing of the experience of realization of antimonopoly action;

mutual support of workers in labor conflicts, from financial assistance

through the demarches of allied unions at the headquarters of the TNC and

solidarity strikes;

enlistment of the working people employed at enterprises of the TNC in the

ranks of the organized workers movement. This applies primarily to the

developing countries, where the degree to which the unions extend to the

working people at plants and factories of international monopolies remains

low.

There is no doubt that on the basis of these principles international and

regional trade union associations will oppose even more actively

neocolonialism and the economic enslavement of the peoples of the emergent

countries and support the right of the working people and the unions to

participate in the elaboration and implementation of development strategy at

all levels and the right for the unions to be consulted on all aspects of

socioeconomic policy. The congress supported the proposal of the delegation of

Cuba and other Latin American countries for 23 October to be commemorated as a

day of trade union solidarity with struggle against the developing countries'

foreign debt. The delegates supported the proposal concerning the convening on

a broad basis of a"Trade Unions for International Economic Security" world

meeting.

More than any other, the Berlin congress paid tremendous attention to the

problem of the defense of union rights and freedoms because the frontal

offensive of capital against the working people is aimed primarily against

their mass organizations—the trade unions. This problem was broached in the

speeches of many participants in the congress at plenary sessions. It was also

discussed in depth and in detail in the congress' Trade Union Rights Committee

operating under the leadership of G. Osorio, chairman of the Trade Union

Confederation of Workers of Colombia.

The participants in the discussion in the commission demonstrated on the basis

of specific examples the scandalous violation of union rights in many

capitalist and certain developing states and showed what a diverse arsenal of

means is being employed for combating the unions. A concentrated offensive is

under way against the entire set of working people's rights recorded in the

General Declaration of Union Rights adopted by the Ninth World Trade Unions

Congress. To be or not to be is a serious issue for the trade movement as such

in countries of the West, primarily in the United States and Great Britain.

Just in recent times the world has witnessed the smashing of the Air Traffic

Controllers Union in the United States, the putdown of the miners' strike and

the persecution of the Print Workers Union in Britain, the formation of a

common antistrike fund by the northern countries' Council of Employers and

other actions indicating a coordinated offensive against the rights of the

unions and the working people. Approximately 10,000 activists of the CGT at

2,085 enterprises were subjected to persecution in France, for example, in

1985 alone. According to ILO data, at the start of the 1980's the law provided

11
in 25 states for the disbandment of union organizations at the discretion of

the enterprise management, and, furthermore, the union is deprived of the

right to protest to the judicial authorities. In 18 countries union elections

are controlled by the government, in another 18 countries the unions have been

prohibited from engaging in political activity.

The participants in the discussion also spoke with alarm about the

increasingly frequent attempts to undermine the union movement from "within"

in order in the long term to reduce it to nothing altogether. For this purpose

so-called "alternative" unions, which are in fact maintained by the employers,

are being set up in a number of countries, primarily France and Japan.

Universal and mass violations of union rights are occurring in a number of

developing states also. Brutal reprisals against union activists in their

countries were described by representatives of South Africa, Chile, El

Salvador, South Korea and other states with repressive-dictatorial regimes.

The delegates of a number of developing countries called attention to the

disquieting state of affairs in the so-called "free trade zones," where the

TNC, with the support of the IMF and the World Bank, are seeking the adoption

of anti-union measures.

The struggle for observance of union rights and freedoms is for the workers

movement under current conditions of vital importance. The speeches of the

participants in the congress contained an appeal for the concerted, united

actions of the organizations of working people of different countries for the

purpose of a fitting rebuff of the anti-union policy of big capital.

The congress supported the proposal concerning the creation of an

international center for defense of working people's rights and trade union

freedoms. The center could be the organizer of effective campaigns in defense

of the working people's rights, primarily the right to work, enlist prominent

lawyers for legal aid for unions and working people subject to repression and

elaborate constructive programs pertaining to defense of human rights issues.

This center could perform an important role in a further strengthening of

class solidarity with the peoples and working people of countries where the

rights and freedoms of working people are flouted.

It is proposed enlisting in participation in the work of the center prominent

union figures, lawyers and representatives of international organizations

dealing with questions of the defense of the working people's rights. The

congress also heard a proposal concerning the creation of a special fund for

aiding victims of anti-union repression, whose resources could be formed from

voluntary contributions of both individual working people and the union

organizations of various countries. The 11th World Trade Unions Congress thus

demonstrated a resolve to rebuff capital and defend and extend trade union

rights and gains.

The appeal for an intensification of the international solidarity of the

working people and the unions on a worldwide scale was heard more powerfully

than ever at the congress in Berlin. This appeal is all the more pertinent in

that bourgeois ideologists have in recent years noticeably stepped up their

attacks on the principles of proletarian internationalism and worker
solidarity. Some people would have us believe in all seriousness that the

working class of the socialist countries and the proletariat in the capitalist

world have no fundamental common interests. Inventions to the effect that

East-West trade-economic relations are taking work away from the working

people of Western countries are being disseminated. There is also much

speculation apropos the contacts of socialist countries' foreign trade

organizations with the international monopolies, which is allegedly "putting

in a difficult position" workers striking at their enterprises. In other

words, with the aid of base fabrications imperialist ideologists would like to

perpetuate the division of the workers movement and erect insurmountable

barriers between its individual detachments.

The progressive trade union movement has always adhered to positions of class

solidarity, but under conditions where the monopolies and rightwing-bourgeois

circles of capitalist countries have adopted a policy of "social revanche" the

significance of proletarian solidarity is growing immeasurably. Without mutual

support and concerted and coordinated action in defense of their vital rights

and freedoms, it is today difficult for the unions to ward off the pressure of

imperialist reaction and rebuff the encroachments on progressive democratic

gains.

Trade union solidarity is a multilevel concept. It incorporates both strikes,

demonstrations or other protest actions and the rendering of material and

legal assistance to the working people and unions subject to brutal repression

and persecution. And, of course, worker solidarity is indivisible. It applies

both to support for the just struggle of the working people of the capitalist

states and assistance in the development of a union movement in the emergent

countries. All those assembled in the Berlin Palace of the Republic greeted

with tremendous enthusiasm the speech of Daniel Ortega, leader of the

Nicaraguan revolution, and voted unanimously for a resolution on the situation

in Central America and the Caribbean. Resolutions of solidarity with the

working people and the peoples of South Africa and Chile and the Arab working

people and messages of solidarity to the working people of Turkey, South Korea

and other countries were adopted with the same enthusiasm. Nor did the fate of

the arrested leaders and activists of the Bolivian workers» center, the

striking workers of Ecuador, the working people of Paraguay who are subjected

to repression and all other fighters for the workers' cause go unheeded by the

participants in the congress. An appeal to the working people and unions of

all countries was adopted.

The participants in the congress valued highly the class solidarity which is

invariably demonstrated by the unions of the USSR and the other socialist

community countries. Soviet trade unions have always displayed solidarity with

the working people of capitalist countries. We may refer, as an example, to

the assistance to the British miners. Together with the unions of other

countries the unions of the USSR sent Great Britain a "ship of solidarity"

with foodstuffs for the families of the striking miners. Approximately 500

British miners and members of their families visited the Soviet Union. From

13
positions of internationalist solidarity help is being rendered the unions of

the emergent states. Hundreds of union officials of these countries annually

undergo training at facilities of the Higher Trade Union Movement School imeni

N.M. Shvernik. The unions of the young states are granted other assistance

also.

The delegates evaluated, in particular, as a specific expression of solidarity

the tremendous amount of work on preparation of the congress which had been

performed by the unions and leadership of the GDR, the striking speech at the

opening of the congress by E. Honecker and the hospitality, warmth and

cordiality of the labor outfits of the republic, which were visited by many

participants in the congress.

The speeches of the representatives of the delegations of the fraternal

socialist countries, just like the familiarization with the activity of the

union organizations of the GDR, helped reveal to the delegates to the congress

from the nonsocialist part of the world the extensive opportunities which the

socialist society affords the working masses and their unions for active

participation in all spheres of economic and social life. The practical

experience of the working people and the unions of the socialist countries,

which is being enriched continuously, the speakers said, confirms that these

countries are the most progressive in today's world in questions of

legislative establishment of gurantees and the expansion and application of

the vitally important rights of the working people and the unions.

To take the Soviet Union, no decision of the organs of power at any level here

affecting the interests of the working people is adopted without coordination

with the trade unions. Not once in the history of the Soviet state has a law

been enacted which might in some way have limited the unions' activity. On the

contrary, legislation provides for the amenability of officials for actions

preventing the unions from exercising their functions. Unions in the USSR

participate openly and directly in the management of production. If an

executive fails to heed the opinion of the union organization, the trade union

committee may demand his punishment or removal. Thus more than 10,000

officials were strictly punished at the demand of the unions in the last year

for violation of work safety rules.

A policy of an intensification of the unions' role in various spheres of

economic, social and cultural life is being pursued consistently in our

country. The Workforce Law enacted in 1983 strengthened still further the

legal basis of the participation of the working people and their organizations

in production management.

Great interest was evoked by the speeches of the members of the Soviet

delegation on the restructuring of work and the enhanced role and

responsibility of our unions in implementation of the strategic policy of an

acceleration of the country's socioeconomic development. A dependable

reference point here are the decisions of the 27th CPSU Congress, which

advocated a further enhancement of the independence and assertiveness of the

social organizations, including the unions. The congress emphasized the need

for an extension of the range of problems in respect of which the decision of

the workforce is final. The members of the Soviet delegation also described

14
the struggle to ensure that the union organizations make more assured and

persistent use of their enormous rights and emphatically rid themselves of the

elements of passiveness and sluggishness in their work which have not yet

disappeared.

The accomplishment of this task is not only our purely internal concern. We

understand full well that the gaze of the working people of the whole world is

currently turned to the socialist countries. In enhancing the efficiency of

their work the Soviet trade unions are simultaneously performing their

international duty to the workers movement of the capitalist countries, which

is conducting a difficult struggle against the antipopular policy of the major

monopolies.

Proceeding toward their 18th congress, the Soviet trade unions confirm their

resolve to continue to be active exponents of the USSR's Leninist peace-loving

foreign policy and to multiply their efforts in the struggle for peace and the

security and social progress of the peoples, the further development of the

fraternal international solidarity of the working people, a strengthening of

the unity of the international union movement and realization of the decisions

of the 11th World Trade Unions Congress.

The time which has elapsed since the 11th World Congress has confirmed the

soundness of its decisions. The congress contributed to a strengthening of the

ranks and position of the progressive trade union movement and its proven

vanguard—the WFTU—and a broadening of the unions' cooperation in the

struggle for peace, removal of the threat of nuclear war, the rights and

interests of the working people and social progress. The policy formulated by

the congress is one of interaction between unions of different political

persuasions, one of equal, friendly and objective dialogue.

The congress succeeded in finding a specific, union approach to problems of

the struggle for peace and disarmament, which were viewed in close connection

with the working people's protests for their vital socioeconomic demands.

The biggest forum of trade unions in history gave precise class-based answers

to many problems troubling the working people of the world. It elaborated a

realistic and constructive program of counteraction of the policy of "social

revanche" being pursued by the forces of imperialism and the monopolies and

the frontal offensive against the vital rights and interests of the working

people which has been developed in the capitalist countries.

The 11th World Congress was held in the year of the 27th CPSU Congress, and it

may be said without any exaggeration that the creative, constructive spirit of

the congress was reflected in the atmosphere of the world congress, the course

of its work and its decisions.

The landmark nature of the world congress was noted at a meeting between M.S.

Gorbachev, general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and a delegation

of the World Trade Unions Congress. He supported the opinion that realization

of the documents adopted there would require strenuous work in the new manner,

with regard for the entire distinctiveness and pivotal nature of the moment.

15
There is no doubt that this congress will go down in the history of the

international trade union and workers movement as an important forum of the

working people emphatically advocating the development and consolidation of

the unions' international solidarity in the name of the progress of mankind,

as a congress of new thinking, as a congress of an abrupt turnabout toward

united actions in the interests of the working people. The strength of the

decisions adopted in Berlin is their focus precisely on action, active

struggle and militant, united protests of the unions in defense of the

interests of the people of labor.

FOOTNOTES

1. PRAVDA, 15 October 1986.

2. "The Working People and the Arms Race," Prague, 1986, p 6.

3. PRAVDA, 1 November 1986.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/246

16
PROBLEMS, DEVELOPMENT OF ASIAN WORKING CLASS ANALYZED

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 14-31

[Article by E.Ye. Obminskiy and B.I. Slavnyy: "Socioeconomic Changes and the

Working Class in the Asia-Pacific Region"]

[Excerpts] Among the processes determining the contemporary picture of the

world, a particular part is played by the development of the Asia-Pacific

region, which is evolving into a new economic and political center of world

significance. The national and socioeconomic revival of the peoples of the

vast expanse of the countries of Asia and Oceania in the postwar period was a

powerful stimulus to the surmounting of national isolation and traditionalism

and to the incorporation in the productive forces of these countries of the

region of the achievements of contemporary S&T progress.

As emphasized in M.S. Gorbachev's speech in Vladivostok, "this process in Asia

and the Pacific zone is currently on the upsurge: everything is on the move

here, far from everything has become settled. The new is intermingling with

the old, and the principles of life which even yesterday seemd permanent are

giving way before a whirlwind of changes—social, scientific-technical,

ideological.... How socioeconomic and political development will continue to

develop here and which processes in relations between states will prevail—

this will largely determine the fate of the entire world" (1).

Indeed, the interests of the world's most important states belonging to

different social systems interact and clash in the Asia-Pacific region.

Realization of the new political thinking based on the priority of salvation

of the world from nuclear catastrophe over all other problems will largely

depend on the extent to which it is possible to ensure the peaceful, truly

good-neighbor cooperation of all countries pertaining to this region.

Imperialism represents the greatest danger for the development of positive

processes in Asia and Oceania. From the very first postwar years various

"bloc" models of the SEATO, ANZUS and CENTO types, which brought with them

merely a new exacerbation of the international situation, a deformation of

socioeconomic processes in the direction of militarization and an aimless

waste of resources, were foisted on countries of the region. Having

encountered the extreme unpopularity of bloc ideas and the subsequent

17
disintegration of the military groupings, the imperialist powers presented the

idea of a "Pacific community" conceived in the form of an exclusive tradeeconomic grouping under the aegis of the region's developed capitalist

states—primarily the United States and Japan—with an auxiliary role for

Australia and New Zealand and with the participation of the developing

countries and territories of Oceania, the Far East and Southeast Asia (2).

In connection with the fact that the developing countries have adopted an

attitude of manifest suspicion toward this latest, essentially bloc, idea the

imperialist powers are endeavoring to little-by-little, using all the

military, political and economic resources at their disposal, influence the

course of socioeconomic development in the region in order to secure

conditions conducive to imperialist expansion. On the other hand internal

socioeconomic processes are under way in the developing countries of the AsiaPacific region in the course of which forces are maturing which are concerned

for a dissociation from imperialism and the implementation of democratic

transformations and a strengthening of cooperation among all states of Asia

and the Pacific.

A stimulation of integration processes is currently under way here. At the

same time, however, the economic and political rivalry of the imperialist

powers and international monopolies is intensifying. It is primarily the

United States and Japan and also the developed capitalist states of Australia

and New Zealand which are participating in the competitive struggle. The

states and territories which are called new industrialized countries (NIC)—

South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore--and also the ASEAN countries

(Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia) are becoming involved

increasingly deeply in the regional economic processes. It is here that there

are abundant labor resources, which are being drawn intensively into

capitalist production. And whereas for the NIC this process is being

completed, in the main, for the ASEAN countries it is only just unfolding,

entering its intensive phase.

Of course, not only the groups of countries which we have mentioned above are

located on the territory of the region, numerous small states in terms of

territory and population of Oceania and also the most populous countries of

the world concentrated in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and

Sri Lanka) are incorporated here. Finally, the socialist Indochina states

(Vietnam, Laos) and also the PRC are included here. Confinement of the

analysis to the processes occurring in the NIC and ASEAN is an attempt to

precisely ascertain the consecutive stages of the uniform process of

capitalist assimilation of the labor resources of the developing world. It can

be assumed that together with the advancement along this path of the ASEAN

countries the said process will also extend to a number of South Asian

countries. In this case certain methods—technological, organizational,

sociopolitical—summoned into being by the requirements of the combination of

manpower and capital and officially approved in the ASEAN countries are to a

certain extent a prototype of what awaits the South Asian countries.

We have already said that the said process is simultaneously becoming a

principal prerequisite of the formation of the working class in countries of

the region. But what kind of working class will this be—like that in the NIC,

18
that is, skilled and relatively highly paid (compared with the standards

adopted in the ASEAN countries) or perhaps the model thereof will be the

manufactory or nonfactory proletariat, whose conditions of exploitation are

incomparably stiffer? Finally, if both models are preserved, which will be the

predominant one or, in K. Marx's words, which conditions of exploitation will

be perceived by the workers as "self-evident and natural".

Two main types of the use of manpower in social production are taking shape in

the economy of the developing countries of the region, and, consequently, two

types of proletariat. Obviously, it is profitable to the capitalist to use

skilled and highly paid manpower only where the technology demands (7). As is

known, the very process of the relocation of many sectors of production to the

developing countries is motivated by the discrepancy in the wage levels of the

workers in these countries and in the industrially developed countries. For

this reason the questions raised above may be formulated differentlytwhich

type of worker is predetermined as the predominant type by local conditions?

The worker of the first type predominates in the NIC; how, on the other hand,

is the situation evolving in the ASEAN countries and certain adjacent

countries pertaining to South Asia?

Among the factors influencing this process an important place is occupied by

population growth. The demographic growth rate in countries of the region,

although having declined compared with the 1960's-1970's, remains high (see

Table 1). In the ASEAN countries and also in South Asia living and work

conditions on the bulk of the peasant farms have deteriorated, on the whole.

The number of landless peasants has grown, the cultivable areas per person

employed has declined and the scale of open and hidden unemployment has

increased. The deterioration in the conditions of the application of labor is

being reflected painfully in the lives of many hundreds of millions of people.

It is they who constitute the 39 percent of rural manpower which in Indonesia

is employed in agriculture less than 24 hours a week, and if the level at

which the counting of partial employment begins is raised to 34 hours per

week, the proportion of the partially employed rises to 57.5 percent. In

Thailand the level of partial employment in the peak season of agricultural

work and its level in the interseason period in 1983 fluctuated from 18

percent of manpower employed in agriculture to 43.2 percent (8).

Table 1. Assessment of the Numbers and Annual Growth Rate of the Population

and Also the Proportion of the Urban Population of 1980 and 1983

Cipaitii HJiM

(** H:ict'.'!cHi!<

(M.1II. 'IIVIOI-.CKI

a)

MnpMU

pni-I!l ('!,.)

0) 11180 1 l'.IS I'.mo | li'K'.

(tr)

pci-nt.ii 3C.KAT0 2487,8' 2015,5 1,7 20,0 20,9

["oiiKOiir (6)

flrromw (Jt)

tOwitnsi Kopt-arC1

5,0

116,8

38.1

5,3

119,1

39,9

1,3

1,9

1.0

90,3

7<i,2

50,9

90,0

70.4

02,0

HllAOHC3H(l '7/

M'i.i:iii3HH 0°)

(pHJlHWIHIIb! 0>i

Cimranyp (tl)

Taii.iaiia ('$)

151,0

13,8

48,3

2,4

40,5

159,2

14,7

51.9

'.'. 5

49,4

1.8

2,2

2.4

1,2

2,0

22,2

29.4

37.4

74,1

14,4

24,1

30.7

38,7 .

74,1

15,4

iiaiiiviaflcin v~'

IIIIAHH On

riaKHCTan C/O

ILlpH JlaiiKa//f)

8X.2

080.4

80,1

14.8

95, s

723.8

94,4

15,0

2,7

1,8

3.1

1.7

10,4

23,4

28,1

21 ,0

M,3

24,7

29,1

21 ,3

19
Key: 1. Country or region. 2. Population (millions). 3. Annual growth norms

(%). 4. Proportion of urban population (%). 5. ESCAP region. 6. Hong

Kong. 7. Japan. 8. South Korea. 9. Indonesia. 10. Malaysia. 11. The

Philippines. 12. Singapore. 13. Thailand. 14. Bangladesh. 15. India.

16. Pakistan. 17. Sri Lanka.

Source: "ESCAP Population Division. Printout of 1984 Assessment of Population

Prospects and Demographic Indicators".

Together with the partial employment in rural areas, there is also an increase

in open unemployment (see Table 2). In Bangladesh—one of the poorest and most

overpopulated countries of the world—the proportion of the urban unemployed

is comparatively small, in connection with the overall low proportion of the

urban population, the proportion of rural unemployed, on the other hand, is

very great. It needs to be considered here that the indicators of open

unemployment far from always reflect the true state of affairs. Only those who

in terms of their material position are capable of not working for some time

while waiting for suitable employment and so forth figure in them, as a rule.

It is frequently a question of children of comparatively well-to-do families

who have acquired an education and who are hoping for comparatively well-paid

work.

Table 2. Proportion of Urban and Total Unemployment (% of Total Manpower)

Proportion of urban unemployed Total proportion

1.1 37.4

8.8 3

2.8 1.7

7.2 6.9

12.2 4.1

Source: "Economic and Social Survey of Asia and Pacific, 1985," Bangkok, 1986,

p 95.

The tremendous scale of unemployment and partial employment in countries of

the region indicates the underuse of human potential. People cannot find a

place for themselves in economic activity connected with modern production.

This is an important point, and its meaning is that the high indicators of

economic growth are not carrying with them the solution of social problems,

primarily that of employment and mass poverty. This growth is concentrated in

a narrow sector of modern industries, which requires only a negligible

proportion of the entire available manpower. The further development of this

sector is capable of influencing merely to a negligible extent the situation

which has taken shape as of this time in the sphere of manpower employment

(see Table 3).

20

Bangladesh 1983/84

India 1978

Indonesia 1980

Malaysia 1975

Philippines 1982
Table 3. Proportion of Unemployed in Individual Countries of the ESCAP Region

in 1975-1983 (% of Total Manpower)

Cipaiiii

(l)

1<J 7",

Banr.iaÄtui C*/

BiipMa (3)

TOHKOHr ('<«')

lliiAim l-*"^.

lIiiÄOHe3na (b)

Ma.iafi3HH (7)

riflKMCTaH CM.

<t>H.1HmiHHbI Cff. »

K)>KiiaH Kopen^/

CHHranyp (/>)

lllpH .nanKa(/l)

Tau.iaHA (/ ?)

41,0

1,0

9,1

0,9

1,7

4,2

4,1

4.«

18,3

0,4

38,2

7,9

5,6

2,3

0,1

1,7

5,0

3,9

4,5

0,8

40,1

2,3

4,5

2,3

0,1

1,7

4,2

3,8

3,9

0,8

HIT

38,1

3,2

3,0

2,5

5.4

1 (i 7 9

38,1

3,2

2,8

3,3

5,2

3,5

3,5

3,8

3,4

14,7

0,9

19S0

38,5

3,5

3,8

0,9

1,7

5,7

3,5

4,3

5,5

3,5

15,3

0,9

l'JSl 11IK2

37,9

4,3

4,0

7,0

2,7

5,1

3,5

5,2

1,5

2,9

17,9

0.9

30,3

4,4

3,0

8,5

3,0

5,1

3,5

4,4

4,4

2,0

3,0

Hi «:l

37,4

4,0

4,5

6,0

3,9

4,1

4,1

3,3

Key: 1. Country. 2. Bangladesh. 3. Burma. 4. Hong Kong. 5. India. 6.

Indonesia. 7. Malaysia. 8. Pakistan. 9. Philippines. 10. South Korea.

11. Singapore. 12. Sri Lanka. 13. Thailand.

Source: "Key Indicators of Developing Member Countries of ADB," Manila, 1985.

The inequality in the distribution of land resources is superimposed on top of

other types of inequality characteristic of the traditional rural society: sex

and age inequality. Even at the present time women remain the part of society

most deprived of equal rights and oppressed, their work in the home rarely

shows up in statistics and their attempts to offer their services outside of

the home meet with disapproval on the part of the men, as competitors, and on

the part of the senior members of the family. This explains the relatively low

degree of women's participation in social production (see Table 4).

Nonetheless, the situation is changing rapidly. Women are moving increasingly

actively onto the urban manpower markets and becoming an important part

thereof, forming the detachments of the working class which are subjected to

exploitation with the aid of the latest imported technology.

Table 4. Proportion of Women in the Labor Force, 1970-1980 (%)

C.TI.^II

0)

in/o

>K. iilllllMhl

JJA.

MV/KMlllll.l

J2L

IialUYia-U'::. (&)

r.-iiiKoin (**.

I iü.'lHH ((>)

Ilil.'ic.llr:<l!5i(?)

MM.-!SlbH>! fr)

I'laKliCTilll IV)

<I»H.nHlll!lil!IJ(/0^

K)/Kiiaa K'iiCJii/V

Cmiranvp (t2.)

lllpH .ri.'!lll<::(/^

Taiuaiu (/</)

t>

28 8

11 9

22 0

20 9

5 2

21 3

23 ,2

18 ,5

18 , /

4(5 ,0

58,0

54,8

52,5

40,0

44,2

55,0

40,0

42,8

50,8

50,1

52.0

mini!

3,

37,

14,

23,

20,

7,

27,

25.

32

21

45

I.-2 . 1

52. 7

•?T, 9

48,5

53.4

40.3

47.4

59.3

53,1

5!', 4

21
Key: 1. Country. 2. Women. 3. Men. 4. Bangladesh. 5. Hong Kong. 6. India.

7. Indonesia. 8. Malaysia. 9. Pakistan. 10. Philippines. 11. South Korea.

12. Singapore. 13. Sri Lanka. 14. Thailand.

Source: "Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1984," Geneva, 1984.

Another part of the labor force which finds itself in a particularly

inauspicious situation on the labor market and which forms the bulk of the

unemployed is the youth. The age structure of the developing countries is such

that people 15 and under constituted in 1983 one-third of the entire

population of these countries, and 22 and under, one-half. Whence the problem

of migration from the countryside to the city and, further, the problem of

urban unemployment. These are problems of young people, and to a greater

extent of young women, what is more, than of young men. Given the indicators

of unemployment characteristic of the manpower of these countries as a whole,

unemployment among the youth amounts to 81.7 percent in Sri Lanka, 78 percent

in Indonesia, 63.6 percent in India and 60.4 percent in Thailand. In Indonesia

open unemployment among the urban youth 24 years and under constitutes 11.3

percent, whereas for the labor force as a whole, only 1.7 percent (11).

Young people suffering from their situation migrate to the city, where they

also find a system of inequality, only more refined and camouflaged. In the

wake of L.I. Reysner and N.A. Simoniya, we would call this system a synthesis

of the traditional and the modern (13). Its modern component is determined by

the capitalist laws of man's buying and selling of manpower. However, it is

important to note here certain differences of this phenomenon from that

studied by the classics of scientific socialism. The employer and the hired

worker do not so much effect an an exchange of equivalents here—the first

advancing variable capital, and the second representing for producer

consumption the "manpower" commodity—as assume mutual obligations of the

traditional type. The first undertakes to feed and render protection, the

second, to work to the extent that the first requires.

Thus finding himself at a capitalist enterprise, the migrant from the village

proves to be partially voluntarily and partially forcibly in a new system of

dependence. It is either the dependence of a debtor obliged to work off the

debt to the creditor or the dependence of a person who has ended up at an

enterprise not of his own accord but sold by his parents, the elder of the

tribal group and so forth. In the situation which takes shape at the

enterprise this dependence is not something unnecessary or irrational, on the

contrary, it is an important functional element in the system. Essentially the

entire economic consideration of the employer is founded on the use of

extremely cheap manpower, and mechanization facilities and sources of energy

are lacking, as a rule, what is more. For this reason heavy, exhausting labor

proves to be the main factor of production growth. And, truly, experience

shows that laziness and partial employment are unknown here, on the contrary,

the brutal exploitation of the worker and the "self-exploitation" of the boss

are the rule.

22
The synthesis of the traditional and the modern has become most prevalent in

the so-called "informal sector" of the economy of the region's developing

countries. The bulk of the unskilled manpower, including the overwhelming

majority of migrants from the countryside, is employed in this sector. In such

cities as Calcutta and Dacca this sector encompasses over 60 percent of the

urban manpower, 87 percent in Bangkok and 45 percent in Djakarta. A survey of

the employment in the informal sector of Bangkok showed that over 70 percent

of the workers are absolutely without qualifications and that over 60 percent

are recent migrants from the countryside. In Bangladesh the work day at

enterprises of this sector lasts 12.5 hours, and 83.5 percent of those

employed have no days off, what is more.

The "informal sector" takes advantage mainly of the commercial opportunities

which are afforded as a result of the activity of the modern highly productive

enterprises. The repair of durables and also the production of a number of

consumer goods at prices accessible to the broad masses of the urban

population are practiced in this sector. Further, this sector undertakes the

construction of private homes and diverse services. Labor productivity in this

sector is, as a rule, low, incomes are correspondingly low also. In Calcutta

the heads of families employed in this sector earn less than 240 rupees per

month, that is, approximately the level of the minimum wage. At the same time,

however, in Manila and a number of other big cities of the region the income

of employers in the "informal sector" is relatively high, which reflects the

market situation connected with the rapid economic growth of individual areas.

The poverty of the data pertaining to the "informal sector" is no accident.

The principle of management here is based not only on an absence of control on

the part of the state but also on manifestly illegal types of activity. The

central problem is the methods of use of the manpower. Compulsion to labor,

with the aid of violence included, enables the employers not only to maintain

the necessary level of competitiveness but even sometimes to obtain a sizable,

by local yardsticks, income. The profitability and earning power of

entrepreneurial activity in this sector are attested by the fact that the

majority of employers here are comparatively young people, and a considerable

proportion thereof, what is more, has taken the path from skilled labor in

modern production to independent "business" in the "informal sector". Besides

illegal methods of recruitment and use of manpower, the employers of this

sector are forced to also employ illegal methods of obtaining raw material

(from the big modern enterprises, for example) and also financial resources.

For this they turn to so-called "high-risk" sources.

Illegal activity is generally not the privilege merely of this sector; its

particular feature is rather that it has no precisely drawn boundary with

criminal business. Therefore the well-known Indian expert A.K. Sen attempts to

separate legal from illegal activity as that "producing goods and services

recognized by society". In addition, he introduces to the concept of legal

method the right of the worker "to refuse hire at his own discretion" (14).

This right appears strange in an economy marked by a huge surplus of manpower,

but it becomes understandable if we consider the traditional forms of

relations between employer and worker in the "informal sector". Finally, it is

important to consider also the very nature of government regulation of

23
production activity inherent in the majority of countries of the region. This

regulation is exercised by a government official machinery which is infected

with corruption and people openly endeavoring to use all the opportunities

afforded them for illegal gain (15).

Despite its scale, the "informal sector" is not the main reservoir for the use

of labor resources based on traditional hiring conditions. There is a sphere

of employment which is even more concealed from observation, where labor

productivity and incomes are even lower. It is a question of industry located

outside of the cities. It is there that a large part of the manpower which is

not incorporated in agricultural production is employed in countries of the

region, but it is on this activity that we have the most insignificant data.

It is known merely that live labor plays an even bigger part there than in the

urban "informal sector," that employment there increases not only to the

detriment of labor productivity but also to the detriment of the total volume

of production and, finally, that consumer goods geared to the demand of the

traditional economy are produced there. That is, the surmounting of the

noncommodity isolation of the traditional rural society and its involvement in

exchange relations are occurring in line with the development of this

extremely inefficient and backward sphere of industrial production.

Such is the category of proletariat which in Soviet scientific literature is

defined as manufactory or nonfactory (16). Currently the said sector is

producing a negligible proportion of goods and services in terms of value, but

providing employment and sustenance for a large number of people. It has

another role also: the traditional or neotraditional relations between the

workers and employers which are customary in this sector are extending beyond

it. At modern enterprises in the city of Ahmadabad (India) part of the

manpower is used given informal terms of hire. In principle this type of

Worker is acceptable everywhere that the quantity of live labor employed makes

it possible for its productivity to be of no great concern. The possibilities

of the use of this type of worker are sufficiently extensive in construction,

garment production and so forth. Hiring is frequently done here on a

collective basis: a contract is concluded with the head of a family or leader

of a tribe, accordingly, compensation is the right to participate in the

general meal and obtain the minimum ration. This type of worker is

unacceptable where a high quality of labor is required and where this cannot

be achieved by an increase in the quantity thereof.

A different type of worker takes shape in the "formal sector," that is, that

which is under the control of official labor legislation. The worker employed

here has, as a rule, certain qualifications, and, accordingly, his labor

productivity should be comparatively high (if compared with the productivity

of an unskilled worker). The development of production concentrated in this

sector is accompanied by a growth of both labor productivity and employment

(see Table 5), and a growth of both variables is being observed everywhere

apart from the Philippines, what is more. In South Korea, Singapore and

Thailand the growth of wages has even outpaced labor productivity growth. The

latter fact is possibly connected with the TNC's reorientation toward the

domestic markets of the developing countries. In producing goods which are a

part of the consumer diet of the so-called "middle strata" the TNC need an

expansion of the range of consumers of their products.

24
Table 5. Real Wages In Manufacturing Industry (%)

Average annual real Average annual growth rate of

wage growth rate real production per person

employed (1970-1979)

Hong Kong, 1969-1981 2.38 4.8

South Korea 9 5

Malaysia, 1970-1979 1.4 3.8

Philippines -6.6* 2.1

1969-1980 -5.5**

Singapore, 1979-1983 6.5 1.9

Thailand

1973-1985 5.9 4

1972-1983 1.4

1978-1983 3.7

Bangladesh, 1973-1982 1.4

India, 1969-1980 2 0.8

Pakistan

1970-1976 1.4***

1976-1981 7.6***

Sri Lanka, 1969-1982 3.5 1-6

Source: ILO-ARTEP. "A Review of Some Major Employment Issues for Asia," 1985,

Bangkok.

* unskilled.

** Skilled.

*** Large-scale manufacturing industry enterprises.

In spite of the widespread views on the TNC as a factor of the formation of

Western-type labor relations, the analysis that has been made shows that the

mode of use of manpower at enterprises of the TNC gravitates in its general

features toward that which has taken shape in the "informal sector". The main

thing is that theefforts of the organizers of production are geared not so

much to an increase in individual labor productivity as to ensuring the

maximum labor contribution of all workmen. Traditional forms of relations

between employer and workman like compulsion to labor with the aid of coercion

are not employed here, but in fact the customary level of wages at these

enterprises represent an instrument of people's compulsion to the most brutal

conditions of exploitation. Finally, nor do the TNC shun openly traditional

forms of labor relations: this is characteristic of local enterprises

connected with them by subcontracts and also the forms of organization of

production which are not reflected in statistics and merely individual

instances of whose activity accidentally get into the press. For example,

quotas for the sewing of individual parts of contemporary clothing, allocated

with the aid of middlemen, the executants of which are either urban outworkers or village families and isolated tribal groups even.

Undoubtedly, there is also a growth in the said countries of the region of the

category of workers which is connected with large-scale modern production and

presupposes not so much intensity and duration of labor effort as experience,

skills and professional training. There are enterprises of this type, state25
owned included, in India, Indonesia and South Korea. However, processes are

under way there indicating not so much a divergence from the type of use of

manpower customary in the "informal sector" as a rapprochement. In South

Korea, for example, the length of the work week has grown continuously: in the

period 1973-1983 it increased in manufacturing industry from 51.2 to 54.4

hours (18). We have mentioned above that at large-scale enterprises of India

instances o»f part of the manpower being used on informal hiring terms have

been noted. The prospects of the development of the working class in the3e

countries are determined largely by the prospects of the development of the

modern type of production. The relatively low efficiency thereof only may be

ascertained as of the present: the experience of India, Indonesia and South

Korea is testimony to this (19). For countries with abundant resources of

cheap manpower a development path oriented mainly toward the use of capital

factors cannot be the optimum. The history of development of recent years

proves the soundness of this assertion.

The migration of manpower in the region also is making an essential mark on

the process of the creation and location of new sectors of material

production, in the course of which profound contradictions between local and

foreign entrepreneurs on the one hand and local working people on the other

are being revealed.

In addition to intracountry migrations, primarily from the village to the

city, intercountry migrations are becoming increasingly prevalent in the

region (see Table 7). In 1983 approximately 3.6 million persons from countries

of the region worked in the oil-producing countries of the Persian Gulf. India

and Pakistan sent there up to 1 million of their citizens each. Besides,

intraregional migrations are becoming prevalent also: Indonesians work in

Malaysia and Singapore, Malaysians in Singapore, Filipinos on the U.S. West

Coast and so forth. South Korea has imparted the most organized forms to this

process: over 100,000 citizens of this territory worked until recently in

Persian Gulf countries on the construction of industrial facilities. In terms

of the export of construction services South Korea is in first place in the

world.

Table 1. Annual Scale of Foreign Migration 1976-1984 (Persons)

in 7 (i I'.iSo n>8i l'J.X'J IHM MINI

5aiirJia;icu] (l) 0 087 30 573 55 787 62 805 59 216 56 754

HiiÄHJi (Z) 4 000 230 000 270 000 240 000 225 000 206 000

naKHCTaii (?) 41 690 133 397 153 081 142 945 128 201', 100 000

<J>H.71WmHHbI (li) 19221 157 394 210 044 250 115 380 263 371 005

lOauiafl Kopea^y !> 37 692 146 436 175 114 196 855 184 277 152 673

[LlpH /IanKa/^)

TaHJiaiiar'^)

1 500 27 000 55 000 55 000

1287 20 809 24 572 105 103 64 527 75 021

Key: 1. Bangladesh. 2. India. 3. Pakistan. 4. Philippines. 5. South Korea.

6. Sri Lanka. 7. Thailand.

Source: "Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific," 1975, p 105.

26
Under the conditions of present-day capitalism imports of manpower are not a

manifestation of a shortage thereof but a means of economizing on variable

capital. Foreign workers do not enjoy the protection of national legislation

and for this reason agree to wage terms below the minimum for the given

country. As a rule, these migrants are the citizens of countries which are

poorer than the host country and, furthermore, the inhabitants of rural

areas, without rights and prepared to tolerate the conditions imposed on them.

They frequently live in specially built camps, and contact with local citizens

is forbidden them, furthermore. Such terms are contained in the agreements

reached between the leadership of the host country and South Korea. The

population of the host countries often adopts an unfriendly attitude toward

the foreign workers, regarding them as an undesirable social element

constituting, in addition, competition for certain strata of local working

people. A broadening of the political and social outlook for some of the

migrants, a raising of their consciousness, class included, and so forth is

complicated.

The facts testify to the accelerated development of capitalism in countries of

the region. The latter is no longer an isolated enclave, but is developing

slowly and unswervingly, ousting the traditional structures and capturing

economic and social space (20). At the same time, however, the traditional

character is not disappearing, it is entering into a synthesis with capitalist

production relations and beginning to penetrate them, mediating the process of

the incorporation in production of local manpower resources. A working class

in countries of the region is taking shape accordingly: it is far from being

confined to industrial workers employed in modern capital-intensive production

and is beginning to an increasingly great extent to incorporate broad and

diverse strata of the working people exploited by capital. Enmeshed in

innumerable vestiges of traditional social relations, these working people are

finding themselves the object of the most barbarous exploitation, which is

producing high profits for international and national capital and appreciably

expanding its social base thanks to the enlistment in the ranks of

entrepreneurs of petty and the most minor exploiters. At the same time,

however, traditionalism is intensifying the ailments of this version of

capitalist development: the working people, isolated in the face of the

exploiters, frequently prove powerless to overcome enmity and disagreements on

a traditional basis. They are succumbing to agitation on the part of

reactionary forces and are not always capable of making their way in the

political situations which arise in society. Corrupt and venal political

regimes and also the tremendous destructive powers accumulated in the lumpen

masses—all this is contributing to increased political and social instability

and knocking society from the path of progress. Under these difficult

conditions there is an increase in the role of the political vanguard of the

working class, the communist and workers parties and the trade unions, which

are confronted with tasks pertaining to the cohesion of the workers on a class

basis and an enhancement of the level of their consciousness and their

understanding of their social role.

The facts testify that capitalism, while assimilating the economic territory

of the majority of developing countries of the Asia-Pacific region and

removing to a certain extent anachronisms of the past, is creating new acute

27
social contradictions, which even at the present stage of internationalization

of the region are perceptibly making their presence felt.

The serious political and socioeconomic situation in the region is increasing

the polarization between labor and capital in respect of regional problems.

Imperialist circles are hatching far-reaching plans for strengthening their

socioeconomic base in the region both for the purpose of deriving new profits

and from the viewpoint of military-strategic interests. Thus a new outline of

regional integration was put forward at the annual meeting of the Pacific

Economic Cooperation Council in October 1985 in Honolulu with the

participation of business circles of the United States, Japan, Australia and a

number of developing countries of the region. The representatives of Japan

proposed breaking the region down into "technozones," which would accommodate

sectors connected with electronics, biotechnology, robotics and so forth.

Without waiting for the response of other countries, Japan is already

preparing resources for financing the corresponding research. The developing

countries are hereby being offered an updated version of the "export zones,"

which will lead to a stratification of the working people, their isolation in

economically uncoupled facilities and a weakening of their unity within

national frameworks. Essentially this is a Pacific version of the

confrontation, in K. Marx's words, of a "Masonic Brotherhood" of exploiters

and the disconnected working people's masses.

Increasingly, in line with the growth of the working class and its entry onto

the political scene with independent demands, the ruling circles of countries

of the region proceeding along a capitalist path are canceling or limiting

rights and freedoms recorded in constitutions and other laws enacted per the

bourgeois-democratic model prior to the working class' conversion into a real

force. This, for example, is precisely the situation in South Korea, where the

comparatively liberal articles of the constitution and labor legislation are

periodically canceled. Simultaneously use is made of the precapitalist

traditions of "loyalty" to those who stand higher on the social ladder for

setting the "loyal" workers against the "rebels". In the 3ame South Korea the

employers are putting up every conceivable obstacle to the working people's

attempts to form independent unions. A typical statement made by a

hospitalized worker of a garment factory reads: "The employers forced the

workers who were not members of the union to beat us up and thereby put an end

to our union's activity" (26). For their part, the TNC are opposing in every

possible way attempts by the national state to implement measures pertaining

to the creation of a more integrated economy. At the insistence of outside

creditors work was suspended in the Philippines, in particular, in 1985 on the

National Development Movement official program, which was aimed at helping the

small local businessmen and the poor strata of the population.

Throughout recent years the international corporations have been actively

spinning a web of intraregional ties enabling them to take advantage of the

mobility of intrafirm production for an increase in surplus value thanks to

reduced manpower costs. Thus the American Castle and Cook pineapple-growing

company transferred plantation production from the Hawaiian Islands to the

Philippines and Thailand, where it pays the workers 30 and 25 cents an hour

respectively, that is, 20 times less than in the home country. Actively

attracting foreign investments, Malaysia intended, following the economic

28
recession, considerably increasing production in 1986. However, as the journal

SOUTH emphasizes, "the workers will be paid less for greater labor efforts"

(28). Singapore has found no other means of reviving the economy than a 2-year

freeze on the working people's wages and the cancellation of corporation taxes

imposed earlier. It is no accident that the thought is running through

monopoly circles to the effect that Singapore "is to be the regional center of

the TNC" (29).

The young working class of the Asia-Pacific region is counterposing to the

offensive of local and foreign exploiters against the working people's rights

growing consciousness, organization and an aspiration to unification of

efforts in the joint struggle. However, it is encountering big difficulties on

this path.

The trade union movement is distinguished by considerable fragmentariness.

Whereas in the years of the anticolonial struggle the forces of the trade

unions were united, following liberation they proved to be split since

together with class differences religious and ethnic interests made their

presence felt quite strongly. Thus 10 head trade union centers were formed in

India, 17 in Sri Lanka, 5 in the Philippines and 3 in Thailand (30).

Nonetheless, the working people's objective interest in joint actions is

leading to a strengthening of solidarity in periods of strike battles. Whereas

in the recent past such solidarity was displayed mainly on socioeconomic

issues, in recent years the trade union organizations of the Asia-Pacific

region have paid ever increasing attention to political problems, both in

individual countries and in the region as a whole. At the national level we

may mention the joint protest of the majority of trade union centers of Sri

Lanka against the antiworker policy of the government manifested in the course

of the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict; the struggle of the Philippines' trade unions

against the repressive policy of former President Marcos; the joint actions of

Pakistan's industrial and agricultural worker unions for a restoration of

democracy in the country and against militarization and the policy of diktat

pursued by the Zia-ul-Haq regime; the struggle of Thailand's working people

against the government's anti-union policy; general strikes by the forces of

all the main trade union organizations of Bangladesh. The peace movement is

becoming increasingly strong. Millions of people in India, Australia, Japan

and the Philippines are participating in peace marches and taking part

actively in the struggle for disarmament.

Particular importance is attached to the unions' actions at the regional

level. The unions, as the most populous organizations of the working people,

have set as their paramount task unification of efforts in the struggle for

disarmament, the preservation of peace and the deliverance of the peoples from

the threat of nuclear catastrophe. Back in 1982 a representative conference

was held in Delhi in which trade union centers of various persuasions

participated. The participants demanded the elimination of all military bases

in the region and the conversion of the Pacific into a nuclear-free zone. They

condemned the growth of militarism in a number of countries of the region and

demanded the. use solely of peaceful means for the settlement of regional

conflicts. An antiwar forum, in which unions which are members of the WFTU and

also the ICFTU united, has been founded in the South Pacific.

29
A big success en route to the unity of action of the working people was the

conference of trade union centers of Asia and Oceania held in February 1985 in

Delhi. More than 100 delegates representing 35 trade union centers from 21

countries of the region and also representatives of the WFTU and other

international trade union centers and organizations of the UN system took part

in the conference. The adopted declaration clearly formulated the most urgent

tasks of the working class and its trade unions in the struggle for peace and

disarmament, social progress and a new international economic order and

against neocolonialism and the expansion of the TNC. A coordination office to

facilitate the implementation of the adopted decisions was set up.

A significant phenomenon in the workers movement of the region is the trend

toward unity of action at the regional level of working people of individual

sectors of industry. The Asia-Pacific Coordinating Committee of Unions of

Textile Industry, Clothing and Related Sectors is operating successfully. The

first issue of the committee's press organ, ASIAN HERALD, emphasizes the need

for an intensification of the anti-imperialist struggle and a strengthening of

the unity of action of the working people, which will make it possible "to

reveal new vistas of cooperation, strengthen ties between workers of the

region and consolidate bonds of solidarity in the course of this process"

(3D.

There is no doubt that the stimulation of the workers movement in respect of

the most important political and socioeconomic problems of the region is

having a growing impact on the sociopolitical situation in Asia and Oceania.

The persistent and relatively skillfully organized joint protests of the

working class in alliance with all progressive forces of the region are

contributing to the solution of the main question of the present day--the

struggle for peace. In August 1985 the South Pacific was proclaimed by the

governments of this region a zone free of nuclear weapons. The corresponding

document was opened for signature in Rarotonga, on the Cook Islands. It was

signed by the leaders of eight countries, and the heads of a further four

countries confirmed their intention to sign the document.

The strengthened movement of peace supporters in Australia, New Zealand,

India, Japan and other countries of the region shows the possibilities of the

working class' cooperation with broad strata of the population and in spheres

of social and political life also. There is currently a broad coincidence of

opinions on such questions as peace and disarmament, the need for satisfaction

of the working people's economic and social demands and the establishment of a

new international economic order, the development of democracy and a

broadening of the working people's rights.

The facts testify that against the background of the continuing socioeconomic

and political changes in the Asia-Pacific region and the intensified processes

of the development of regional ties various approaches to determination of the

future of the region and its role in world political and economic life are

being manifested distinctly. The imperialist powers are endeavoring to convert

the region into an exclusive military-political and economic grouping under

the aegis of the West and to perpetuate the dependence of the developing

countries of Asia and Oceania.

30
As a counterweight to this, the organizations of the working class, proceeding

from the interests of the broadest masses of the population, are conducting a

struggle for a different, democratic alternative to the region's development.

Radically opposed to the trans-capitalist models of the region's integration

are the goals and tasks of the workers movement pertaining to a strengthening

of the working people's regional solidarity on the basis of anti-imperialist

and anti-monopoly struggle for the peaceful cooperation of the states of the

region with different social systems.

The sociopolitical changes in the region, which have confronted vast, earlier

inert strata of the population with acute problems not only of a national but

also global nature, are inevitably leading to an increase in the role of the

working class in the solution of these problems and its influence on the

general development process. The future of the peoples not only of this region

but of the whole world will largely depend on its capacity for performing this

role.

FOOTNOTES

1. PRAVDA, 29 July 1986.

2. See "Pacific Regionalism: Concepts and Reality," Moscow, 1983.

7. Ph. Aydalot, "Dynamique spatiale et developpement inegal," Paris, 1976.

8. ILO-ARTEP. "Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Asia," Bangkok, 1983,

p 16.

11. M.D. Loonoi, "Unemployment Schooling and Training in Developing

Countries," London, 1985, p 176.

13. "Evolution of Oriental Societies: Synthesis of the Traditional and the

Modern," Moscow, 1984.

14. QUARTERLY BULLETIN OF STATISTICS FOR ASIA AND PACIFIC, vol XII, No 4,

1982, pp 2-3.

15. N.V. Jagannathan, "Corruption, Delivery System and Property Rights,"

WORLD DEVELOPMENT vol 14, No 1, Oxford, N.Y., 1986.

16. "The Nonfactory Proletariat and the Social Evolution of Countries of the

Foreign East," Moscow, 1985.

18. "Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific," United Nations, 1983,

p 309.

19. "The Transition to an Industrial Economy in Monsoon Asia," ADB ECONOMIC

STAFF PAPER No 21, 1984, Manila, p 57-

20. FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW No 21, 1981, p 67.

21. PRAVDA, 14 November 1984.

31
22. TIME, 25 November 1985, p 47.

26. FLASHES FROM THE TRADE UNIONS, 30 February (sie) 1984, p 4.

28. SOUTH, May 1986, p 23.

29. Ibid., p 24.

30. WFTU REVIEW No 8, 1984, p 1.

31. THE ASIAN HERALD, Maiden Issue, 1985, p 1.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/246

32
FINAL REPORT ON CONFERENCE ON WORKING CLASS IN PRESENT DAY

[Editorial Report] Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1,

January-February 1987 carries on pages 32-115 the second set of materials from

the conference "The Working Class and the Present Day" held 8-10 October 1986

in Moscow. The material published here includes eight presentations given at

the conference and two surveys (obzor). The presentations published in

RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR are: "Structural Changes in the Working Class

and the Policy of the Communists" by Willi Gerns, member of the Presidium and

the Secretariat of the board of the German Communist Party; "The Present Day

and the Class Struggle" by Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party

of the United States; "Economic Prosperity Faced With the Choice: Economics of

Arms or Economics of Peace" by Ignaas Lindemans, chairman of the Confederation

of Christian Workers of Belgium and chairman of the Independent Christian

Movement for Peace; "The Working Class in the Contemporary World" by lb

Norlund, member of the Danish Communist Party Central Committee Secretariat

Executive Committee; "Certain New Problems Facing the Working Class" by

William Kashtan, general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada; "The

Working Class and Contemporary Problems" by Cheddi Jagan, general secretary of

the Guyana People's Progressive Party; "The Working Class and the Changing

World" by Sandor Gaspar, chairman of the WFTU, member of the Hungarian

Socialist Workers Party Central Committee Politburo and chairman of the

Hungarian Council of Trade Unions; and "Contemporary Imperialism and the

Working Class (Trends of the '80's)" by James Stewart, general secretary of

the Communist Party of Ireland.

The two surveys published are: "The Struggle Against the Forces of Reaction

and War" by A. Shumavan and "The Scientific-Technical Revolution: Strategy of

Capital—Challenge to the Working Class" by S.I. Tatishchev.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

CSO: 1807/246

33
DANISH PEACE MOVEMENT, ORGANIZATIONS DESCRIBED

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 pp 129-135

[Article by A.-W. Karlsen: "'Country of Reservations'"]

[Text] On the eve and at the outset of the 1980's bourgeois commentators of a

number of West European countries put into circulation the term "Danization"

in connection with the reservations of Denmark's then social democratic

government concerning the NATO leadership's demands for a jacking up of the

level of military spending. In subsequent years Denmark's representatives

(sometimes together with those of Greece, Holland or Spain) have on several

occasions not been in unison with their most belligerent North Atlantic allies

on questions of the deployment of the new American intermediate-range nuclear

missiles in West Europe, the making of their territory available for the

deployment of chemical weapons, realization of the SDI program and such. It is

no accident that Denmark, as Jörgen Jensen, chairman of the Danish CP,

recalled, addressing the 27th CPSU Congress, "is called the country of

reservations" (1). This has been brought about to a considerable extent by the

fact that Denmark is one of the few NATO countries where the mass peace

movement managed to avail itself of the split in the camp of local Atlantists

and in the period from December 1982 through May 1986 to carry through

parliament (the Folketing) 19 resolutions aimed against the militarist plans

of imperialism.

This article attempts to reveal the particular features of the development of

Denmark's peace movement at the current stage and determine its structure and

ideological-political tenets and methods and forms of activity for influencing

the mass consciousness and also the attitude of the labor unions and the

country's biggest party—the Danish Social Democratic Party—toward the

struggle for peace and disarmament.

Denmark's organized peace movement is based on a century-old tradition of the

struggle of antimilitarist forces (2). In the postwar period this movement

gave an active account of itself at the start of the 1950's in connection with

the collection of signatures to the Stockholm Appeal and at the start of the

1960's within the framework of the campaign against nuclear weapons. At the

current stage Denmark's antiwar protest movement, experiencing rises and

falls, is constantly expanding its social base and is on the lookout for new

ways of struggle. The mass support for many of its initiatives, particularly

in the 1980's (more than 200,000 persons took to the streets on national

demonstration days in 1983 and 1984—10 times more than in 1979—and the

34
annual 5-minute antiwar strikes in the period 1983-1986 encompassed the

country's entire labor union movement), testifies that in this country with b

million inhabitants potential for protest against the nuclear madness and

against the militarist plans of American imperialism has been accumulated. Let

us dwell briefly on the structure of this movement and its ideologicalpolitical tenets.

The persevering daily work of thousands of people affiliatedwith these

organizations was needed for sympathy with the slogans of the antiwar

organizations to become an active political factor. The Danish experience

confirms that "permanent potential for mass assertiveness and protest and a

thirst for 'participation' are the reason for a feature characteristic of

nonparty democratic movements—the capacity, given certain circumstances, for

rapid growth and development" (3).

Denmark's contemporary peace movement represents, as it were, an interweaving

of two structures. First, more than 30 national organizations, the biggest of

which is the Peace and Security Cooperation Committee (4) (the circulation of

its newspaper FREDSAVISEN runs to 10,000 copies). Many of them have their own

local organizations in various cities of the country. Second, local groups of

peace supporters. They are either group members of one or several national

organizations or cooperate with the latter occasionally in connection with

this campaign or the other. The strongest joint action of Denmark's peace

forces was the campaign which began in 1982—"Stop the Nuclear Missiles.

Whereas it initially united approximately 100 organizations and groups, by the

time of its culmination in 1984 approximately 30 national organizations and

250 local groups were cooperating in its ranks.

The spread of the forces and the abundance of parallel organizations contains

both weak and strong aspects: on the one hand the danger of being caught up in

ideological-political arguments leading away from the main artery of the

struggle, on the other, the possibility of uniting supporters of the most

diverse ideas and beliefs within the framework of coincident tasks of the

struggle for peace, which Denmark has succeeded in doing, in the mam.

This country's peace movement contains—as in those of other West European

countries—a whole conglomerate of ideological-philosophical currents, which

may provisionally be reduced to two principal schools. Whereas the communists

participate only in the first, most populous school, the entire remaining

spectrum of participants—from liberals, Christians and social democrats

through radical-left forces—is represented both in the first and m the

second. Common to the two schools is an endeavor to champion peace by means of

a limitation of the arms race and a strengthening of Europe's security,

specifically by way of the creation of nuclear-free zones, but there are also

serious disagreements between them in their comprehension of the reasons for

the exacerbation of the international situation and in the choice of methods

and means of preservation of peace.

The first school is characterized by Cooperation Committee organizations, the

Trade Union Peace Movement and others, which proceed from realistic political

assessments, endeavoring to move to the fore factors capable of uniting the

peace movement. The second school is represented primarily by the splittist

35
antiwar No To Nuclear Weapons (NNW) organization, which was formed in 1980

under the conditions of exacerbation of the internaitonal situation. This

organization is characterized by an endeavor to ignore the social roots of the

problem, view weapons as evil in the abstract and to make active use of the

"equal responsibility of the military-political alliances for international

tension" concept. At the center of the polemic between the representatives of

these schools is the question of the attitude toward the policy of the USSR

(the two are quite close in condemnation of the militarist policy of the U.S.

Administration). The supporters of the first school either agree with the

consistent policy of the USSR or aspire to contribute to a strengthening of

the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems.

The supporters of the second school are characterized by an endeavor to put

pressure on the USSR primarily by means of interference in its internal

affairs. Seeking a "change in the political atmosphere in which the nuclear

arms race began," the most extremist forces are demanding a revision of the

Yalta agreements and such (5). While advocating peace and disarmament and

manifestly narrowing the base of the peace movement here they are

ideologically and politically objectively in step with the demands of the

West's reactionary forces. This duality in the policy of the NNW and certain

other organizations is leading to political passiveness and a preoccupation

not so much with mass work as with loud, narrowly sectarian carping (6).

In exaggerating the ideological-political disagreements of the participants in

the antiwar protest movement the NNW supporters are inevitably pushing into

the background the very idea of the struggle for peace. On the eve of mass

demonstrations and in the course of the preparation of the world congress

devoted to the International Year of Peace (October 1986, Copenhagen) they

advanced their claims time and again, attempting to dictate their terms. As

far as the Cooperation Committee is concerned, all these years it has been

pursuing a flexible policy, not avoiding ideological debate but attempting to

direct it into a positive channel. Analyzing and discussing the content of and

reasons for the stereotyped ideas concerning the image of the "enemy" and the

"military-political blocs," "strategic balance" and "militarism" categories,

the Cooperation Committee is conducting a patient dialogue with the NNW

supporters on the question of the principle of equal and identical security.

The supporters of the second school are distinguished by a chronic distancing

from the Danish communists. Certain liberals, leftists and rightwing social

democrats, frequently both supporters and opponents of NATO, what is more,

converge in their aspiration to portray the antiwar organizations of the

democratic school as obedient tools of the communists. The NNW activists who

nonetheless consent to certain contacts with the communists inasmuch as they

do not consider it possible to ignore them as an active and influential force

in Denmark's peace movement play up the values of decentralization and

spontaneity in every way possible and frequently slight the communists on

these grounds. Considering primarily the NNW's demarcation from the

communists, A. Jorgensen, chairman of the Danish Social Democratic Party,

observed that the NNW was closest in spirit to the social democrats (7). Yet

in practice many labor union activists of the Social Democratic Party

collaborate loyally and positively with the communists within the ranks of the

Cooperation Committee and the Trade Union Peace Movement, constituting the

36
basis of the unitary spirit, which is the strength of the Danish antiwar

protest movement. N. Braun, representative of the Christians for Peace

organization, which is a part of the Cooperation Committee acknowledged: "No

peace organization other than the Cooperation Committee is in a position and

prepared to undertake the work on coordinating the activity of several hundred

peace groups... be the main organizer of large-scale national

demonstrations... print and disseminate heaps of posters, pamphlets and

appeals... and publish the FREDSAVISEN newspaper. The Cooperation Committee is

rightly the locomotive of the entire movement.... We simply cannot imagine the

Danish peace movement without the Cooperation Committee" (8).

Despite the said ideological-political disagreements in the Danish peace

movement, the Cooperation Committee had every reason to point out back in 1983

that this movement was one of the strongest in West Europe not only

organizationally but also because predominant therein was a policy not of

criticism of the USSR and confrontation (which was to a certain extent

characteristic of the movement in the Netherlands and Norway) but of a

strengthening of peaceful coexistence and renunciation of interference in the

socialist countries' internal affairs (9). Priority is given pressure on its

"own" parliament and its "own" government, which makes it possible to bring

the problems of war and peace closer to the level of everyday thinking of

ordinary Danes. Great attention is also paid to global disarmament problems.

A significant amount of work in the day-to-day activity of the peace

committees is being performed by activists of the Danish CP, who are

endeavoring "not to confine themselves to a circle of ideological sympathizers

but to move out into the wide open spaces of the field of the battle for

peace"(10). The above-mentioned N. Braun observed that it is no secret that

the communists are exerting their influence on the policy of the Cooperation

Committee, although are not in a majority in its leadership. In the latter, he

emphasizes, there are representatives of six parties and dozens of national

organizations and local peace groups, and "none of these people are by any

means naive simpletons. Despite the political disagreements, they are

upholding a policy of cooperation... in respect of specific matters on which

there is unity of opinion. And there are many such matters, incidentally"

(11).

Within the Cooperation Committee framework the communists exerted big efforts

to avoid an ideological-political impasse and unite the antiwar protest

movement around the elaboration of a joint specific action program. This

document--"The Danish Peace Policy—14-Point Program" (October 1982)--

determined the following four main groups of demands which have to be carried

through the Danish Parliament. Concerning Denmark's membership of NATO, it is

primarily a question of dissociation from participation in realization of the

NATO "Euromissile" deployment decision; concerning the cooperation of the

northern countries of Europe, of the preparation of international negotiations

apropos the creation of a nuclear-free zone in North Europe; concerning

Denmark's participation in the United Nations, of actively promoting a

decision on a freezing of nuclear arsenals and the banning of nuclear weapons

testing in all spheres; and, finally, concerning domestic policy problems, of

a freeze on military spending at the 1982 level, the creation in Denmark of an

extragovernmental peace study center and so forth (12).

37
The main activity of Denmark's unitary peace movement has since the fall of

1982 developed around these demands (only the NNW has remained aloof, joining

in joint measures only occasionally). In the course of persevering and

multifaceted work it has been possible to have a considerable proportion of

these demands carried through the Folketing.

In the quest for the most expedient methods and forms of activity activists of

the peace movement are taking stock of the general socio-psychological

situation in the country and the degree of knowledgeability of the masses and

their involvement in political life.

Back in the 1960's activists of the Danish campaign against nuclear weapons—

following the example of the British CND—were publishing scientists' works

and explaining to the masses that nuclear catastrophe was a highly possible

tragic prospect (13). Relying on accumulated experience, activists of the

contemporary Danish peace movement are discovering that for their explanatory

work to be sufficiently effective the kind of knowledge which no school, no

higher educational institution and no official publications can provide is

essential. Whence the importance of the active position of a numerically very

strong group of the intelligentsia (doctors, teachers, librarians, architects

and others). Within the framework of the unitary peace movement they have in

recent years founded their own publishing house and their own professional

peace groups, which prepare skilled explanations, handbooks and

recommendations for the peace movement. Attention was called back in 1979 to

the insufficient knowledgeability not only of the broad masses but also of

members of the Folketing with respect to problems of armaments by individual

prominent social democrats, who declared that the members had voted in support

of NATO's "twin decision" guided merely by intuition (14).

In 1980 the congress of Denmark's biggest union of specialized workers, which

has a wealth of traditions of educational work among the working people,

appealed to the Folketing for the allocation of resources for the development

of research in the sphere of disarmament problems (15). Such a decision was

adopted following a difficult parliamentary struggle, and in 1985 a peace

research center was opened under the auspices of Copenhagen University whose

associates now frequently, as experts, write articles in publications of the

peace organizations and address conferences and hearings (16).

Important work in the masses is being performed by schoolteachers, a

detachment of the intelligentsia which had until recently remained aloof from

political and labor union activity. However, there have been profound changes

in teachers' consciousness and the degree of their political assertiveness has

increased with the change of generations and as a consequence of the pursuit

by the P. Schlueter bourgeois government of a policy of "social revanche"

incorporating a cutback in appropriations for the needs of education.

Participating in organized fashion in the peace movement, they have now won

from the local authorities in a number of Denmark's cities the right to

include peace lessons in the school curriculum. Specifically, they are

proposing that the students perform independent work: conduct interviews on

problems of war and peace with local inhabitants and peace movement activists.

After the group discussion of these interviews and the processing of material

38
that has been collected, the students write essays. Back in 1982 progressive

teachers were complaining that, with the exception of the abundance of proNATO publications of Denmark's military leadership, the schools lacked

teaching and visual aids for classes on these problems. Since then the peace

movement has organized the publication of diverse printed material intended

for teachers and different student age groups (17).

However, the representatives of reactionary organizations are not twiddling

their thumbs. For a number of years Denmark's Atlantists have been attempting

to create their "counterweight" to the peace movement. The On Guard of Denmark

organization, which incorporates representatives of the country's most

prosperous circles, commentators and public figures, and also the Young

Conservatives organization are among the most zealous champions of the cold

war. Parties of the right, specifically the Center Democrats, have at times

managed to intimidate the man in the street and some of the politically

inexperienced youth with the bugaboo of anticommunism and even derive

electoral benefits from this. If, however, it is considered that influential

forces from Social Democratic Party are often at one with' them and that the

majority of Danish newspapers adhere to positions of Atlantism, the mass

nature of many demonstrations should be considered an undoubted success of the

peace forces.

At the same time the task of persuading the masses of the reality of the

nuclear threat (18) and urging each Dane to make the maximum contribution to

its removal remains. The socio-psychological consequences of^the

"neoconservative wave" and the protracted economic crisis are impeding this.

Despair and hopelessness have sunk deep roots in the consciousness of the

masses, primarily the youth. With regard for this fact the Danish Communist

Youth Union, as one of the country's biggest youth political organizations, is

performing a great deal of work within the framework of the antiwar protest

movement (19). It was among the initiators of the creation of local Youth for

Peace groups, which have played an important part in the politicizatiön of

Danish youth. Back in the 1960's many trainees and students took part in the

struggle against nuclear weapons. A new feature is the growth of the numbers

of protesting youth and the creation in the general channel of the peace

movement of the Youth for Peace organization (20). A big impression on many

young Danes was made by a group of the country's leading sports figures

joining the ranks of the antiwar protest movement.

While paying considerable attention to educational work, most diverse

organizations within Denmark's unitary peace movement at the same time

evaluate positively the role of mass demonstrations for there Is no doubt as

to the benefit both from multifaceted activity at the stage of their

preparation and from the emotional effect and political impact of them on the

broad masses (only individual NNW figures began in the mid-1980's to call for

a winding down of mass demonstrations, pointing to the existence of

ideological disagreements, which "it is inexpedient to demonstrate openly,"

and believing that "putting arguments to politicians is more effective than

marching about the streets with placards").

39
Peace movement activists, however, are making effective use of the rich

arsenal of actions, both "old" and "new". For example, even the traditional

form of the collection of signatures to a petition is used as an opportunity

for discussion and agitation. In the event of these petitions being published

in the newspapers, everyone who has signed them participates in payment for

the cost of the publication. It was with a collection of signatures to a

petition that the Women for Peace organization began its work on enlisting

them in antiwar activity. Following the example of the heroic British women

from Greenham Common, for the first time in their country Danish women set up

in 1984 a similar tent peace camp around the NATO command post in the locality

of Ravnstrup near Viborg. Popularization of the slogan of the creation of a

nuclear-free zone in North Europe contributed to extensive support for the

Manchester initiative declaring districts, cities, streets and public

buildings a "nuclear-free zone".

A new form of work was the 1983 "referendum" conducted by activists of local

groups of peace fighters on the question of Danes' attitude toward the

deployment of the American missiles in Europe. They managed to poll 14,000

Danes, of whom 77 percent were opposed (it is indicative that among the

supporters of the Social Democratic Party—the party which signed the NATO

"twin decision"—90 percent had a negative attitude toward "deployment") (21).

The results of the "referendum" and also a poll conducted in 1981 which showed

a mass reluctance to abide by NATO's demands for an increase in Denmark's

military appropriations (22) are very remarkable if one considers the

prevailing opinion in the country that it is precisely this military

organization which could serve as an instrument for a strengthening of

European security (23).

There have been appreciable changes in Danes' mood in the time of development

of the contemporary antiwar protest movement. These changes, J. Jensen wrote,

testify to "the large-scale evolution, diverse in form, of the mass social

consciousness. An evolution so profound that it is evidently capable of

encompassing a far broader spectrum of social and ideological issues. Working

people see increasingly clearly the direct connection between militarist

policy on the one hand and the economic and political foundations of the

bourgeois state on the other" (24).

A particular feature of the current peace movement in Denmark is the arrival

of a significant proportion of the labor unions at active positions, which

occurred earlier than in Italy, the FRG and Norway (25), and also the positive

changes which have been discerned in the policy line of the Social Democratic

Party—the country's biggest.

Merely the fact that the Danish workers movement is one of the most organized

in the capitalist world is no guarantee of its active role in the struggle for

peace for the motives for joining unions usually have among the working people

primarily an "economist" trade-unionist coloration. Further, the country's

union movement is heterogeneous and in the hands of moderate social

reformists, who traditionally have not been disposed to involve themselves in

problems which go beyond the limits of purely trade union work. And the fact

that it has been possible in the 1980's to raise individual sectoral unions to

the level of participation in the political struggle, the peace struggle

40
included, is explicable not least by the mobilizing capacity of the communists

in a number of Danish unions (of both skilled and unskilled workers). We would

note that even prior to the mass upsurge of the contemporary peace movement a

Copenhagen branch of the Specialized Workers Union (SID), the Excavator and

Road-Repair Worker Local, was participating actively in the campaign against

nuclear weapons and against Denmark's membership of NATO.

In publications devoted to an analysis of the working class' participation in

the antiwar struggle many authors frequently establish merely in general

outline the growing role of the unions. For an understanding of the complexity

and contradictoriness of this process it would seem essential, speaking of

Danish unions' participation in this struggle, to employ a differentiated

approach and distinguish at least three levels of the union hierarchy: "lower"

(individual enterprise committees), "middle" (municipal union councils and

municipal sectoral union committees) and "upper" (leadership of the Danish

Central Trade Union Association [DCTUA] and the national leadership of the

sectoral unions).

Right up until 1983 the unions' participation in the peace struggle was

concentrated at the local level (the exception was the leadership of the SID

and the Printing Workers Union). Many of the "lower" activists primordially

combined agitation-propaganda work in the localities with the development of

international cooperation. This applies to an initiative of SID activists of

Alborg, who in May 1981 conducted an international conference on questions of

a nuclear-free North (not supported by DCTUA leaders) and subsequently

established close contacts with unions of the USSR and the United States.

National conferences of union activists of the peace movement and special

seminars and conferences for young unemployed persons to promote their

participation in the struggle for peace were held in-1981 and 1982 thanks to

"local" resources. The Copenhagen Trade Union Peace Movement organization was

founded in the fall of 1982 at the "lower" level. It carried on the tradition

of antiwar meetings of union activists of Denmark, the USSR and the United

States and was an organizer of the mass antimissile demonstrations in

Copenhagen in the fall of 1983, 1984 and 1985.

The extent of the unions' "local" peace activity exerted a gradual influence

on the "upper stories of the edifice" of the unions, and their leaders had to

move away from traditional, purely trade-unionist activity. As a result

councils of unions of Copenhagen and a number of other cities supported for

the first time the mass demonstrations of 1983 and 1984. Longest in passive

positions has been the leadership of a number of unions of skilled workers,

specifically the powerful Metalworkers Union, which on certain political

issues stands farthest from the policy of the unions' forces of the left. Back

in 1977 its leaders were actively seeking the development of military

production in the country ("for tackling the unemployment problem") (26).

Subsequently, in the ranks of the most moderate representatives of the DCTUA

and the Social Democratic Party, they endeavored to ignore the demands of such

subdivisions of this union, as the Copenhagen Electricians, Auto Mechanics and

Shipbuilders Local, which supported "the peace movement, which represents,"

one resolution observed, "a truly nationwide movement" (27).

41
The SID, which has presented a number of independent initiatives, has

participated very actively in the antiwar protest movement in the 1980's. At

an enlarged session of its leadership in 1981, which invited well-known

leaders of the international and Danish workers movement, specially devoted to

problems of disarmament the prominent social democrat H. Hansen, chairman of

the SID, formulated the idea which subsequently became the leitmotiv of

unions' participation in the peace struggle: "What is the point of success in

the social struggle if we lose the struggle for peace?" The session decreed

the allocation of 500,000 kroner for educational work on the theme of the

conference (28). This position echoed the sentiments of the rank and file of

the said union. For example, in September 1984 Copenhagen's longshoremen, who

are a part thereof, refused to unload ships which had arrived with military

equipment for participation in NATO maneuvers. Toward the end of 1984 the same

union adopted for the first time in the history of the Danish union movement a

Peace Program, which organically interweaves the themes of the struggle for

peace and international worker solidarity and also formulates the demand that

the DCTUA be more active in support of the antiwar struggle of the working

class (29).

At first the leaders of the DCTUA withheld support for an active struggle for

peace. However, in 1983, 1984 and 1986 they deemed it necessary to support the

international initiative concerning a 5-minute general antiwar strike, in

which practically all the country's working people, including civil servants,

participated.

In the fall of 1982 the Trade Union Peace Movement organization was founded by

Copenhagen's leftwing union activists for antiwar agitation among the working

people. Only after it had successfully conducted a number of international

trade union conferences and become a national organization, within whose

framework leftwing social democrats and communists are cooperating, was there

a resurgence of the activity of the Danish International Workers Movement

Center (AIS), which had been created in 1981 with the support of the leaders

of the Social Democratic Party and the DCTUA. Its goals: proceeding from the

principles of "democratic socialism," to propagandize the ideas of

antimilitarism and the international solidarity of the working people and also

render the workers of the developing countries material support. Based on both

the individual and group membership of a number of unions, this organization's

activity in the first few years was imperceptible. However, in 1984-1985, with

the increased involvement of the working people in the peace movement, the AIS

consented in a number of instances to cooperation, specifically with the Trade

Union Peace Movement, in the organization of demonstrations and conferences.

In May 1986 they conducted an international trade union seminar against the

militarization of space, in which an AUCCTU delegation participated. In the

fall of 1986 the AIS sent to the USSR for the first time a group of 120

activists for familiarization with antiwar work in Soviet labor outfits.

The resurgence of the antiwar activity of the unions of Denmark (which is

characteristic not only of activist workers but some of its leaders also) is

particularly noteworthy considering that even in the Scandinavian region

Danish union leaders do not, as a rule, occupy active leftwing positions.

Considering the organic unity of the union movement and the Social Democratic

Party (ideological, political and organizational), there is every reason to

42
speak of the direct influence of the unions' peace activity on the evolution

of the views of the Social Democratic Party leadership in the 1980's.

Since Denmark joined NATO in 1949 under the H. Hedtoft social democratic

government, breaking with neutrality status, the Social Democratic Party has

unreservedly recognized membership of this aggressive military-political bloc

as a principle of its foreign and defense policy. Taking into account the

demands of NATO and the Pentagon, the Social Democratic Party, both in

opposition and in office, has in conjunction with the major bourgeois parties

all this time adhered to the principles of "national unity" in the defense

sphere. At the same time it was under social democratic governments that basic

principles of the country's defense policy were formulated: a refusal to make

bases available in peace time to foreign armed forces and to deploy nuclear

weapons in the country.

There have been increased attempts at a distorted interpretation of the said

principles under the conditions of the current exacerbation of the

international situation. Kept secret from parliament, in 1976 the Danish

military command concluded an agreement with the United States providing for

the transfer of American "reinforcements" to Denmark "at the early stage of a

crisis situation". When, in 1979, the Danish CP proposed in parliament a draft

resolution against the deployment of foreign troops and nuclear weapons in

peace time, the Social Democratic Party rejected it (30). Following NATO

policy, the Jorgensen social democratic government ignored the peace forces'

protests against the increase in military spending and also the demands for

the creation of a nuclear-free zone in North Europe.

In response to this policy the Social Democrats Against Nuclear Weapons and

Militarism (SAM) intraparty group was founded in 1981. In different times its

appearance would have evoked sharp retaliatory measaures on the part of the

leadership (as was the case in 1966 at the time of the attempt to create a

discussion club in the Social Democratic Party on domestic policy issues).

However, following the crisis in the party at the start of the 1970's in

connection with the formulation of its policy on the question of Denmark's

membership of the EEC and also considering the mass scale of the antiwar

protest, the Social Democratic Party leadership deemed it expedient to

reconcile itself now to the appearance of an intraparty opposition (31).

Operating within the framework of the above-mentioned AIS as a group member,

the SAM group represents the most radical, antimilitarist current among Danish

social democrats.

The resignation of the Jorgensen social democratic government in the fall of

1982 was brought about directly by domestic policy problems. At the same time

the growing criticism of its military-political orientation on the part of the

mass peace movement threatened to undermine the Social Democratic Party's

reputation, which had been thoroughly battered in the years of economic

crisis. It is no accident that it is in the sphere of foreign policy that the

most pronounced changes have occurred in the policy of the Social Democratic

Party in the 1980's (32). Following the resignation of the Jorgensen

43
government and the adoption by Norwegian social democracy (the Norwegian Labor

Party) of a declaration condemning further financing of the plan for the

deployment of the American "Euromissiles," the Social Democratic Party

parliamentary faction adopted a similar decision.

On 17 December 1982 the Danish Folketing approved by the votes of the Social

Democratic Party, the Radical Liberal Party and the two left socialist parties

a resolution on a freezing of new contributions by Denmark for the financing

of the "Euromissiles" program. Altogether the said four opposition parties,

with a larger number of seats than the parties on which the P. Schlueter

bourgeois government is based, constituted an "antimissile majority," which

subsequently repeatedly made its presence felt.

In January 1983 the Norwegian Labor Party opposed the entire program of

"Euromissile" deployment altogether (the decision was approved by the

Scandilux consultative group, which is made up of social democrats of a number

of small West European countries). In the wake of this the Social Democratic

Party leadership issued its own wide-ranging platform in the sphere of

security policy. This document stipulated, specifically, that the Social

Democratic Party would struggle for a freeze on all existing nuclear arsenals

and call on the United States to respond positively to the USSR's peace

initiatives (33). In the subsequent period the Social Democratic Party

correlated its parliamentary initiatives with this platgform to a considerable

extent. In the course of 1983 the votes of the "antimissile majority" made it

incumbent upon the P. Schlueter pro-NATO government to seek deferment of the

deployment of the "Euromissiles," actively work against attempts to deploy

nuclear weapons in Denmark in connection with the creation of a nuclear-free

zone in North Europe and also dissociate itself at the NATO Council session

from the "Euromissile" deployment which had begun.

In 198U the Folketing once again supported the creation of a nuclear-free zone

in North Europe and obliged the government to support the implementation of

confidence-building measures between East and West, a ban on the deployment of

nuclear weapons in space, no first use of nuclear weapons and so forth (35).

All these resolutions, the Danish communists observed, echoed the principal

slogans of the peace movement and afforded the antiwar movement new

opportunities, putting pressure on the government (36). In accordance with the

said resolutions, the Schlueter government was obliged to actively support

realization of the Soviet proposal concerning no first use of nuclear weapons.

In 1985 the Folketing adopted by the votes of the "antimissile majority"

parties new resolutions against support for the SDI program and in 1986

condemned the United States' refusal to negotiate a ban on nuclear testing.

With the strengthening in the Social Democratic Party of the orientation

toward the preparation of a nuclear-free zone in North Europe treaty there has

come to be increasingly active talk in the party ranks of the need for a

revision of the 1976 "Reinforcements" Agreement since it provides for the

deployment in Denmark of offensive, nuclear weapons (37).

Of course, the Social Democratic Party leaders' growing recognition of their

duty to display responsibility for the fate of peace and make the maximum

contribution to the struggle for disarmament has brought about attacks on the

part of the leading bourgeois parties, who have seen this as damaging the

44
"national unity" concept. For imparting "persuasiveness" to their criticism

and insulting attacks on social democracy they have employed, inter alia, a

well-knownmisquotation attributed to Lenin ("useful idiots"), in which he

allegedly disparagingly spoke of pacifists cooperating with the communists

(38). The variety of pressure from the right is naturally exerting an

influence on the party's moderate forces, which are inclined at times to

impede its advancement of new initiatives. Although the differentiation of

forces in the Social Democratic Party on this question has not assumed the

form of open confrontation, there are, nonetheless, a minimum of two lines:

first, that of the supporters of a combination offidelity to NATO and

consideration of a number of the demands of Denmark's peace-loving public and

also of the positive changes in the foreign policy orientation of the

Socialist International and the position of the Scandilux international

consultative group and, second, of the preservation of unquestioning loyalty

in respect of the aims of the NATO leaders and "national unity" on militarypolitical issues (39). Thanks to the predominant influence of supporters of

the first line in the time that the Social Democratic Party has been in

opposition, a divide between it and the Schlueter bourgeois government has

been discerned in the military-political sphere.

The movement of Denmark's peace-loving public has succeeded in advancing in

the 1980's, having exerted considerable influence on the mass consciousness,

on the policy of the biggest party—the Social Democratic Party—and, finally,

directly on the country's foreign policy, which it has not been possible to

accomplish as efficiently in other West European countries. Important

potential of antimilitarist and social protest has been created in the course

of the mutual penetration of the worker and democratic movements and the

combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of action.

FOOTNOTES

1. PRAVDA, 6 March 1986.

2. See "'Det fredssyge Danmark...'. 100 ars dansk fredsarbejde," Copenhagen,

1982, pp 5-27.

3. "Present-Day Capitalism: Political Relations and Institutions of Power,"

Moscow, 1984, p 105.

4. The Cooperation Committee was set up in 1974. The basis thereof was the

Danish delegation at the World Congress of Peace-Loving Forces in Moscow

(1973), which included represented of various parties, labor unions and

pacifist groups.

5. See "Fredsarbejde—Hvor star vi idag?" Copenhagen, 1984, pp 31-33.

6. See INFORMATION, 1 June 1984.

7. See NY;POLITIK No 5, 1984, p 6.

8. LAND 0G FOLK, 20 May 1986.

45
9. See "Dansk fredsbevaegelses vej," Copenhagen, 1983, p 25.

10. PROBLEMY MIRA I SOTSIALIZMA No 11, 1981, p 21.

11. LAND 0G FOLK, 20 May 1986.

12. See "En dansk fredspolitik-et 14 punkts program," Copenhagen, 1982, pp

1-4.

13. See K. Jorgensen, "Atomvabnenes rolle 1 dansk politik," Odense, 1973, p

10.

14. The Danish Government deemed it necessary to take account of this

criticism and a year later it set up under its aegis a commission of

experts in the sphere of security and disarmament policy.

15. See "Fagbevaegelsen og indsatsen for freden. L0-tema," Copenhagen, 1983,

p 12.

16. See FREDSAVISEN No 10, 1984, pp 3, 131.

17. Among the aids for teachers and the antiwar literature for students we

would point to the following titles in Danish: V. Borgor, "How To Portray

and Play Peace," Odense, 1981; "Teaching Peace," Copenhagen, 1984; "Peace

Lessons—Psychology and Pedagogics in Antiwar Work," Copenhagen, 1984. See

also MEZHDUNARODNAYA ZHIZN No 2, 1984.

18. In 1980 some 58 percent of Danes polled considered nuclear war a real

threat, but in 1984, 25 percent, POLITIKEN, 19 May 1980; LAND 0G FOLK,

16 February 1984.

19. See "Ungdommens kamp og kommunisterne," Copenhagen, 1983, p 68.

20. The NNW supporters which are a part of this organization agreed to the

formulation of a joint platform, with Communist Youth Union members

included.

21. See RAKET TIDENDE No 5, 1983, p 8.

22. See LAND OG FOLK, 4 July 1981.

23. Some 55-60 percent of Danes polled by the Gallup Institute regularly

support Denmark's continued membership of NATO from these standpoints,

"Veje til fred," Copenhagen, 1985, p 225.

24. PROBLEMY MIRA I SOTSIALIZMA No 11, 1981, p 22.

25. See RK i SM No 6, 1984 and PROBLEMY MIRA I SOTSIALIZMA No 4, 1983.

26. See INFORMATION, 19 April 1977.

46
27. METAL 13 No 6, 1984, p 4.

28. See Fagbevaegelsen og indsatsen...," pp 8-9.

29. FAGBLADET No 15, 1984, pp 12-14.

30. See POLITIKEN, 17 April 1979.

31. For more detail on the centers of leftwing antimilitarist criticism in the

Social Democratic Party see A.-W. Karlsen, »Differenzierungen innerhalb

der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Daenemarks bei aussenpolitischen Fragen,"

"Nordeuropa," Studien-17, 1984, Sonderreihe, Greifswald, pp 51-67.

32. For more detail see L. Budtts, "Developing Dialogue, Strengthening Trust,"

PROBLEMY MIRA I SOTSIALIZMA No 1, 1986, pp 69-72.

33. See WEEKENDAVISEN BERLINGSKE AFTEN, 7 February 1983.

34. See "Danmarks sikkerhedspolitiske situation," Copenhagen, 1984, pp

141-143.

35. See ibid., pp 144-146.

36. See LAND OG FOLK, 4 May 1984.

37. See "Forsvar—det bedste forsvar," Copenhagen, 1986, pp 79-80;

SOCIALISTIK WEEKEND, 18 April 1986.

38. See AKTUELT, 8 May 1986.

39. See INFORMATION, ZZ April 1985.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/238

47
REASONS AGAINST SHIFTING MILITARY PRODUCTION TO CIVIL REBUTTED

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 136-145

[Article by V.V. Potapov: "Important Direction of the Class Struggle"]

[Text] In the postwar years the urgency of the conversion* of military

production has grown in line with the increase in the exceptionally pernicious

impact which the imperialist arms race is having on peace and the security of

the peoples and states' economic and social life. The struggle for conversion

is an important part of the general struggle for disarmament. Both the

theoretical modeling of the process of the partial or complete

demilitarization of the capitalist economy and the practical activity of

progressive political and social organizations of the West, primarily the

unions advocating a switching of government spending from military to

civilian purposes, represent in aggregate the elaboration of an economic

mechanism of disarmament and the specific plans and methods in accordance with

which and by means of which it will be accomplished.

The basis of this survey is material of a seminar held in 1984 in Brussels

organized by the European Trade Union Movement Institute which was devoted to

the subject "Disarmament and the Restructuring of Military Industry for

Peaceful Production. Survey of the Possibilities and Experience of West

European Countries". Representatives of trade unions of Austria, Belgium,

Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the FRG, Finland, France,

Sweden and Switzerland (24 persons) and also 11 representatives of

international trade union organizations of West Europe participated.

The current exacerbation of the general crisis of capitalism, the rapid growth

of the militarization of the economy of the imperialist states and the

strengthening of reactionary trends in the domestic and foreign policy of

their ruling circles impart special importance to such attempts to collate the

existing international experience of the conversion of military production and

determine the main directions of the scientific elaboration of this problem.

For this reason the conclusions drawn by the participants in the seminar

retain their significance today also.

48
The experience of postwar reconversion showed how, on what scale and in what

length of time it is possible to switch enterprises from military to peaceful

production. The experience is unique, the scale, majestic, and the time,

amazingly short.

The continuation and expansion of the scale of the arms race in peacetime, the

formation of military-industrial complexes and the conversion of

militarization into a principal feature of the postwar development of the

capitalist economy have led to conversion having grown into a problem of

considerable importance of state-monopoly regulation at the current stage.

Western literature of the most diverse persuasions quite often discusses the

problems confronting economic regions or individual firms in connection with

the closure or opening of enterprises of military industry and the

restructuring and liquidation of military bases and facilities.

An analysis of state-monopoly regulation of the war economy confirmed the

conclusions of the supporters of conversion concerning the practical

possibility thereof and made it possible to elaborate plans based on accurate

data of actual reality, highlight the key problems and ascertain the main

obstacles in the way of a restructuring of the defense industry.

A transition to a synthesis of developments emerged in the latter half of the

1970's, and there was an understanding of the fact that in the contemporary

international situation, under the conditions of the ramified giant system of

state-monopoly capitalism, conversion could not be a simple act of the

shifting of resources from one sector of the economy to another but

represented a complex process of restructuring of the capitalist economy.

However, it is not a question of its social transformation, as the apologists

of militarism frequently portray this alternative, but only of a nonmilitary

version of capitalism using its productive forces and financial resources for

creative purposes.

Study of the models and plans of conversion advanced by representatives of

various social groups (from members of governments through the progressive

scientific community and the unions) of the United States, Great Britain,

France, the FRG, Italy and other Western countries permitted the following

conclusions.

At the center of the bitter arguments between the devotees of the arms race

and the supporters of the conversion of military production are five

propositions of militarist apologetics.

1. The arms race contributes to economic prosperity and spares the capitalist

states crises of overproduction. For this reason it is profitable to the

entire population of these countries.

2. The arms race provides employment and high wages for the workers of

military industry and the civilian sectors connected therewith. Therefore it

is profitable to the working people of capitalist countries.

3. The conversion of military production would lead to grave consequences for

the economy since there would be a halt brought to many military plants,

49
the closure of military bases and the cancellation of military orders, which

perform an important role in the normal functioning of the capitalist economy.

4. The arms race stimulates S&T progress since it leads to a significant

expansion of R&D. For this reason it is profitable to research workers and the

intelligentsia.

5. Conversion would cause a considerable increase in unemployment inasmuch as

it would be difficult for the the people forced to leave the armed forces and

defense industry to acquire new qualifications and find work.

The supporters of conversion reject these propositions, adducing substantial

arguments in its support. Does the arms race really contribute to nations'

economic prosperity? In the event of a significant and rapid growth of

military production there could be a certain upturn in the overall level of

production in the country, but it is well known also that arms production is a

waste of productive forces inasmuch as arms perform no useful functions for

the national economy and that the material and labor expended thereon

disappear from the reproduction process to a considerable extent, which

ultimately weakens the economy. An upturn artificially brought about by means

of an arms race does not create a base for stable economic development. It is

of a temporary nature, as a rule, and ultimately leads merely to an

exacerbation of economic difficulties—a growth of taxes, inflation and

unemployment and reduced effective demand. Military production cannot be

expanded infinitely at the expense of peaceful production. Sooner or later

there has to be recession, after which, of course, a new wave of

militarization is possible.

Does the arms race really provide for the permanent employment of the working

people in military industry and the sectors connected with it? Is it true that

conversion will cause a growth of unemployment? Numerous studies prove

convincingly that the possibilities of the creation of jobs in military

industry are considerably fewer than in civilian industry. Consequently, the

employment of the military sector exists and is growing at the expense of an

increase in the proportion of the unemployed in the capitalist countries, and

the high wage rates in military industry are possible merely thanks to a

redistribution of income via the budget. In addition, the majority of jobs

created by the military sector cannot be filled by the working people among

whom unemployment is particularly high—workers of mining, metallurgical,

automobile, textile and other sectors of industry and people working in

services. A considerable proportion of the jobs in military industry falls to

highly skilled workers, among whom the level of unemployment is below the

average as it is. The negative impact of the development of military

production on employment is also manifested in the fact that, contrary to the

claims of the apologists for militarism, military industry does not guarantee

high and stable employment because it is characterized by strong fluctuations

of the production capacity load connected with the noncontinuity of the

granting of orders, the existence of intervals between the fulfillment of arms

production programs and the periodicity of the replacement of fixed capital

and the end product of military industry, which, in turn, leads to

considerable fluctuations in employment.

50
Of course, the conversion of military production would require the reequipment

of the shops which manufacture products lacking civilian analogies.

Considerable relocations of manpower and the retraining of part of the

personnel would be necessary also. But all the said phenomena are being

observed even now—at operating military plants. Some orders are being

replaced by others, workers are being dismissed from some military plants, at

others, on the contrary, the workforce is strengthening and so forth.

Conversion is a lengthy and gradual process which is planned in advance and

which does hot therefore damage the economy.

The question as to whether there will not be a decline as a result of

conversion in the overall demand for manpower in the country should also be

answered in the negative. After all, the resources now spent on arms will not

vanish but will be spent for peaceful purposes. For this reason the overall

demand for commodities and the manpower essential for their production not

only will not diminish but will in time grow inasmuch as better conditions for

the development of the economy will have been created. The state, which has

in the postwar years elaborated a considerable number of measures for

regulating employment, should play a most important part in the solution of

the employment problem in the conversion process.

Is it true that the arms race stimulates S&T progress? There is no doubt that

it is connected with the intensive development of increasingly efficient means

of destruction and annihilation. S&T progress in the civilian sectors

frequently means a byproduct thereof or obsolete samples and models. But

asserting that this is the best S&T policy is the same as proving that the

best method of operating an automobile is harnessing a horse to it. Military

research is expanding at the expense of the diversion of scientific forces and

material resources from the sphere of peaceful research. E. Teller, the

"spiritual father" of Reagan's strategic defense initiative, claims that 90

percent of the results of this project could be used for civilian purposes.

Practice has shown that approximately only 20 percent of military developments

subsequently prove useful for the civilian sphere (1).

Will conversion bring about a sharp deterioration in economic conditions in

the capitalist countries? This may be answered in brief: the reconversion

conducted after world wars I and II did not lead to economic collapse, despite

the fact that the reduction in the armed forces and the scale of the

reconversion were far-reaching. Problems would undoubtely arise. Of what kind

will be shown below.

The concluding report of the seminar (2) says: the opinion that military

spending has a positive economic effect is based solely on the fact that it is

a permanent major item of the budget, although in reality these resources

could be used with greater results in other spheres of activity more necessary

to society. From the viewpoint of economic development the most intelligent

thing would be a reduction in military spending and the channeling of the

resources thus released into alternative types of production.

Militarization and employment. A question which it is important to elucidate,

"The Report" says, is that of whether military spending is a guarantee of a

high level of employment. After all, in West Europe several million working

51
people depend directly or indirectly on military industry (Table 1).

Approximately 50 million persons in the world are employed in the military

sphere, of these, almost 50 percent directly in the armed forces,. 10 percent

or 5 million persons in military industry and 1 percent or 500,000 persons in

military R&D. In West European countries the numbers of research and

engineering-technical assistants and personnel employed in military, production

and military R&D constitute 2.8 million (3).

Table 1. Employment in the Military Sector of West European Countries in 1980

(Millions)

Armed forces Military Military Total (~)

servicemen and industry industry

civilian employees subcontractors

Great Britain 0.54

France 0.67

FRG 0.68

Italy 0.5

Other countries 0.8

0.4 0.35 1.3

0.3 0.2 1.2

0.2 0.1 1

0.1 0.1 0.7

0.12 0.08 1

Total 3.19 1.12 0.83 5.2

Source: "Abruestung und Umstelling der Ruestungsindustrien auf

Friedensproduktionen. Eine Uebersicht der Moeglichkeiten und Erfahrungen in

Westeuropa," Hrsg. Koepke G., Brussels, EGI, 1984, p 20.

In Great Britain from 400,000 to 600,000 persons are employed in military

industry, of whom 225,000 are working on government orders. A further 300,000

workers approximately at subcontractor enterprises depend on military

production. In order to have a clear idea of the diversion of human resources

from peaceful labor in this country 323,000 servicemen and 220,000 persons

working in the ramified Ministry of Defence system should be added (4).

In France approximately 300,000 persons are employed directly in military

industry, of whom almost 200,000 are employed at state-owned enterprises,

100,000 at private enterprises (5).

In the FRG 200,000-250,000 persons (this figure fluctuates from 150,000 to

400,000) work at military industry plants. Almost 700,000 persons serve in the

Bundeswehr (6).

The figures concerning the numbers of workers in Italy's military industry are

highly contradictory—from 80,000 to 300,000. In the opinion of the authors of

"The Report," the figure most corresponding to reality is 100,000 (7).

Precisely the same difficulties arise when calculating this indicator for

Spain. Here the numbers of those employed directly in military production

constitute approximately 30,000 (8).

In the "small" European countries the number of persons employed in military

industry amounts to 25,000 in the Netherlands, 18,000 in Belgium, 20,000 in

Switzerland and 32,000 in Sweden and approximately 10,000 in the other

countries of North Europe (9).

52
The central question is, as "The Report" points out: what will become of these

workers if military spending is reduced?

In no sector of industry and services do investments create as few jobs as in

the military sector. According to estimates, in 1981 $1 billion permitted the

creation in the United States of 29,402 jobs in strategic missile production.

The same amount spent on civilian needs would have permitted the creation of

30,899 jobs in! housing construction, 31,829 in railroad transport, 38,192 in

R&D in solar energy use, 38,650 in government establishments and 45,397 in

public transport (10). According to other calculations, the discrepancy in the

capacity for creating jobs between the military and civilian sectors of the

economy is considerably wider. They point out that an investment of $1 billion

in military industry permits the creation of 76,000 jobs, but the investment

of this same amount in the health service would create 104,000 (11). The

existence of this discrepancy is explained by the fact that under the

conditions of the growth of science- and technology-intensive new arms systems

there is an increase in the cost of a job. This can be shown in the example of

the plan for the production of the MX missile in the United States.

Expenditure on its realization over a period of 8 years is to amount to $30-70

billion, given the employment of 38,000 persons. Even if the inflation factor

is not taken into account, the price of a job constitutes $100,000-230,000.

And approximately 50 percent of the jobs, what is more, are earmarked for

highly skilled engineers and workers, and this means that for the categories

of working people among whom unemployment is particularly high—the youth

workers of average and low skills--the way to the military enterprises is

closed (12).

Similar calculations are adduced in respect of the FRG also. According to

estimates, DM1 billion of government spending on arms creates 18,000 jobs,

whereas in other sectors this same amount of expenditure would permit the

creation of 19,000 in municipal services, over 20,000 in the public health

service and over 21,000 in transport and in construction (13). In the opinion

of associates of the German Economic Research Institute, these figures are

understated, and according to their calculations, DM1 billion of outlays in

the civilian sphere permits the creation of 30 percent more jobs than in the

military sphere (14).

Although many workers believe that military production stabilizes the

situation on the labor market, this is not in fact so, the participants in the

worker meeting "Jobs Through Arms?" held in Darmstadt (FRG) in 1984 point out.

Attempts are being made to impress upon the working class the idea of the need

for a further buildup of arms production, concealing it with arguments about

"insured" jobs in the military sector. How much they are insured in reality is

indicated, for example, by the data pertaining to Great Britain: in the period

1963-1978 some 250,000 jobs were done away with in military industry.

According to forecasts, considering the paramilitary sectors (that is,

civilian sectors carrying out military orders), a further 200,000 jobs will

have been lost up to 1987 (16).

Militarization and S&T progress. The next important question studied in "The

Report" is the analysis of the consequences of the militarization of S&T

53
progress. Thus in the United States and Great Britain, it says, more than 50

percent of all government spending on R&D goes on military R&D. In France onethird of resources is spent to the same end, in the FRG 10 percent and in

Japan little more than 2 percent (17).

It has to be acknowledged, the authors of "The Report" write, that spending on

defense was an important factor of acceleration of the time taken to build and

assimilate computers, electronic and microelectronic equipment and so forth.

The original expenditure on R&D and the assimilation of new technology thanks

to the budget considerably reduced production costs in other sectors at the

time of the spread of this technology. Something el3e has to be acknowledged

also: that the direction and structure of current R&D do not correspond to the

long-term socioeconomic aims of society. Many of the directions of R&D in the

developed capitalist countries are determined primarily by military interests.

Thus, for example, the development of equipment for obtaining fast neutrons

corresponded only to the interests of arms production. The peaceful use of

nuclear fission required a different orientation of research.

Expenditure on R&D in the military sector directly influences economic growth,

prove of which is the high rate of development of the FRG and Japan—the two

countries with the least proportion of military R&D in the overall volume of

R&D. Of course, there is no direct dependence here, but the allocation of

large resources for civilian R&D nonetheless affords the best prospects for

economic growth. But the expenditure of large resources on military research

is nothing other than their diversion from the sphere of the civilian economy

and a slowing of the rate of technical and economic development (18).

Militarization of the economy and the state's social policy. It is becoming

increasingly clear, a participant in the meeting, H. Wulf, the West German

economist, writes, that military spending is growing at the expense of a

cutback in social programs. Analyzing the policy of the Bonn government in the

period 1979-1982, he shows that the unprecedented increase in military

spending was covered primarily by way of a reduction in expenditure in respect

of such budget items as "Transport," "Labor and Social Order" and "Research

and Development". Expenditure on the purchase of arms alone in 1982 had

increased 42 percent compared with 1979. In this same period expenditure per

the "Labor and Social Order" item increased only 16 percent, "Education and

Science" 7 percent and "Youth, the Family and Health Care" 3 percent (19).

Table 2 gives us an idea of the negative influence of the growth of military

spending on Great Britain's socioeconomic development.

Table 2. Expenditure on Military and Social Needs in Great Britain in 1982-

1983

Year's expenditure by item Pounds sterling, millions

Budget expenditure on defense 1982-1983 14,091

including:

maintenance of regular army personnel 5,331

military R&D 1,833

maintenance of flotilla of Polaris submarines 327

Air Force purchases 2,235

54
900

Programs*

Harrier fighter

Upgrading of combat tanks ^50

National Health Service 11,663

including:

child health care 3,703

Medical Rsearch Council 10?

subsidies to invalids 2°5

supplementary benefits 1s

Electrification of British Hail 825

Motorway construction program 350

Individual items of expenditure

180

35

10

Class-42 destroyer

"Hunt"-class trawler

Model-92 radar installation

Vertical takeoff Harrier fighter °

Lynx-class helicopter 2*'

London outer circular °'*9

District hospital 22'9

600 new apartments 9.9

Local telephone system 5.0

One school

Individual items of expenditure (pounds sterling)

One general, upkeep 3J'nnn

Milan antitank missile Lnnn

TOW antitank helicopter-fired missile 2,000

Pay of six nurses 30,000

"Artificial kidney" machine 5,500

Artificial hip joint 1'

200

* In September 1981 prices.

Source: "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 17.

As a whole, the possibility of a structural reorganization of the military

sector, the authors of "The Report" believe, is determined by five features

thereof:

the high regional concentration of production;

the profound specialization of the firms of the military sector;

the high qualifications of the manpower employed therein;

dependence on exports to certain countries;

degree of direct influence of the 3tate on production.

55
The participants in the seminar considered the most important of them the

degree of specialization of production and the level of state participation

(20).

In all countries, aside from Japan, military industry is to a considerable

extent concentrated in several areas. This leads to the great dependence of

the latter on the military enterprises located on their territory. The closure

of military bases, enterprises, S&T research centers and laboratories would

entail appreciable changes throughout the economic life of these areas.

The sectoral structure need expect no less serious consequences. As is known,

the degree of specialization of military firms is high. Thus in the aerospace

industry of the leading developed capitalist countries 40-80 percent of

capacity and manpower is employed in military production, and in electronics

industry this proportion constitutes 20-30 percent. Obviously such

specialization would cause many problems in the event of a restructuring, but

the state would help mitigate its negative effect to a considerable extent

inasmuch as the majority of military firms depends on its orders (21).

Manpower employed in the military sector is also characterized by a whole

number of specific features, primarily the great concentration of highly

skilled personnel, engineers and scientists. Inasmuch as all these skilled

workers are connected with equipment and technology which may be used for the

production of civilian products, this fact needs to be taken into

consideration at the time of the compilation of plans for conversion together

with measures pertaining to the retraining of the workers.

It also needs to be considered that in some countries persons employed in the

military sector have to a considerable extent guaranteed jobs at enterprises

of the state sector, as in France, for example. But in the majority of

countries the picture is different: the degree of dependence of jobs on a

small number of large-scale projects is high, which leads to a narrowing of

the product list of production and, consequently, to the diminished guaranteed

nature of the jobs.

The authors of "The Report" believe that although military production is

concentrated in a small number of sectors, there are many technical

opportunities for its conversion. Shipbuilding, for example, could instead of

warships produce a minimum of 21 classes of civilian product, but conversion

in shipbuilding is made difficult by the deterioration in demand for it.

However, many types of alternative product are incorporated in official

development programs (aid to developing countries, energy supply, development

of the infrastructure and so forth). This would facilitate realization of the

conversion measures, but simultaneously enhance the role of the state, which

would implement a policy of a redistribution of resources from the military to

the civilian sector and also compel private firms to develop the

diversification of production (22).

The greatest difficulties in realization of workers* initiatives, the authors

of "The Report" believe, would arise in the sphere of investment activity

inasmuch as under capitalist conditions financial resources are in the hands

of private owners. The Alternative Production work groups in the FRG organized

56
by the trade unions in centers where military production is located and

struggling for their conversion are running into this problem. All their

attempts to intervene in investment policy are automatically converted from

economic to political and run into stubborn resistance since they affect the

power of the employers and their right of decision-making. "The employers," K.

Mehrens, a participant in the meeting and employee of the economics department

under the main board of the FRG Metalworkers Union, writes, "consider

decision-making in the sphere of investments and the production product list

their prerogative and do not consider it necessary to bring in the workers

here" (23). A technical director of the British Lucas Aerospace firm was

perfectly candid on this point: "I personally am quite happy inasmuch as what

is decisive is not the technical feasibility of a project but the question of

who controls the firm" (24).

The realization of conversion projects must undoubtedly proceed thanks to a

change in the structure of production, Mehrens continues. However, two

questions go unanswered here: whence the resources and who will finance the

conversion. Workers under the threat of a loss of their jobs are in principle

reluctant to further burden themselves with financial risk, therefore it is

necessary to recall the employers' responsibility for jobs. It is the latter

who should finance a change in the production profile. Such financing is

impossible without the intervention of the state authorities. Investment aid,

financial guarantees or direct financing on the part of the government could

be an effective tool here. S. Melman, the well-known American specialist in

the field of military economics and conversion, develops Mehrens' idea.

Conversion, he believes, should be planned at two levels: nationally and

regionally in respect of capital investments; at enterprise level for the

elaboration of detailed plans of alternative products and methods of their

production. It is necessary on a state scale to effect merely overall

coordination of the conversion plans, the main burden of work, on the other

hand, resting with the authorities which will undertake the conversion

locally—a broad decentralized basis is needed.

In addition, Melman writes, it should be considered that the conversion of

military production is a lengthy business. A study of military industry

enterprises and the activity of retraining and training programs in thepublic

and private sectors and, finally, his own calculations led him to conclude

that the painless implementation of a wide-rangingn plan of the

restructuring of U.S. military production would take 10-15 years (25).

A separate chapter of "The Report" is devoted to the experience and policy of

the unions in the sphere of the diversification and conversion of military

production. Particular attention is paid to Great Britain and an analysis of

the experience of the Lucas Aerospace firm. Omitting the history of the

elaboration of the plan of the conversion of production, we would note that it

had been finally drawn up by the start of 1976. However, right up until 1979

nothing had been done in respect of this plan since the firm's board of

directors kept referring to the need for coordination of the plan with higher

management authorities.

Following the assumption of office by the Conservative Government, the

management of Lucas Aerospace abruptly changed its policy, switching from

57
tacking and procrastination to the offensive. In the period 1979-1982 members

of the union board, the secretary of the joint shop stewards committee and

leading militants were dismissed. Approximately 2,000 persons had been

dismissed by February 1982 just at the Burnley factory, where a plan for the

production of a heat pump instead of military products had been elaborated

(26).

Conversion plans had been drawn up for a number of enterprises of the Vickers

firm also. An analysis was conducted at the Barrow Shipyards of the prospects

of the production of civilian products which showed that the channeling into

peaceful purposes of resources currently spent on the building of warships

would permit the manufacture of 54 types of alternative products. At the

factory in Newcastle the union drew up a list of names of peaceful products

substituting for production of the Chieftain tank. They included automatic

presses, coal-mining equipment, tractors, steam generators and heat pumps

(27). However, these plans did not really come to anything.

There was a similar fate for the conversion plans advanced by working people

of the North London Royal Ordnance factory—a branch of the state-owned Royal

Ordnance Factories firm, which produces fuzes and explosives. When the

Ministry of Defence announced the need for a cut in production, the factory's

union activists requested assistance from the members of the Greater London

Council and obtained financial resources for studying the possibilities of

alternative production with the former structure and numbers of persons

employed. Its results showed realistic possibilities of the production of two

types of civilian commodities: consumer electronics and VCR's. Discussion of

this plan is not yet at an end (information of 1984—author's note), but the

dismissals have already begun (28).

The attempts at conversion at individual enterprise level led to the

development of a debate concerning determination of the measures necessary for

conversion at the national level. The opinion was expressed that conversion

should assume the form of plan-oriented government policy. The Labor Party and

the British TUC proposed the creation of additional institutional

establishments which would undertake the restructuring of military production,

specifically a national industrial commission for the restructuring of

production which would study the possibilities of a reduction in military

spending, draw up plans for conversion and adopt all the measures necessary

for their realization. It was also suggested that alternative production

councils be formed at all military industry enterprises whose task would be

the elaboration of specific conversion plans (29).

Conversion programs and plans continue to be developed, despite the stepped-up

antiworker policy of the Conservative government. V. Morgan's article, which

was published in the West German union journal DER GEWERKSCHAFTER, examines a

plan for the conversion of military production entitled "A Better Future for

Military Industry Workers" which was elaborated by the British Transport and

General Workers Union. It provides for the organization at the national and

regional levels and also at the enterprises of conversion councils or offices,

which would be made up of representatives of the interested parties. The

councils' tasks would be to coordinate and accelerate the restructuring of

production. Questions of conversion would be dealt with directly by civilian

58
production committees obligatorily set up at each enterprise, whose tasks

would include: an analysis of available labor and material resources;

alignment of the manpower's skills structure with the requirements of civilian

production; prevention of workers' disqualification at the time of the

restructuring of production; an analysis of the costs of production and

expenditure on the marketing of the products, compilation of programs of R&D,

financing, material-technical supply, acquisition of patents and licenses and

so forth (32).

The plan of the Transport and General Workers Union observes that the civilian

production committees should adopt measures for the timely notification via

all accessible information sources and media of the progress of the work,

including the employers' reluctance to cooperate with the committee. It is

interesting to observe that the plan incorporates a proposal concerning the

introduction of a new system, similar to that currently employed in Sweden, of

the conclusion of contracts for the production of military products. The

union's demand is such: the contracts should be concluded only with firms

which have detailed conversion plans showing how in the event of cancellation

of a military order production would be reorganized for the manufacture of

civilian products. The restructuring of production should be financed thanks

to the military expenditure thus saved and a conversion tax levied on all

enterprises manufacturing military products. Morgan emphasizes particularly

such an important element of the plan as the demand for the nationalization of

the enterprises whose owners refuse to undertake the restructuring of military

production (31).

In the FRG the plans for conversion are being developed the most actively by

the Metalworkers Union. Alternative Production work groups have been set up at

many enterprises of the metal-working sector. Such a group was created in 1980

at the Blohm and Voss company shipyards, where of the 6,000 workers,

approximately 50 percent are employed in military production, and the military

product constitutes more than 70 percent of the sales volume. An order for the

production of a Chile-class submarine served as the reason for its creation.

The union protested this order, pointing out that no new orders would be

received in the immediate future, there would be a reduction in the number of

jobs and the working people would lose work. The sole Way out of the situation

which union representatives saw was a conversion of military production, and

such a conversion, furthermore, as would not lead to the disqualification of

the workforce, a reduction in wages and cuts in the number of jobs.

The Alternative Production work group made a study of the firm's production

potential and the competitiveness of the products and concluded that a

restructuring of production for the manufacture of civilian products would not

be loss-making either for the employers or the workers/Particular account was

taken here of the fact that the list of the products produced by the firm had

been diversified to a considerable extent: shipbuilding products account for

only 20 percent of production, while steam generators, ship's engines,

equipment for power stations and automated welding equipment for the

automobile industry constitute 80 percent (32).

59
The Alternative Production work group paid particular attention to the

development of Hamburg's energy supply. The purpose thereof was a simultaneous

increase and reduction in the cost of the generation of electric and thermal

energy and reduced losses thereof. It was proposed for this purpose developing

in parallel both centralized and decentralized city power systems. Coal-fired

power stations supplemented by a system of mid-sized and small thermal

electric power plants are to be the basis thereof. Hamburg currently has only

a centralized heat distribution system serviced by a thermal electric power

plant situated at a great distance from many parts of the city. The work group

proposes a solution whose essence is the creation of district and neighborhood

small thermal electric power plants, which should subsequently be united in a

single city system.

The authors of the project also point to the fact that its realization would

permit the creation of new jobs, while costs would be compensated by the

better use of energy and its reduced costs for consumers. The Blohm and Voss

firm is in a position here to produce a large part of the requisite equipment:

turbines and boilers, heat exchangers and vibration and sound mufflers.

The project, B. Schutt, a member of the work group, recounts, was submitted to

the firm's management and was approved by the latter with the proviso that its

implementation could begin only in the event of an order for production of the

equipment being received from Hamburg's Power Supply Administration inasmuch

as a restructuring of production given a simultaneous increase in the

manufacture of unitized plants and a transition from the production of large

boilers to small ones would be required for this. They are continuing to

struggle for its realization (33).

"The Report" informs us that in the FRG Alternative Production work groups are

also operating actively at plants of the Krupp MAK firm (34).

Collating the working people's demands in the sphere of the diversification

and conversion of military production, C. Wellmann writes in the article "The

Arms Race and Jobs" that the FRG's unions consider as essential measures in

the solution of the problem of an increase in employment the following: at the

national level, redistribution of federal budget revenue in favor of the

civilian sector; at enterprise level, the immediate diversification of

military production for the purpose of the firms' reduced dependence on

military spending; at all levels, the timely implementation of measures in

respect of implementation of investments in civil production and the

conversion of the military capacity which has been created (35).

In France the experience accumulated by firms of the diversification and

restructuring of military production for the manufacture of civilian products

is very negligible. The trade unions have been relatively passive in this

respect and are in practice not drawing up conversion plans. In the state

sector of military production examples of conversion are lacking altogether.

This is partly explained by the state monopoly of arms production and the lack

of competition in this sphere. At the same time, however, instances of

diversification following the transfer of state-owned military enterprises to

private ownership are relatively frequent. The state undertakes here to

purchase the military products produced by the enterprise.

60
A factory producing tank engines in Limoges, which in 1960 was transferred by

the state to the Renault firm, may serve as an example. This led to a growth

of employment and an extension of the product list. Tank engines still

constitute the bulk of the products, however. The (Arm de Shatelyero) factory

was transferred to private ownership in 1968. The enterprise was divided

between several firms. The biggest of them was SFENA (production of space

navigation instruments), which began the manufacture at the factory of both

military and civilian products. The same fate befell in 1975 the Atelier de

(Vernon) firm, which conducts fundamental R&D in the sphere of space rocket

engines (36).

Two further typical examples may be cited. In 1970 the (Gerini) factory

(anchor chains and anchors for ships) was transferred to the Swedish Alfa

Laval firm, which produces equipment for food industry. The second example is

a factory producing explosives in (Ripo). Following a number of administrative

reorganizations in the Defense Ministry, it became a private firm. This

afforded it an opportunity to expand the production list. The firm gained

great freedom of action both in the sphere of production and marketing.

However, explosives acquired by the state still constitute the bulk of

production (37).

The opposite trend is observed in the private sector of France's military

production—the restructuring of civilian for military production. This is

explained by the stability and higher level of profits in the military

compared with the civilian sectors. Although the French unions regard

diversification and conversion as long-term goals, for this reason

accomplishing them at the present time, under the conditions of economic

depression and the crisis of employment, is, they believe, impossible. Under

the present conditions they are supporting the state's policy of an increase

in military spending and arms production (38).

In Italy, "The Report" says, the activity of the Metalworkers Union aimed at

the achievement of two goalsr the more extensive participation of the

country's aviation industry enterprises in the European consortium for

passenger aircraft production (the Airbus, for example) and the

diversification of military production—the manufacture of medical aviation

equipment, trucks and helicopters—merits attention.

At four major firms—Aer-Macchi, (Oto-Melar), Agusta and Selenia—the union

has put forward the demand for the organization together with military

production of the manufacture of civilian products. The start was inspiring:

the working people managed to compel the employers to sign contracts in

accordance with which they undertook to begin diversification. However, these

obligations remain on paper merely as yet. Only the Agusta firm has begun the

production of helicopter ambulances (39).

The impact of the international economic crisis and the Italian Government's

decision on a threefold growth in spending for military purposes in the period

1981-1983 have practically reduced to nothing the possibilities of a

conversion of military production. Despite this, the country's working class

is continuing the struggle against the policy of militarization, counterposing

61
to it peace initiatives—wide-ranging plans for a restructuring of military

industry for the production of civilian products. The material of the Italian

Metalworkers Union Fifth National Conference, which was held in 1981, noted

the need for the following measures.

Study of the prospects of employment in the sectors of civilian production in

which the use of workers released from military production is possible,

considering here the need to accord them jobs which are equivalent in terms of

qualifications data.

An increase in the interest of workers of civilian and military sectors of

industry in diversification; the purpose of such actions primarily should be

the creation of confidence in workers of the military sector that they are not

alone in their aspirations.

The elaboration of every conceivable measure pertaining to economic planning

and regulation—scientific and market studies which could facilitate

conversion and help avoid job losses.

A broadening of control on the part of the workers and unions of the activity

of the employers, which would create conditions conducive to conversion,

specifically thanks to access to information on all measures being planned and

implemented.

The elaboration of a code of activity of multinational firms and its timely

renewal. All this is necessary because the TNC either participate directly in

military production or take advantage of financial participation and the sale

of patents and are also suppliers of the arms producers (40).

The material of the survey permits several important conclusions concerning

the current state of affairs and recent trends in the sphere of the conversion

movement—the economic platform of international disarmament. First, there

have been practically no changes both in an extension of the theoretical

development of the problems of conversion and in practical realization of the

plans thereof. There are substantial objective factors explaining this

proposition: the new round of the cold war which began at the end of the

1970*s, the lack of progress in international disarmament and the structural

crisis, which rendered many undertakings futile. How could they be otherwise

in programs of an additional expansion of capacity of this sector or the other

thanks to a reduction in military production if the capacity of the existing

civilian sectors is sometimes used at considerably less than full load?

Obviously, without a military-political solution of this question progress in

the economic sphere is impossible also. However, we should note as an

important positive aspect the aspiration of working people of the West to

preserve their militancy and defend their positions in the conversion sphere.

Second, the slogan of struggle for the conversion of military production has

in recent years been transformed somewhat, having become the slogan of

struggle for diversification and conversion. Under the current economic

conditions, which are difficult for the working class and where some of its

national detachments are having to struggle bitterly for the gains which they

have won (and, as practice shows, in a whole number of cases to yield their

62
positions on cardinal issues), this change is objectively justified.

Diversification permits the conversion of purely military firm3 into mixedtype enterprises, thereby facilitating in the future the struggle for complete

conversion, and affords the working people material and experience for the

elaboration and implementation of plans for the production of alternative

products and so forth. However, as the publications examined in the survey,

primarily the material of "The Report," show, introduction to the slogan of

struggle for conversion of an intermediate point--the demand for

diversification—could entail a dangerous trend—the conversion of conversion

into a formality. In the current serious international and domestic economic

situation demanding the speediest conversion is pointless and dangerous. The

workers do not want additional complications now, when many sectors are

experiencing a structural crisis, when the "microelectronic revolution" is

pushing increasingly new masses of working people out of the gates of plants

and the doors of establishments and when in general the problem of

unemployment and the decline in the authority of the union movement is so

serious on the one hand and "clear prospects" of an increase in the number of

jobs thanks to expansion of military production can be seen on the other.

Under these conditions only diversification is realistic, and the working

people's tasks are to extend its framework as widely as possible.

It should not be forgotten that conversion was conceived not by the workers

but by capitalists and that until it was adopted by the working class and

became the economic platform of disarmament, conversion was only a form of

private, state and, finally, state-monopoly regulation of the economy. In a

whole number of countries the unions are beginning to identify firms'

adaptation to changes in the conditions of the market with the struggle of the

world's progressive forces for liquidation of the military sector of the

capitalist economy. Meanwhile the experience of private firms shows that

reverse conversion is being carried out no less often—the restructuring of

civilian for military production. In sum, the fluctuations to one side and the

other are not producing a zero effect, and the militarist priorities of the

ruling class of the developed capitalist countries are giiving rise to a

constant growth in the military sector of their economy. There is

diversification and diversification.

FOOTNOTES

»Two concepts are encountered in modern literature—"conversion" and

"reconversion". The term "conversion" is used in cases where it is a

question of a restructuring of enterprises or sectors of military industry

for their production of civilian products. The term "reconversion" is

usually employed to denote a process of conversion of enterprises and

sectors which had been adapted in wartime for arms production to the

production of peaceful products. The term "diversification" denotes an

increase in the proportion of civilian goods in the total product

manufactured by firms.

1. "The Struggle for the Relaxation of International Tension and

Socioeconomic Problems of Capitalism," Moscow, 1984, p 26.

2. Henceforward "The Report".

63
3. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien auf

Friedensproduktionen. Eine üebersioht der Moeglichkeiten und

Erfahrungen in Westeuropa" (Hrsg. Koepke G, Brussels: EGI, 1.984, p 19).

4. Ibid., p 21; V.W. Morgan, "Ein ueberlegter Plan," DER GEWERKSCHAFTER No 1,

1984, p 32.

5. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 21.

6. Ibidem; K. Mehrens, "Umstellung von Ruestungsproduktion auf zivil

Bedarsgueter. Betriebliche und ueberbetriebliohe, Strategien fuer die

Umstellung" in "Arbeitsplaetze durch Ruestung?" (Hrsg. DGB-Landesbezirk

Hessen, Abteilung Vorsitzender, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, p 23).

7. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 22.

8. Ibidem.

9. Ibidem.

10. "Die Rolle der Ruestung in der Wirtschaft des heutigen Kapitalismus,"

IPW—Forschungshefte (Intst. fuer intern. Politik und Wirtschaft, Bonn,

1984, No 4, p 112).

11. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 24.

12. Ibidem.

13. M. Brzoska, "Ruestung und Arbeitsplaetze" in "Arbeitsplaetze durch

Ruestung?" p 10.

14. K. Mehrens, Op. cit., p 23.

15. Henceforward "Worker meeting".

16. V.W. Morgan, Op. cit., p 32.

17. "Abruestung und Umstellung der "Ruestungsindustrien...," p 26.

18. Ibid., pp 29-30.

19. H. Wulf, "Ruestungsgaben und Sozialabbau" in "Arbeitsplaetze durch

Ruestung?" p 16.

20. Ibid., p 58.

21. Ibid., p 59.

22. Ibid., p 62.

23. K. Mehrens, "Alternative Produktion—warum und wie?" DER

64
GEWERKSCHAFTER No 1, 1984, p 16.

24. E. Hildebrandt, H. Spitzley, "Unsichten auf nutzliche Produkte," DIE

MITBESTIMMUNG No 12, 1982, p 435.

25. S. Melman, »Problems of Conversion to Civilian Economy. An Agenda of

Topics, Questions and Hypotheses," BULLETIN OF PEACE PROPOSALS No 12,

1985, Oslo, pp 12-15.

26. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 72.

27. Ibid., p 76.

28. Ibid., pp 76-77.

29. Ibid., p 77.

30. V.W. Morgan, Op. cit., p 33.

31. Ibidem.

32. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien," p 78; B. Schutt,

"Alternative Fertigung: Die Suche nach sicheren Arbeitsplaetzen und

sinnvoller Arbeit," DIE MITBESTIMMUNG No 12, 1982, p 443.

33. Ibid., pp 444-445.

34. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," p 80.

35. C. Wellmann, "Ruestung und Arbeitsplaetze," DIE MITBESTIMMUNG No 12, 1982,

pp 441-442.

36. "Abruestung und Umstellung der Ruestungsindustrien...," pp 81-82.

37. Ibid., p 83.

38. Ibidem.

39. Ibid., pp 84-85. ;

40. Ibid., pp 85-86.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 18077246

65
FORMATION OF NICARAGUAN MASS, VANGUARD ORGANIZATIONS DETAILED

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 1'46-153

[Article by A.V. Kuzmishchev: "Formation of the Sandinist Front in Nicaragua"]

[Text] The Nicaraguan revolution is attracting attention today as part of the

stream of the world revolutionary process of the 1970's which extensively

encompassed the most diverse areas and countries of the developing world—

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde,

Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iran, Chile, Grenada and El Salvador. Interpretation of

the Nicaraguan experience demands that the researcher turn primarily to

Lenin's ideas on the theory and practice of revolutionary struggle (1).

Specifically, the ideological impact of the Cuban revolution and its influence

on the victory of Sandinism demands special attention in this respect (2).

On the frontier of the 1980's the situation in Central America was

characterized by two features common to all its five states (3): the former

system of the domination of imperialism and the bourgeois-landowner oligarchy

had entered a phase of "crisis of the upper strata"; social contradictions 'had

intensified, which had brought about a marked stimulation of the protest of

the "masses" against imperialism and the local military-tyrannical regimes.

The signs of a revolutionary situation In each country had taken shape in

their own ways and were of varying depth. They were manifested in fullest form

in Nicaragua (4).

Under the conditions of the obvious maturation of national crisis the fate of

the revolution in this country depended primarily on the maturity of the

subjective factor, that is, the readiness of the masses for an open, including

armed, encounter with the enemy for power and also the capacity of the

political vanguard of the forces of the left to head them and lead them to

victory. As a result a new vanguard organization—a military-political front—

was formed in Nicaragua (as in El Salvador and, to a certain extent, in

Guatemala and Honduras). It arose not artificially and not in a void but grew

naturally from the gradual accumulation of practical experience of the

revolutionary actions of the masses not only in Nicaragua but in Latin America

as a whole, experience which was first embodied on Cuba. The armed victory of

the people and the creation on Cuba of a government expressing the interests

of the working people and the exploited masses and the unity of action of the

66
revolutionary democrats and communists were a striking and inspiring example

for all who thirsted for immediate revolutionary action. The prerequisites had

emerged at that time for an exaggeration of the role of the subjective factor

in revolution, which engendered a mood of, if you will, surplus optimism. Many

sincere, but politically inexperienced young revolutionary patriots,

endeavoring to repeat the path of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara at all costs,

had persuaded themselves that it all now depended on the resolve and heroism

of the participants in "direct" revolutionary action themselves. Vulgarizing

the views of Che Guevara, they began to put forward the idea that popular

forces are always capable of victory over a regular army inasmuch as the

military-political center (focus), leading the revolutionary struggle only in

rural localities, itself creates all the necessary conditions for revolution.

By the start of the 1960's this current of radical-left thought had acquired

the name of "focalism" (5). ^ ^

Such views found the fullest expression in W"1 works of the French radicalleft journalist Regis Debray, whose book "Revolution in Revolution? Armed

Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin America," which was written following

several visits to Cuba and trips to various Latin American countries, became a

kind of "focalist" catechism (6). The calls for a dissolution of the communist

parties contained in this book did particularly great damage to the unity of

the national liberation movement on the continent. It should, however, be

acknowledged that some of the propositions advanced by R. Debray reflected

actual particularities of the development of the revolutionary process in

Latin America. Specifically, the importance and necessity even of the creation

under certain conditions of a particular military-political organizatjLony

vanguard force of the revolution, was noted. ^^———~'

When the book "Revolution in Revolution?" appeared, in January 1967, the

guerrilla movements which had been formed by the "focalists" in Latin America,

having experienced a short-lived upsurge in 1963-1964, were already on the

decline and shortly after ceased to exist. The tragedy of Che Guevara's

Bolivian expedition (1966-1967) and the death of Guevara himself opened

people's eyes to the real danger which arises from an exaggeration of the

subjective factor of revolutionary action. An important step en route to

surmounting this obstacle which had arisen in the way of the revolutionary

movement was taken at the Havana meeting of communist parties of Latin America

(1975), where the dialectical connection between the unity of the

revolutionary forces and a broader alliance of all democratic forces was

emphasized (7). The leadership of the Cuban Communist Party made a significant

contribution to the success of this meeting.

The topicality of the subject which we have broached for today's revolutionary

action was confirmed once again in the course of the theoretical scientific

conferences held at the start of the 1980's in Havana, in which

representatives of communist and workers parties and also revolutionarydemocratic organizations and movements of Latin America participated. Granted

all the diversity of the opinions, contentious at times, expressed at these

conferences, their participants noted practically unanimously the urgent need

for the elaboration of questions of the unity of the forces of the left and

the regularities of the genesis of a revolutionary vanguard, in the form of a

military-political front included. And, furthermore, the development of the

67
people's struggle in Nicaragua and the example of the FSLN—not as the sole

possible model but as actual experience of the victory of revolutionaries—

left a profound imprint on the entire course of the debate at these

conferences (8).

Rodney Arismendi, the prominent Marxist scholar and revolutionaryinternationalist, called the Sandinist people's revolution in Nicaragua the

hope of Latin America and the start of a new dawn (9). Events in this small

Central American country have acquired the significance of a symbol in which

is concentrated the will of the peoples of the continent in the struggle for

their rights against the local oligarchy and American imperialism. The

vanguard of the working masses--the FSLN--was forged and tempered in the

course of the nationwide struggle against the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. The

front was named in honor of Nicaragua's popular hero, Gen Augusto Cesar

Sandino (1895-1934), who in the period 1926-1934 had headed the struggle

against the American interventionists and their accomplices. Thus the FSLN,

which had been created in the period of revolutionary upsurge in Latin America

on the eve and at the outset of the 1960's, also emerged as the spokesman for

the national anti-Somoza tradition of liberation anti-imperialist struggle.

The appearance of the front objectively reflected progressive trends in the

development of revolutionary processes in Latin American countries,

particularly the Cuban experience. However, the Sandinistas emphasize the

distinctiveness of the historical roots and development paths of the

Nicaraguan revolution. The FSLN leadership distinguishes the following stages

of popular struggle, in the course of which the Somoza dictatorship was done

away with.

1. The stage of historical cohesion of the revolutionary movement (1926-1934).

The time of Sandino's heroic struggle.

2. The stage of revolutionary recession (1934-1956). The establishment of the

dictatorship of the Somoza family, when a whole generation of revolutionary

Sandinist fighters was physically exterminated, which disrupted continuity in

the liberation movement.

3. The stage of revolutionary upsurge (since 1956). Its start was marked by

the heroic action of the young patriot Rigoberto Lopez Perez, who, paying for

this with his life, killed the dictator Anastasio Somoza. At this stage the

new generations of Sandinistas joined in the struggle. They formed the FSLN,

which became the vanguard of the revolution and led the people's masses to

victory on 19 July 1979. It would be no exaggeration to say that the history

of the creation of the FSLN as the vanguard of the revolution which rallied

and led to ultimate victory a quite broad association of political groups, in

which the union of forces of the left played the leading part, is in fact the

history of the revolutionary upsurge.

The Sandinistas divide this third stage into several phases.

Following the initial period (1956-1960), of the preparation and strengthening

of the bases of the unity of the revolutionary vanguard, came the period of

the creation (as of 1961), development and strengthening of the ranks of the

FSLN.

68
The growth of the front's influence in the country is subdivided thus:

1961-1967- Predominance of exclusively guerrilla methods of struggle

(domination of "focalist" ideas and methods);

1968-1970. Ideological-political restructuring of the FSLN;

1971-1975. Open confrontation with the dictatorship;

1976-I977- Decline in the revolutionary struggle. Disagreements in the ranks

of the FSLN;

1978-19 July 1979. New revolutionary upsurge. Cohesion of the ranks of the

FSLN. People's victory (10).

Strictly speaking, the events of 1976-1979 may be put into two particular

periods of the stage of revolutionary upsurge (even in a separate stage of

civil war and its victorious conclusion, possibly). However, such a

subdivision has yet to be encountered in the available literature, both Soviet

and foreign (11).

The adduced periodization of the stage of revolutionary upsurge provides, if

the content of each of its periods is revealed in more detail, an integral

picture of the emergence of the vanguard of the revolution and the alliance of

forces of the left in Nicaragua. Furthermore, the "focal" disease cost this

country's revolutionaries dear. Twice—in 1963-1964 and 1966-1967—the

Nicaraguan revolutionaries attempted to implement "focalist" principles. And

both times they suffered cruel defeats.

The struggle against the guerrilla campaign divorced from the people is

closely linked with the name of Carlos Fonseca, who was one of the first to

"comprehend the experience and example of Sandino, combine them with

revolutionary theory and scientific doctrine and signpost to the entire

Nicaraguan people the way to victory" (12). On the basis of an analysis of

Nicaraguan reality C. Fonseca concluded that under the conditions of the

existence of a deeply rooted repressive dictatorship supported by the United

States the possibilities of the peaceful path of revolution in the country had

been exhausted by the start of the 1960's even. It was further concluded from

this that the revolutionary process in Nicaragua could develop only along a

path of prolonged armed struggle (13). Under these conditions there was an

increasingly obvious need for the creation of a militant vanguard

organization—a revolutionary military-political front (14) which, while

performing certain functions entrusted to a proletarian party (formulation of

the organization's policy line and its strategy and tactics and politicalpropaganda work in the masses), would also engage in purely military activity.

C. Fonseca wrote:"Within the framework of our strategy the people's masses

are without arms doomed to defeat, just as arms without the masses are doomed

to defeat. The way to victory lies via a parallel strengthening of the

struggle of the masses and armed struggle" (15).

69
The influence of the experience of the Cuban revolution, which was mentioned

above, markedly accelerated the process which had begun in Nicaragua of the

cohesion of the most resolute fighters against the dictatorship. Thus in 1959

the opponents of the Somoza regime formed the Nicaraguan Democratic Youth

(NDY) organization. Two further anti-Somoza organizations calling for armed

struggle—the Revolutionary Sandinist Front and the Nicaraguan Patriotic

Youth--appeared in 1960. A year later the most resolute members of the NDY

created (in fact recreated inasmuch as it had been conceived back in 1957) the

"New Nicaragua" movement, which also advocated armed struggle against Somoza.

The representatives of these organizations and certain others closely

connected with them (Home Resistance Front—Nicaraguan Revolutionary Youth and

others) and also some of the activists of the Nicaraguan Socialist Party

(NSP--the party of Nicaragua's communists)--mainly from its youth

organization—met in July 1961 in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. The

participants in this meeting proclaimed the formation of the National

Liberation Front. In 1963 the front acquired the honorary title "Sandinist"

(16).

The diversity of organizations which constituted the basis of the FSLN was

explained by the fact that they represented the most diverse strata of

Nicaraguan society: workers and peasants, craftsmen, revolutionary

intellectuals and the students and the petty and certain other groups of the

bourgeoisie.

The extent of the Nicaraguan proletariat's participation in the revolution was

for a long time explained by its position as a class "which had appeared in a

backward capitalist country and which had been a casualty of the country's

social, political and cultural backwardness and also the most diverse forms of

reformism" (17).

The weakness of the Nicaraguan proletariat as a class predetermined, in

particular, the low level of development of its political organization. This

can be seen sufficiently clearly in the example of the activity of the oldest

and for many years the sole political organization of the Nicaraguan workers—

the NSP. Created in 1944, at the time of the general democratic upsurge

connected with the Soviet Army's successes in the war against the fascist

aggressors, the NSP subsequently fell under the influence of "Browderism".

This predetermined in the 1940's-1950's the policy of the conclusion of

agreements (so-called pactism) with the bourgeois opposition to Somozism,

which, in turn, consented to constant compromise with the dictatorship. The

communists found themselves pulled into the maneuvers of bourgeois

politicians. On the threshold of the 1960's the NSP was able to overcome the

"pactist" mood. But there was no unity within the party on the ways and forms

of struggle against the Somoza regime. Thus the majority of activists of its

youth organization aspired to vigorous revolutionary action—they opted for

the path of armed struggle. It was for this reason that in 1960-1961 a large

part of NSP members participated in the formation of the FSLN.

The NSP leadership viewed the Sandinist movement with distrust and accused it

of encouraging factionalism in the party and leftist deviation. The "focalist"

mood which predominated in the FSLN at that time confirmed that this criticism

was not without foundation. However, the NSP failed to see the ideological70
political growth of the front as of the end of the 1960's. Its role in the

anti-Somoza movement was belittled. The party believed that the defeats of the

FSLN in 1963-1964 and 1966-1967 meant both the final failure of "focalism" in

general and the Sandinistas in particular. In their statements the communists

observed that in the Nicaragua of the 1960's there was no political force

capable of successfully confronting the regime (18). The negative attitude of

the NSP leadership toward the Sandinistas intensified sharply at the start of

the 1970's, when Trotskiyites attempted to split the party, calling for an

immediate armed uprising and the establishment of a dictatorship of the

proletariat. Many people uncritically identified this reckless policy with the

FSLN's line of prolonged armed struggle against despotism (19). The workers

themselves, however, and other groups of working people instinctively

gravitated toward Sandinism, seeing it as a real revolutionary force. The

workers actively supported the unions which the Sandinistas had created and

which were independent of the government and joined the FSLN's armed

detachments.

The Sandinist movement's strengthened ties to the proletariat influenced the

change in the NSP's attitude toward the front. It was observed at the party

Central Committee Fifth Plenum (December 1975) that the FSLN was the most

important element determining the character of the revolution in the country.

However, later the NSP confirmed a policy not of armed struggle against the

dictatorship in alliance with the FSLN but of an intensification of the

communists' activity in respect of a strengthening of the party's relations

with the bourgeois —legal and semi-legal—opposition to Somocism. At the

culminating stage of the revolution (the fall of 1978-19 June 1979) the

communists concluded with the FSLN an agreement on joint action, recognized

the Sandinistas as the vanguard of the revolution and merged their groups of

fighters—"People's Armed Forces"—with the front's regular units (20). Some

party activists were still unable to completely rid themselves of past

prejudices, the other group of communists, on the other hand, resolutely

supported the FSLN (21). It was emphasized at the First NSP National

Conference (August 1979) that the tyranny had been conquered by "Sandinist

rifles".

The experience of the class battles which developed in Nicaragua testifies

that the vanguard forces of the revolution undergo a kind of adaptation

process under the conditions of armed confrontation with reaction. A militarypolitical organization (more often than not called a military-political front)

of the vanguard is created. The foundations of its influence in the masses

assuming the form of the broad unification (alliance) of various political and

social—trade union, women's, youth and such—organizations are laid. And,

furthermore, even certain strata of the national bourgeoisie pursuing their

selfish egotistical goals may participate therein. The basis for such

unification is a program of broad democratic—sometimes antifascist—and antiimperialist demands. The vanguard and its mass base constitute the camp of the

forces of revolution. The complex class "amalgam" of revolutionary forces

predetermines the need for a solicitous attitude toward the unity which has

been achieved. The presence in the camp of revolution, however, of certain

detachments representing the exploiter classes even demands vigilance in

respect of the attempts of these forces to establish their hegemony in the

people's movement.

71
How, specifically, did these processes appear in the context of the Nicaraguan

people's struggle against Somocism?

First, such a form of organization of the vanguard as the military-political

front (MPF) crystallized out in the course of the buildup of the revolutionary

process under the conditions of armed struggle. The MPF combines the

attributes of a political party (or coalition of political parties) with the

functions of a military organization (the armed forces). And the military

functions of the front, considering the conditions of the armed struggle in

which it appears, and the ultimate goal—the military victory of the

revolution—play the predominant part in its activity, what is more.

The structure of the MPF depends on actual national singularities. The MPF is

largely the result of collective creativity. Its relations with other

political and social forces are of a complex nature, that is, some of them the

MPF absorbs or creates from scratch, while with others it establishes allied

relations. The role of the communist party here depends on the degree of its

political maturity and the readiness of its leadership and personnel for

decisive actions. Also possible is a situation where the communists are not in

a position—as a political organization—to assume the responsible role of

vanguard and be part of the forward detachment of the revolution. This was the

case with the NSP and its leadership almost up to the start of the national

crisis of 1978.

Second, accomplishment of the urgent task of the unification of all the most

consistent fighters for the public cause is undoubtedly a most important step

in the development of the revolution. F. Castro wrote that "...revolution is

the art of unification of forces" (22). However, a revolution needs the

support, buttress or, at least, the benevolent neutrality of the broad masses.

Without this condition, the assault of the vanguard of the people's forces on

power is in practice doomed to fail. "Winning with the vanguard alone is

impossible," V.l. Lenin wrote (23).

Winning the masses over to one's side and uniting them is the priority task of

revolutionaries. In countries which are economically backward and which have a

fragile social structure 3uch a task can only be tackled on the basis of a

program minimum acceptable to the masses. Simple and intelligible in form, it

must correspond to the needs and cherished aspirations of the majority of the

population. Such programs serve as the basis for the creation of broad

political alliances. Such alliances are not in themselves identical with

revolutionary vanguards but form their mass base.

The foundation for the unity of the forces struggling in Nicaragua against

Somocism was laid by the document "Historical Program of the FSLN," which had

been compiled by C. Fonseca. This program incorporated demands for the

creation of a revolutionary government, genuine agrarian reform in the

interests of the oppressed peasantry and also a cultural revolution, the

creation of labor legislation protecting the working people and social

security, the honest work of the civil service authorities, development of the

backward parts of the country, equal rights for women, respect for the

citizens' religious feelings, a foreign policy independent of the United

72
States, struggle for the unity of the peoples of Central America, support for

the struggle against imperialism throughout the world, replacement of the

Somocist National Guard by a new people's army and respect for the memory of

fallen popular heroes (24). The content of the "Historical Program of the

FSLN" corresponded to the tasks of democratic and antidictatorial

transformations, contributed to the active enlistment of the broad masses in

the struggle and testified to the conscious ideological and political activity

of the Sandinist vanguard of the revolution.

The dynamism of the FSLN was also manifested in the front's capacity for

concluding tactical alliances, with circles of the right of the haute

bourgeoisie included, whose positions in the country's economy were constantly

being attacked by the Somocist dictatorial clan. The representatives of these

Circles formed in 1974 the Democratic Opposition Alliance (DOA). It also

incorporated organizations which supported the Sandinistas and other political

forces of the left (specifically, the NSP). As the bourgeois leaders intended,

the DOA was designed not only to fight against the dictatorship. The DOA was

also confronted with the task of disputing with the FSLN the initiative in the

competition for possession of the masses. Politicians of the right attempted

to implement these plans within the framework of the Broad Opposition Front

(BOF), which united in 1978 practically opponents of the dictatorship,

including the Sandinistas and the DOA. C. Fonseca had warned of such a danger

when he wrote that the bourgeoisie would make every effort to avail itself of

the successes of the people's struggle and that it was essential to

counterpose to these maneuvers the unity of the masses and their political

organizations (25)«

Third, the Sandinistas firmly and consistently implemented this guideline of

their leader, who had fallen in battle with the troops of the regime (November

1976). They formed the "United People" movement, which was shortly after

converted into the National Patriotic Front (NPF), and broke with the BOF. The

NPF became a genuine mass bloc of all revolutionary forces. A particular

feature of the activity of the NPF was that all the organizations which formed

it voluntarily recognized the leading role of the FSLN.

Thus the FSLN represented the interests of various social groups and classes—

the bulk of the exploited strata of the population. The element uniting them

at the stage of the struggle for power was the community of strategic goal—an

end to Somocist oppression. However, the specifics of the class approach of

the proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and so forth to the

accomplishment of the same tasks of the revolutionary struggle could not have

failed to have left their imprint on the actions of the revolutionaries

"delegated" by these classes to the vanguard forces of the popular movement.

This is the objective factor explaining the possibility of the appearance of

contradictions within the vanguard. There are also, of course, subjective

factors also creating conditions for the emergence of such contradictions. In

sum both these types of contradictions may engender renegades of the exSandinista Eden Pastora type. This also has to be taken into consideration

because the history of the contemporary revolutionary movement unfortunately

has many examples of genuinely left forces exhausting themselves with internal

struggle even in the face of an advancing enemy. As F. Castro wrote, "...the

problem of sectarianism has existed, exists now and will continue to exist in

73
all revolutionary processes..." but "...as long as battle is being waged

against you from outside... whatever your differences in views, the enemies

must not perceive the split in your ranks" (26).

The Sandinistas had also to a certain extent to survive a crisis of internal

development and a struggle of different currents. Thus the death of C. Fonseca

was a big blow for the FSLN and for the entire revolutionary movement in

Nicaragua. A number of prominent leaders of the front died in roughly the same

period—at the end of 1976. Simultaneously the National Guard surrounded and

destroyed several guerrilla bases in the mountainous areas of the north of the

country. In practice the Sandinist groups in the cities were isolated from

FSLN detachments in rural localities and different parts of Nicaragua. All

this contributed to the development of centrifugal trends in the ranks of the

front. As a result three currents took shape in the FSLN. Each current put

forward its own plan against the dictatorship. The first of them, which came

to be called "Prolonged People's War," represented the section of the

Sandinistas which insisted on the need for a strengthening of the guerrilla

bases in rural localities. These bases were to have prepared the foundation

for the development of civil war against Somocism nationally. Another

current—"Proletarian Line"—advanced as the main task of the Sandinist

movement propaganda work for the purpose of winning over to the side of the

cause of the revolution as many broad strata of the working masses as

possible. One further current came to be called the "Third Strategy" (another

name was "Insurgent Group"). The activists of this current put the main

emphasis on the preparation of a nationwide uprising buttressed by an alliance

of all anti-Somoza forces.

In the opinion of the Sandinistas, the appearance in the FSLN of three

currents was not the result of ideological contradictions. The disagreements

within the front concerned mainly questions of tactics. And, furthermore, the

representatives of the Sandinist currents did not create independent

organizations and individual executive bodies. Moreover, these currents

complemented one another's actions, as it were. For example, activists of

"Proletarian Line" and "Prolonged People's War" worked at plants and factories

and in the poor neighborhoods and created cells of the Revolutionary Student

Front. In turn, Sandinistas from the "Insurgent Group" organized guerrilla

detachments and bases. In the winter of 1978-1979, at the time of the

exacerbation of the revolutionary situation which had been ripening in the

country since 1977, all three FSLN currents in fact united once again for an

offensive against the common enemy, and in March 1979 this unification was

structured organizationally (27).

"It is not enough to call oneself a 'vanguard' and forward detachment," V.l.

Lenin wrote, "it is also necessary to act such that all remaining detachments

see and are forced to recognize that we are in the lead" (28). Studying the

stages of the development of the revolutionary movement and the singularities

of the formation of its vanguard, Clodomiro Almeyda, a most authoritative

leader of the Chilean antifascists, formulated thus this Leninist proposition

with respect to Latin American reality: "The emergence of a genuine vanguard

becomes possible as a result of historical development, in struggle; the

vanguard is forged in battle and is created on the basis of successful

practice, in the course of the growth of revolutionary processes" (29).

74
Under the conditions of the constant revolutionary action characteristic of

Central America of recent decades the role of vanguard cannot be appropriated

by the proletarian parties a priori. The less so in that, not being mass (with

the exception of Costa Rica), they essentially cannot lay claim to the role of

leading political force. In other words, a certain contradiction between the

spontaneous aspiration of the masses to active forms of struggle and the

relative weakness of the communist parties has taken shape. As a result the

role of vanguard may at a certain stage also be performed by revolutionary

military-political organizations speaking on behalf, as it were, of MarxistLeninist parties and acting on their behalf (30).

But when it is a question of experience of the class struggle in the Central

American subregion, it cannot be overlooked that the communists always have

been and are now unfailing and active participants in revolutionary action and

the formation of revolutionary vanguards in their countries. Under these

conditions the vanguard emerges as a result of the merger of diverse political

forces expressing the interests of the social strata of the exploited masses—

workers of manufactory and handicrafts industry and the young industrial

proletariat which has just sprung up, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie

(tradesmen, solitary craftsmen and so forth). The Sandinist people's

revolution created such a blend of revolutionary vanguard—.the FSLN. This also

explains the complex structure of the NPF. The FSLN within the NPF played the

part of leader of the entire popular revolutionary bloc.

As a whole, however, the distinctiveness of the formulation of the question

concerning the vanguard of the revolution in Nicaragua—and in Central America

generally—stands out in greatest relief upon comparison of the experience of

the development of the class struggle in Europe and the developing countries

which gained independence recently. Here, as in Europe, communist parties

exist. However, they are weak and are not mass, which is more characteristic

of the communist parties of developing countries, where the proletariat is

living through largely a period of its formation as a class, and the middle

strata occupy revolutionary positions. These strata group around militarypolitical fronts, which head the national liberation struggle in their

countries. A clear example is the development of events in the former

Portuguese African colonies: Angola, Mozambique and others.

As far as the forms and methods and also paths--peaceful or armed--of the

revolution are concerned, these questions cannot be resolved once for all and

identically for all countries. We would note that the Nicaraguan revolution

helped us better understand that it was not the revolutionary guerrilla who

suffered bankruptcy in Latin America in the 1960*s but that about which R.

Arismendi has given repeated reminders—primitive revolutionary efforts and

"focal" guerrilla warfare. It should also be noted that upon an examination of

the question of the vanguard of the revolutionary forces it is essential to

suffuse with specific content such a capacious and frequently employed concept

as "front". In other words, it is necessary to make clear on each occasion

what we are dealing with: a military-political organization uniting one or

several currents of vanguard forces of the revolution, which set a common

strategic goal, or a broad alliance of the most diverse political movements,

which are tackling jointly identical tactical tasks. Granted all the obvious

75
differences between these two types of fronts, a certain confusion sometimes

arises, which is complicated by the fact that they are constantly interacting,

disintegrating or reemerging or giving life to new fronts under new names (it

is sufficient to recall the innumerable interminglings and participation of

the FSLN and its representatives in the DOA, BOF, the "United People" bloc and

the NPF). The correct definition of the type of front is a way of ascertaining

who is acting the part of hegemon of the revolution and other fundamental

questions of revolutionary action. It may be said that in this respect the

Salvadoran and Guatemalan revolutionaries have found themselves in a more

favorable position: they are armed with the inspiring experience of the

Sandinistas.

Thus the development of the world liberation movement on the frontier of the

1980's showed once again the possibility of the existence of such a type of

organization of revolutionary vanguard as the military-political front. The

structure of such a type of revolutionary organization corresponds to the

requirements and tasks which armed struggle puts on the agenda (supply of arms

and ammunition; combat training; creation of armed detachments and the

organization of their activity; leadership of combat operations and their

tactical and strategic planning and so forth). No less important a task of the

front is political-propaganda work, the organization of the masses (the union,

women's and youth movement) and the creation of local power in the liberated

areas—the embryo of future people's power. This corresponds to the tasks of

lengthy armed struggle, as was the case in Nicaragua, but does not mean,

naturally, that MPF are the sole possible form of existence of a revolutionary

organization. Even less does this contradict and detract from the role of the

communist parties, which is particularly obvious when it is a question of

national singularities and the experience of the revolutionary struggle in El

Salvador and Guatemala.

FOOTNOTES

1. V.l. Lenin, "What Is To Be Done? Leftwing Communism, an Infantile

Disorder" and elsewhere.

2. F. Castro, "The Strength of the Revolution Lies in Unity," Moscow, 1972;

ibid., "Certain Aspects of the Cuban Revolution—Heroic Epic. From Moncada

to Playa Hiron," Moscow, 1978 and elsewhere.

3. Traditionally implied by Central American countries are Guatemala,

Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

4. See "Joint Declaration of Communist and Workers Parties of Central American

Countries, Mexico and Panama," GRANMA, 29 October 1980.

5. "Focalism" is a term derived from the Spanish "foco"~"focus".Its supporters

tried to prove that the development of the revolutionary movement, as they

imagined it, was being impeded by the "old" communist parties. The

"focalists" denied a priori the role of the communist parties in the

national liberation movement and the experience they had accumulated.

76
According to the "focalists," the communist parties had lost their

revolutionary character inasmuch as they were incapable of conducting an

armed struggle, which, in accordance with "focal" dogma, was the sole

possible path of revolution in Latin America.

6. See R. Debray, "America Latina: algunos problemas de estrategia

revolucionaria," CASA DE LAS AMERICAS No 31, 1965; "Le castrisme: la

longue marche de l'Amerique Latine," LES TEMPS MODERNES, June 1965;

"Revolution in Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in Latin

America," MONTHLY REVIEW, July-August 1967.

7. "Latin America in the Struggle Against Imperialism, For National

Independence, Democracy, Public Well-Being, Peace and Socialism," Moscow,

1975.

8. See "Estructura de clases en America Latina. Conferencia teorica

internacional. Memorias," Havana, 1980; "America Latina: proletariado y sus

aliados. Materiales de la conferencia de la Habana," Prague, 1981;

"Conferencia teorica internacional. Caracteristicas generales y

particulares de los procesos revolucionarios en America Latina y el Caribe.

Memorias," Havana, 26-28 April 1982.

9. LATINSKAYA AMERIKA No 2, 1980, p 9.

10. See H. Saavedra Ortega, "50 anos de la lucha sandinista," Mexico City,

1979; "Augusto C. Sandino, Carlos Fonseca Amador. The FSLN. La estrategia

de la victoria," Mexico City, 1980; "El prinapio del fin 1956... 23 anos

de lucha... Nicaragua: Path of Struggle and Victories," Moscow, 1984. "El

trinfo... 1979," Managua, 1981.

11. The exception is, perhaps, merely the viewpoint of R. Debray, who was the

first to specially distinguish the period "between October 1977 and July

1979," see R. Debray, "Nicaragua ano cero," CASA DE LAS AMERICAS No 117,

1979, p 82.

12. "Habla la direccion de la vanguardia," Managua, 1981, p 179.

13. C. Fonseca, "Bajo la bandera del sandinismo (Textos politicos)," Managua,

1981, p 165.

14. Ibid., pp 187-192.

15. Ibid., p 147; "La revolucion atraves de nuestra Direccion Nacional,"

Managua, 1980, p 23.

16. See "Sandino's Ideological Legacy," Moscow, 1982, p 26 and also T. Borge,

"Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacion," Havana, 1980, p 31.

17. "Augusto C. Sandino...," p 127.

18. "International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties. Documents and

Material. Mocow, 5-17 June 1969," Moscow, 1969, p 230.

77
19. "Augusto C. Sandino...," p 347.

20. PROBLEMS OF PEACE AND SOCIALISM No 1, 1980, pp 65-67.

21. "Augusto C. Sandino...," pp 342-343.

22. F. Castro, "The Strength of the Revolution Lies in Unity," p 175.

23. V.l. Lenin, "Complete Works," vol 41, p 77.

24. "Sandino's Ideological Legacy," pp 241-251.

25. Ibid., pp 202-205.

26. F.Castro, "The Strength of the Revolution Lies in Unity," pp 32, 291.

27. B.I. Koval, "Latin America: Revolution and the Present Day," Moscow, 1981,

p 148; ibid., "The Revolution Continues," Moscow, 1984, p 79; "Augusto C.

Sandino...," pp 52-55.

28. V.l. Lenin, "Complete Works," vol 6, pp 83-84.

29. NUEVA SOCIEDAD No 61, July-August 1982, p 18.

30. See B.I. Koval, "Latin America: Revolution and the Present Day," p 186.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/246

78
EFFECTS OF S&T REVOLUTION ON CAPITALIST SYSTEM, WORKERS

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 168-174

[Article by V.K. Malov: "The S&T Revolution and the Working Class of

Capitalist Countries"*]

[Text] A most obvious and impressive consequence of the current stage of the

S&T revolution is man's growing release from direct participation in the

production of goods and services and the high rate of the latest technology's

replacement of live labor. However, the reduction in man's direct

participation in production is just one aspect of the complex processes

occurring in the labor sphere under the influence of the S&T revolution.

Another aspect is the expansion of indirect types of labor connected with the

performance of monitoring-control and logic functions of an increasingly high

level, responsible decision-making, service and the creation of increasingly

complex equipment. The human factor of production is being expressed

increasingly not so much in direct participation in the manufacture of the

subjects of labor as in the creative processing of information for the purpose

of the increased efficiency and intensification of production.

Speculating on the processes occurring in the working class of the zone of

developed capitalism, a number of bourgeois scientists is propagandizing

theories of "erosion" or "dissolution" in other strata, "abatement of the

class struggle" and so forth. They cleave here, as a rule, to an incorrect,

narrow interpretation of the boundaries of the working class, thereby

underestimating its development potential under the conditions of the S&T

revolution. However, the facts testify to the fundamental fallacy of the

theories advanced by bourgeois ideologists. )

K. Marx and F. Engels never identified the concept of the working class only

with the factory-plant proletariat. It was obvious to them that, for example,

a trade worker is just as much a worker as any other, despite all the

differences which exist between them. Considerable attention is also paid in

the works of the founders of scientific communism to the agricultural

proletariat. The increased significance of circulation and services in the

process of modern production and its increased subordination to capital are

leading to an extension of the boundaries of the working class thanks to wage

workers employed in these spheres. Whereas at the former stages of the

79
development of industrial production (large-scale industry, the assembly-line

system) workers of physical labor predominated in the composition of the

proletariat, in our time S&T progress and the comprehensive automation of

production are leading to an appreciable enhancement of the role of workmen

employed in skilled mental labor, including engineering-technical specialists

servicing modern machinery. The S&T revolution has penetrated the sphere of

office work, having accelerated appreciably the social differentiation of

office workers. As a result many of them have in practice become a part of the

working class. The rapid development of capitalism in the countryside has led

in a number of industrially developed countries to the disappearance of the

peasantry as a class and its division into bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie and

agricultural proletariat.

Nor is it any accident that the numbers of the working class are growing in

the zone of developed capitalism. By the start of the 1980's the working class

here numbered approximately 241 million (compared with 80-85 million at the

start of the century).

Thus the S&T revolution is leading not to the "erosion" of the working class

but to the greater diversity of its production functions, the complication of

its professional and social character and a rise in its general and

professional culture. As K. Marx observed, "merely the cooperative nature of

the labor process is inevitably extending the concept of productive labor and

its exponent, the productive worker. There is no need now in order to work

productively to employ one's hands directly; it is sufficient to be a tool of

the aggregate worker and perform one of his subfunctions" (1).

The application in capitalist production of comprehensive automation is

leading to a reduction in the overall level of employment of the working

people and also to a slowing of the rate of increase in the number of persons

working throughout the economy as a whole. The main "target" here is the

category of semi-skilled manpower—the basis of line-assembly production—and

also miners, metallurgists and construction workers. Workers being squeezed

out of sectors experiencing an acute structural crisis cannot find a use for

their capabilities in the new promising sectors in which workmen of

preeminently mental labor predominate inasmuch as they lack, as a rule, the

appropriate education and training. In other words, capital's conversion to

intensive methods of management is being accompanied by a profound and

comprehensive negative impact on employment. Some 32 million unemployed in the

developed capitalist countries are a vivid example of this.

Comprehensive automation is also creating particularly favorable conditions

for capitalism's increased exploitation of wage labor. Under capitalism new

technology is being introduced not to reduce essential work time but to

increase surplus work time. Therefore here, as K. Marx emphasized, "all means

for the development of production are becoming means of subordination and

exploitation of the producer..." (2).

An important place under the conditions of the S&T revolution is occupied by

such a form of "efficiency promotion" as an increase in the intensity of

labor, intricate, for the most part, what is more, which is attended by

particularly serious and little-studied consequences. The changes in the

80
conditions of the work of draftsmen and designers may serve as a typical

example. The introduction of automated facilities is on the one hand doing

away in their labor with repetitious, uncreative operations and, on the other,

causing nervous strain, stress conditions and dissatisfaction. In the United

States, for example, the National Institute of Occupational Diseases conducted

a survey in 1979-1980 of video terminal operators in offices of San Francisco,

which revealed an exceptionally high stress level—higher even than for air

traffic controllers. From 80 to 90 percent experienced excessive strain, and

there was an increase in the state of anxiety, depression and fatigue.

-•:'• ?

It should be emphasized that a significant role in the process of capital

accumulation under the conditions of the rapid retooling and structural

changes in the economy is being performed by an expansion of the exploitation

of the low-income labor of women and also the youth, foreign workers and the

representatives of national minorities. At first sight there is a manifest

contradiction: the S&T revolution is connected with the use of intricate,

skilled labor, but these categories of working people do not have the proper

qualifications. However, the point is that the use of their labor permits the

corporations to effect the necessary maneuver: economize on the wages of the

workers and simultaneously reimburse outlays on costly equipment.

Differentiation of the wage within individual occupational-skills categories

of working people is also a source of considerable profits. .

Nonetheless, the center of gravity of "scientific" systems of deriving surplus

value lies elsewhere: it is slowly, but surely shifting toward the broader

use—in the interests of deriving profit—of personal incentives and

stimulation of the workers to intensive and high-quality labor. The nervouspsychological and, mainly, intellectual resources of the individual and small

groups and, via them, large-scale outfits (so-called "quality groups" in

Japan, "autonomous teams" in Sweden and others) are becoming a means of

enrichment of capital. True, the employers have encountered in this case a

surprise result: granting the workforce an opportunity to exercise "control in

the workplace" is leading to the growth of the perception of social inequality

and forming an aware protest against the authoritarian nature of relations in

industry (3).

Speaking of the technological changes in contemporary production, it should be

emphasized particularly that it is a question not of the strictly conditioned

dynamics of material productive forces but of a highly complex dialectical

interconnection between material production and the human factor, more

specifically, between the set of productive forces and social relations. Of

course, new technology as such makes certain changing demands on production

management and the organization of labor and the qualities of the aggregate

workman. But how these demands are realized in practice depends on the social

forces operating in the given industry and in society. Two extreme

alternatives (the rest gravitate toward them) are objectively possible: either

adaptation to the new technological conditions of the same invariable

capitalist criteria and principles of management or struggle to substitute for

the latter different principles, the exponent of which is the workers

movement.

81
Monopoly groups and neoconservative political circles expressing their

interests are endeavoring to implant a "model" of labor relations based on the

S&T revolution in accordance with which automation and computerization are to

ensure the even greater subordination of wage workers to the conditions of the

automated production process and intensify specialization and differentation

between workers of different levels of skill. In other words, the corporations

are endeavoring to achieve a situation wherein class relations in industry

would be weakened, and it is these goals which are objectively served by the

diverse concepts of "technological determinism" portraying contemporary

technical progress as a sphere where people's unequivocal, unilinear

dependence on technology is taking place.

The workers movement, on the other hand, proceeds from an understanding of

technical progress as a certain "field" of possibilities. Technical progress

contains various possibilities, including the alleviation and humanization of

the conditions of labor, enrichment of its content and the cultural and

intellectual development of the workers. However, in order to realize this

"vector" of the S&T revolution under capitalism a persistent, persevering

struggle of the working class recognizing and defending its interests in the

sphere of production and society as a whole is needed. Otherwise, each phase

of technical progress will afford new opportunities for the pressure of

capital on the working class, the deepening of its division and the

degradation of many groups thereof.

The bourgeoisie is attempting to shift the burden of the consequences

engendered by the capitalist use of S&T progress and the capitalist

socialization of production onto the working people, primarily the working

class, and to dismantle their democratic gains. This is a kind of "social

revanche" for past defeats.

Unfortunately, in the complex interweave of technical, economic and social

problems which have arisen at the present abrupt historical turning point the

state of affairs is shaping up not to the benefit of the working class. As

observed at the 27th CPSU Congress, "as of the mid-1 970's the increasingly

frequent economic crises and the technological restructuring of production

have changed the situation and enabled capital to switch to the

counteroffensive and deprive the working people of a considerable proportion

of their social gains" (4). However, this does not mean that the working class

is incapable of erecting barriers in the way of the monopolies' usurpation of

the fruit of S&T progress. On the contrary, it is expressing increasingly

decisively its refusal to accept the changes in technology in the form and on

the terms which monopoly capital is imposing on it. Protests against the

negative social consequences of the S&T revolution and for its use in the

interests of the working people are inevitably assuming an antimonopoly

nature.

What demands are being moved to the fore in the course of the current

confrontation of labor and capital, primarily the strike struggle? First, the

demand of guaranteed employment and defense of the workers against the threat

of disqualification. Second, a broadening of the working people's rights in

respect of participation in production management and the demand that they be

granted to a greater extent than hitherto a chance to influence the solution

82
of questions concerning their current situation and prospects at the

capitalist enterprise. Third, struggle for a reduction in unemployment. In a

number of capitalist countries, the FRG, for example, the confrontation of

labor and capital is concentrated to a considerable extent around problems of

a legislative reduction in work time without a cut in wages.

The comparative "moderation" of these demands by no means testifies to an

easing of the main social contradiction of capitalism. On the contrary, it is

becoming more profound, although it far from always assumes equal seriousness.

The class struggle in the capitalist world is altogether not developing

rectilinearly. It is characterized by periods of rise and fall and assumes

varying dimensions in different countries and in different periods. To employ

a visual image, the workers movement would appear before us as a line which

often changes its direction, at times turning back, as it were, moving further

away from its starting point, in short, represents a real broken line.

The crisis and the technological restructuring engendered a highly

contradictory range of reactions in the working class. On the one hand, under

the influence of the crisis and the growing uncertainty some workers succumbed

(and are succumbing) to egotistic and corporate moods. The calls of

conservatives for a "recovery" of the economy by way of according private

capitalist enterprise "greater freedom" and a reduction in the burden of the

state's social spending are finding a response in this environment.

Conservative propaganda is instilling in these strata the fact that under the

conditions of modernization of production social payments and the unions'

demands threaten the stability of their economic position. On the other hand,

in broad strata of workmen of the "old" and "new" sectors, those who by virtue

of their occupational-skills unpreparedness for the technological changes are

forced to work in specialized sectors, youth who cannot find work, the longterm unemployed, working people forced to consent to temporary work and so

forth, there is a growing perception of social lack of protection and a mood

of despair and apathy. It should be considered also that as a result of the

growth of the numbers of the proletariat and the incorporation within it of

new detachments the inner heterogeneousness of the working class has increased

considerably and the strata thereof bordering on the bourgeoisie or the "new

middle strata" which have not attended the school of class struggle have

become numerically more significant. All this is naturally complicating under

current conditions revelation of the revolutionary potential of the

proletariat as a class as a whole opposed to capitalist society.

However, the struggle of the working class continues. It is significant that

the number of participants in social conflicts in capitalist countries has

continued to increase in recent decades as a whole. Thus whereas in a 5-year

period (from 1975 through 1979) approximately 282 million persons took part in

them in the zone of developed capitalism alone, in the following 5-year period

(from 1980 through 1984) the figure was 335 million. A particularly

significant increase in the number of political protests is observed here (5).

.i . '

The instigators 'of many strike battles are the factory-plant detachments of

the working class. The degree of organization of the workers in unions is

higher here, as a rule, and the activity of the communist and workers party

cells at the enterprises is more assertive. At the same time, however, the

83
number of strikers representing engineering-technical personnel, office

workers and the industrial intelligentsia has increased. This has reflected

the expansion of the social base of class confrontation. Workers of

nationalized sectors and enterprises and various categories of office workers

have begun to join more actively in the strike struggle in a number of

countries.

The working people's rebuff of measures reflecting in concentrated manner the

bourgeois state's offensive against the social rights and gains of the working

class is accelerating the politicization of its struggle.

The crisis processes and the major economic and social changes connected with

them are prompting union activists toward more long-term thinking and a search

for solutions and plans which go beyond the framework of traditional "purely

economic" trade unionism. The unions of a number of countries are putting

forward a wide-ranging set of sociopolitical demands—a program of reforms in

the spheres of production management, the system of education, employment

policy and the use of labor resources. They are being forced into this by the

critical situation in which the working class is being put by the economic

revolution and technological and structural reorganization of the economy. At

the same time, however, the intensified independent political role of the

unions stimulated by the change in the correlation between economics and

politics under the conditions of state-monopoly capitalism and its

characteristic "politicization" of sociopolitical life is reflected in this

phenomenon. The fact that the state has taken on itself a huge volume of

socioeconomic regulation is prompting the unions not simply to make demands on

state power and act via its "own" parties but also to increase its own, direct

influence on the elements of the state in which the main decision-making

centers are concentrated, that is, the executive and the system of

consultations between government and business. They are having to formulate

and defend their demands in respect of a considerably broader range of issues,

substantiate these demands and link them with the general economic situation,

frequently advancing here their own socioeconomic alternative (6).

The growth of the assertiveness of union members and the increase in the level

of their demands are also manifested in their participation in the struggle

for a reduction in military spending and the markedly increased rapprochement

of the goals of the union members and the participants in the new social,

specifically, peace movements. The ideological and psychological ties between

the workers' organizations and democratic movements are increasing step by

step. As a result increasingly great significance in the demarcation within

reformist parties and the unions is attached to the attitude toward the

problems being advanced by the new social movements.

An essential factor of the rapprochement of the worker and the new social

movements is the peace struggle. Its goals are equally close to the working

class and other strata. This is expressed, for example, in the interweaving of

the struggle for peace and against the arms race with the struggle for

employment in the advancement of the slogans "Jobs and Peace!" and "New Jobs

84
Instead of New Bombs and Missiles!" In West European countries, New Zealand,

Australia and Japan a large number of working people participates annually in

mass protest actions against the arms race and for appropriations to be

channeled not into the production of new means of destruction but into the

expansion of social programs.

It would be wrong to believe that this participation in mass democratic

protest actions is leading the majority of workers, the youth and the

intelligentsia directly to positions of class struggle, even less to those of

socialism. A number of currents in the contemporary peace movement are

characterized by bourgeois views and anticommunist prejudices at times. But

for communists and progressive workers true to Marxist-Leninist tradition the

evaluation of the significance of a mass movement cannot be equated with a

comparison of doctrines and ideologies. Immeasurably more important for them

is the question: what in practice is the behavior of the strata of the

population which agree with pacifism and neutralism or are close to their

ideas. Even having determined the bourgeois nature of the views of the

participants in the peace movement under current conditions, communists do not

place the period here. They take into consideration the fact that the struggle

against militarism and against the arms race develops from one stage to

another, thanks to which old formulas are capable of being suffused with new

content.

Protests against the military danger cannot, of course, remove class

contradictions and the difference in political orientations. Communists are

not about to renounce class struggle while it is historically inevitable. This

is impossible. But the development of the struggle for peace does not

contradict the logic of the working class' struggle for social preogress—

without this struggle progress could become impossible. In addition, many

participants in the peace movement belong precisely to the strata which are

for the first time rising to political life under the new conditions.

Participation in the peace struggle is awakening them from political lethargy

and, given certain circumstances, channeling their protest against the most

brazen imperialist circles. In this case the peace movement is capable of

extending the sphere of political alliances and turning a new page in the

antimonopoly struggle of the people's masses.

FOOTNOTES

* From the editors: The CPSU Central Committee decree "Organization of the

Working People's Political and Economic Education in the 1986/87 Academic

Year" proposes subordinating all forms of tuition to study of the problem

of the country's socioeconomic development. Proceeding from this, the

editors consider it possible to recommend for study in the system of

political and economic education and self-tuition a number of articles

published in 1986:

A.G. Aganbegyan, "Economic Strategy of the 27th CPSU Congress: Social

Aspects" (No 6); E.I. Bonn, F.P. Pankratova, S.A. Plisova,

"Stabilization of the Workforce" (No 4); V.L. Glazychev, "Development of

the Nonproduction Sphere: 'Plant—City' Program" (No 3); Ye.B. Gruzdeva,

E.S. Chertikhina, "Occupational Employment of Women in the USSR and Their

Pay" (No 3); A.A. Korobeynikov, "Pivotal Problem" (No 1); B.Z. Milner,

85
"Restructuring of the Management of the Economy: Problems and Prospects"

(No 5); A.K. Nazimova, L.A. Gordon, "S&T Progress and the Industrial

Assertiveness of the Working Class" (No 4); I.K. Pantin, "Program of

Creation, Peace and Social Progress" (No 1); Ye.I. Romanovskiy, "Workers'

Families in the USSR: Income and Well-Being" (No 6); Ye.M. Chekharin,

"The CPSU's Social Policy at the Current Stage" (No 5); V.P. Chichkanov,

"ßaykal-Amur Main Railroad—Facets of Social Development" (No 1); O.N.

Yanitskiy, "The Human Factor and Socio-Reproductive Processes" (No 4).

1. K. Marx and F. Engels, "Works," vol 23, p 517.

2. Ibid., p 660.

3. See S.A. Yershov, "The Proletariat Confronted by Comprehensive Automation:

New Conditions of the Class Struggle," RK i SM No 6, 1984, p 108.

4. "Material of the 27th CPSU Congress," Moscow, 1986, p 13.

5. See T.T. Timofeyev, "Leading Force of Social Progress," RK i SM No 2,

1986, p 26.

6. See "Present-Day Capitalism: Political Relations and Institutions of

Power," Moscow, 1984, p 94.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

8850

CSO: 1807/246

86
BOOK ON USSR WORKING CLASS REVIEWED

Moscow RABOCHIY KLASS I SOVREMENNYY MIR in Russian No 1, Jan-Feb 87 (signed to

press 6 Jan 87) pp 180-182

[G.N. Cherkasov, G.A. Silantyeva review: "Development of the USSR Working

Class: Problems and Prospects"]

[Text] The important shifts and changes of an objective nature making for the

prospect of an acceleration of the Soviet society's socioeconomic development

and its achievement of a new qualitative condition simultaneously also are to

a certain extent shaped by the human factor and the social driving forces for

the accomplishment of this historically urgent task formulated by the CPSU.

Among such shifts and changes demanding serious scientific comprehension,

changes in the actual position of the working class and its production and

social potential under the impact of the general economic and social processes

occurring at this stage undoubtedly pertain among the most important.

It is to this that the book in question,* which largely sums up the studies on

the corresponding range of problems which have been conducted in the first

half of the 1980's in the USSR Academy of Sciences IMRD, is devoted. It

analyzes the changes in the composition, numbers, general and professional

culture and social assertiveness of Soviet workers which have occurred in the

1960's-1980's. On the basis of this analysis the authors endeavor to ascertain

the prospects of the further development of the working class in the

foreseeable future, having illustrated its place in the fundamental economic

and social transformations of our time, primarily in the transition to an

economy of higher organization and efficiency and in the formation of a

classless structure.

As the CPSU Central Committee Program (New Version) emphasizes, "the political

experience of the working class and its high consciousness, organization and

will unite our society. The growth of the general educational, cultural and

professional level and labor and sociopolitical assertiveness of the working

class is enhancing its vanguard role in the perfection of socialism and

communist building." What precisely makes for this role of the working class?

The authors of the book in question show: on the one hand its objective

interests and the fact that the further improvement of the life of the

workers, the enhancement of the meaningfulness of labor and an upsurge of

well-being are impossible without a fundamental acceleration of socioeconomic

87
progress. On the other, it is the working class which constitutes the basis of

the human factor, whose stimulation is the main prerequisite of such a

process.

However, the potential of the working class is not realized spontaneously but

as the result of the economic, social and political measures consciously

planned and implemented by the Communist Party. Importance is attached here to

consideration of the fact that the very nature of the development of the

working class is changing under current conditions. The quantitative growth of

is ranks, so important in the past, is losing its former role. The absolute

numbers of the Soviet working class will hardly change appreciably in the

coming decade. Its qualitative development will move to the fore. In this

sense the growth of the skills and cultural-technical level of the workers

throughout the past 25 years constitutes a principal manifestation of the

growth of the forces of the working class and its readiness to undertake an

intensification of production and an acceleration of S&T progress.

At the same time the authors of the monograph, relying on a vast amount of

statistical material and the data of the specific sociological studies which

they conducted, show that the workers' increased educational potential is not

always realized fully inasmuch as there continues to be a relatively high

proportion of unskilled physical labor, performance of which does not require

a high general education. The reduction in the proportion of unskilled labor

in the 1970's was considerably slower than the growth of the workers' general

educational level. Today more than one-half of the unskilled labor jobs are

held by workers with higher than elementary education. Young people with 10

and 11 years of school training are having to work here increasingly often.

For persons with such or an even higher level of education work in these

occupations frequently proves to be a source of social discomfort, and for

society results in economic and social losses.

The authors observe that together with the disproportion between the workers'

general educational level and the content of their labor there is also a

discrepancy of another type connected with the comprehensive mechanization,

automation and robotization of production processes and the application of new

progressive technology, which are making higher demands on the workers. The

qualifications of the majority of workers fully corresponding to the demands

of present-day production are proving not to fully correspond with production

born in the course of the S&T revolution. A comparison conducted by the

authors confirmed that there are differences between the standard demands on

workers' skills and the actual level of their professional training. Thus, for

example, according to the data of a survey in Taganrog, among workers employed

in mechanized and line-assembly labor (according to the classification

developed by the authors, this is labor predominantly of the developed

industrial type) 86 percent are made up of those for whom professional

training prior to the start of their labor activity is required, wherea3 only

42 percent actually have such training. Among the workers employed in

automated labor and labor pertaining to the adjustment and repair of equipment

/
(labor predominantly of the scientific-industrial type) this proportion

constitutes 92 and 47 percent respectively (p 142). The general professional

training of the youth prior to the start of its labor activity and

simultaneously a constant rise in the qualifications of workers employed in

industry are becoming an imperative demand of the times.

Just as material are the dialectics of the development of social

assertiveness. The growth of the social assertiveness of the working class is

a principal achievement of socialism, with regard for which the CPSU is

elaborating its strategy of the country's further economic and social

progress. At the same time the realization of this strategy demands a rise in

the social assertiveness of the working class to a new level. The authors show

the danger of rectilinear and simplistic interpretations of the numerous data

concerning the workers' participation in the management of production.

Thus despite the pronounced improvement in many average statistical indicators

of the workers' social assertiveness, which is occurring in parallel with the

progress of the technical-engineering organization of production, the general

social feeling, the feeling of proprietor and the degree of satisfaction with

one's actual influence on the course of production and social affairs are,

according to the data obtained by the authors, roughly identical among all

workers, regardless of the type of production in which they are employed. A

detailed analysis testifies that the forms of enlistment of the workers in

management which exist currently lead to the molding in them of a feeling of

proprietorship and responsible, enterprising independence connected with this

predominantly at the microlevel, so to speak, on the scale of the workplace,

brigade and primary labor outfit generally. Thus 60-70 percent of workers

surveyed feel themselves to be masters in their own jobs, but within the

framework of the shop only 13 percent of workers of developed industrial labor

and 24 percent of workers of scientific-industrial labor perceive their

influence on the course of production, and within the framework of the entire

enterprise even fewer: 7 and 16 percent respectively. At the current stage an

important task is the creation of conditions converting workers into zealous

and enterprising proprietors not only of their own workplace but of all of

production as a whole. These conclusions are entirely in keeping with the

CPSU's program principles of the development of the creative initiative of the

working people and their increasingly full enlistment in the process of

management of production.

The monograph rightly emphasizes that it is essential to make use of all

available potential at enterprises and in organizations for the continued

formation of worker self-management, primarily the opportunities which are

afforded by group forms of the organization of labor. Inasmuch as there exists

a heterogeneousness of socio-technological structures, which will retain its

significance within the bounds of the next two decades, a differentiated

approach to the continued development of the brigade organization of labor is

essential. The type of brigade, the degree of independence in the organization

of labor and production and the range of managerial functions delegated to the

brigade leader and the brigade council must be closely tied in with the

technical-engineering type of production. Consideration of the objective

singularities of the situation of workers of different types of production is

also important in realization of the rights which have been accorded the

89
working people by the Workforce Act and the enhancement of their role in the

management of enterprises, establishments and organizations.

The monograph's final section "From the Social Structure of the Working Class

to the Socio-Occupational Structure of Society" is of great interest in the

theoretical and practical respects. The authors have made an extended multiaspectual study of the trends and prospects of the working class'

socioeconomic development under the influence of such factors as the

development of the S&T revolution and the changes in the content of labor

connected therewith, the intensification of the urbanization process, the rise

in the educational and cultural level of the Soviet people, shifts in the

direction of the surmounting of the class differences between workers and

kolkhoz members, the rapprochement of the workers and the intelligentsia, the

conversion of the industrial nucleus of the working class into the social

nucleus of society and certain others.

The analysis of the trends which were ascertained enabled the authors to note

certain objective regularities of the qualitative changes in the social

structure of society and to interpret the data thus obtained in the form of a

forecast of the development of the socio-occupational structure of society and

the separation of individual elements thereof. The forecast of a classless

structure of society proposed by the authors is not only of undoubted

theoretical but also practical interest inasmuch as it may serve as an

important reference point for the elaboration of plans of the social

development of the republics, regions, cities and enterprises. I believe it

would be expedient for the authors to continue work in this productive field

for the purpose of bringing the theoretical concept of a classless structure

of society which has been elaborated to the point of actual qualitative

proportions between individual components of the socio-occupational structure

of society at individual stages of its development.

Like any new and nonstandard work, the book by L.A. Gordon and A.K. Nazimova

is of interest not only for its conclusions and results but also the questions

which arise in the course of reading it. Far from all the propositions

advanced by the authors appear convincing. Moreover, may of them are a direct

invitation to debate. The debate is all the more appropriate in that in some

cases the authors stop half-way, as it were, toward the final formulations, as

if fearing to go the whole way in their own procedural premises. For example,

the book speaks convincingly of the need for a multidimensional analysis of

the social structure of contemporary Soviet society. Indeed, as long as it is

a question of the socio-occupational aspects, the authors adhere to such an

approach. But switching to an examination of the prospects of the formation of

a classless social structure of society as a whole, they return once again to

a simplistic unidimensional interpretation. L.A. Gordon and A.K. Nazimova

rightly note the importance of the divisions ensuing from the nature of labor

and the participation in management, but lose sight here of such a colossally

important division as "city-countryside".

In general, the authors have failed to overcome an oversimplified approach

completely, and its aftertaste is perceived throughout the book. We say this

not to erase the significance of the outlines proposed in the book. On the

contrary, we repeat once again that they constitute a sufficiently reliable

90
tool of analysis. At the same time a certain inconsistency of the book is that

the outlines are far from always verified by application to actual factual

material. Yet it is clear that only such application makes a theoretical

outline viable and permits its verification by practice and, correspondingly,

its specification, enrichment with details and so forth. Only in the process

of practical use do theoretical propositions cease to be an outline, and a

hypothesis become a theory. This has not been done as yet, and the authors'

outlines oversimplify reality at times. Of course, the authors make the

reservation that the occupational structure which they have adduced permits

coarse generalities whereby, for example, all troubleshooters and repairmen

fall into the same category, regardless of the type of labor with which they

are actually connected (p 121). Reservations, however, do not make things

right, and the outline in one way or another remains not entirely applicable

to a very important (particularly from the viewpoint of development prospects)

category of workmen. In this sense the authors' hypotheses only partially

acquire the status of theory.

In conclusion we would touch on one further question. A big merit of the book

of L.A. Gordon and A.K. Nazimova is the fact that the authors proceed in their

conclusions from a great deal of factual material, successfully combining the

data of sociological studies with the mass, albeit less detailed, material of

official statistics. The sociological data were obtained mainly in the course

of two (with a 10-year interval) surveys conducted in the typical industrial

center of Taganrog. The unity of the construction of these surveys and the

comparatively long interval between them enable us to speak with confidence

about changes in the conditions of the labor and social life of the Taganrog

workers as stable changes, and comparison with the data of official statistics

(primarily all-union population censuses) affords an opportunity for

determining which of these changes are of a generally significant nature. In

general, the skillful combination of the material of the sociological surveys

and the data of official statistics constitutes a most important merit of the

work. I would like to hope that this fruitful area of research will continue

to be developed. Specifically, it would be highly desirable in the next few

years to conduct a third survey in the city of Taganrog in order to collect

data which together with the material of the latest census would permit a

judgment concerning changes in a 20-year period.

Incidentally, an attentive reading of the book leads to certain more general

conclusions concerning problems of the further refinement of socialist

statistics. Taking a close look at the data of official statistics on the

social development of the working class carefully assembled and put together

by the authors, it can be clearly seen that Central Statistical Administration

publications have in recent decades (publication of the material of the 1979

census, for example) been much leaner than previously. There is no doubt that

well arranged and generally accessible statistics constitute an essential

element of the true openness of social life, as also an important prerequisite

of the real scientific substantiation of socioeconomic policy. An improvement

in social statistics will largely depend on the energy and persistence with

which the latest achievements of social science are applied in practice. This

is a most important area of the intensification and increased returns from

Soviet social science.

91
Returning once more to the book as a whole, we would note that its authors do

not overlook contentious, debatable aspects of the problem in question and, at

times, negative aspects of the processes being studied. On the contrary, they

attempt to reveal the main objective and subjective factors determining their

appearance. The book helps us understand the complex and relevant theoretical

and practical problems connected with the prospects of the development of the

social structure of Soviet society under the conditions of the continued

development of the S&T revolution and the transition to the path of an

acceleration of socioeconomic development.

FOOTNOTE

* L.A. Gordon, A.K. Nazimova, "Rabochiy klass SSSR: tendentsii i

perspektivy sotsialno-ekonomicheskogo razvitiya" [The USSR Working Class:

Trends and Prospects of Socioeconomic Development], Moscow, "Nauka", 1985,

pp 221.

COPYRIGHT: "Rabochiy klass i sovremennyy mir", 1987

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