A-Infos (en) Review of Workers Against Work (from Anarchy #51 - Spring/Summer 2001)

["Jason McQuinn" <jmcquinn@coin.org>]

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This review is from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #51. Anarchy magazine
now has a web site at: www.anarchymag.org


Workers Against Work: Labor in Paris and
Barcelona During the Popular Fronts

Reviewed by Alex Trotter

Workers Against Work: Labor in Paris and Barcelona During the Popular Fronts
by Michael Seidman (University of California Press, 1990) 384 pages, $50.00
( 30) hardcover.

    This is a comparative study of workers  resistance to the labor
discipline imposed by their own representation in its various flavors (i.e.,
Socialists, Communists, anarchosyndicalists, and sundry other leftists and
liberals) in two different but contemporaneous situations in the 1930s.
Unlike most academic labor histories, which seem to emphasize (favorably)
political and economic activities of unions and parties, Seidman s is a
social history of everyday life under the Popular Fronts in Spain and
France, and gives much-needed attention to the revolt against work. Seidman
does an admirable job of showing how the  progressive forces  contended with
not only their declared enemies on the Right, but also the indifference and
unruliness of the masses whose cause they claimed to champion, even if he
does seem at times too defensive in his sympathies for the resistant
workers. Alas, the $50 price will be daunting to most potential readers,
especially the very workers and work-resisters who would presumably most
benefit from it. For those with Internet access, it is possible, though a
pain in the ass, to read the entire book on line at the University of
California Press Web site (which is what I did). The address is as follows:
http://www-ucpress.berkeley.edu:3030/dynaweb/public/books/history/seidman
-- whew! Got that?!

    Seidman examines the social and historical differences between France
and Spain and the ways these differences produced divergent styles of
leadership by the coalitions of the Left, and yet shows how similar were the
methods used in the two countries by workers to evade or mitigate the
demands of productivism, as were some of the methods used by leftists
(revolutionary in Spain, reformist in France) to promote discipline in the
workplace, either through blandishments or through coercion. Two definitions
of class consciousness came into sharp conflict; for the activists, it meant
working productively to build socialism, but for the workers it meant
avoiding the demands of wage labor as much as possible. Seidman discusses
the particular struggles of women, immigrants, and the unemployed as well as
those of the main body of male, citizen, waged workers.

    Spain was much less industrially developed than France. There had never
been a real bourgeois liberal  revolution, and the Enlightenment had made
only a tentative impact. The main power remained in the hands of the
oligarchic landowning class, the Catholic Church, and the military.
Catalonia had the most advanced industry in Spain, but even there, the
bourgeoisie was relatively weak. The bosses  style of rule remained
paternalistic to an extraordinary degree, with frequent resort to direct
police repression and military intervention in politics (the
pronunciamiento). The working class during the first part of the 20th
century was extremely combative, violent confrontations with employers, the
Church, and the police being the order of the day. The Popular Front came to
power in a situation of actual takeover by workers; churches were burned and
factories were abandoned by their owners, who fled for their lives. The
principal workers  organizations, the anarchosyndicalist CNT and the Marxist
UGT, expressed a  revolutionary ideology up to and throughout the 1930s.
Marxists and anarchists alike upheld an ideology of modernization and
development, which in their view were tasks the proletariat would undertake
because the bourgeoisie could not or would not.

    France, by contrast, had established a democratic stability, with
separation of church and state; a strong bourgeois class, committed to
innovation and the ideology of progress, into which Jews and Protestants
were integrated; highly developed industries, and a unified national market.
Anticlericalism had faded as a cause after the Dreyfus Affair. There was
free public education under the Third Republic, so little need was felt for
modern schools like those run by the anarchosyndicalists in Spain. By the
time of the Popular Front the main workers  organizations  the Socialist
Party (SFIO), the Communist Party (PCF), and the CGT unions  had largely
abandoned revolutionary ideology. By endorsing French patriotism in World
War I  (the union sacr e), the Socialists and CGT had integrated themselves
into the nation and shown the ruling class that they were not a
revolutionary threat. Anarchosyndicalism in France faded after the war and
was replaced by Communism as the principal revolutionary ideology. Despite
political and tactical squabbles between them, the Socialists and Communists
cooperated in the building of the Popular Front. There was violence during
the Popular Front, but the capitalist class remained in control of the means
of production. Nor did extreme right-wing threats against the state, in the
manner of Franco, ever manifest. The officer class in France maintained
loyalty, albeit grudging perhaps, to the republic, even under the first  red
government since the Commune.

    Seidman compares Spain s level of development in the 1930s to that of
prerevolutionary Russia s; the strength of revolutionary ideology there was
similar to that of the Soviet Union.  Like the Russian Marxists, the
anarchist revolutionaries of Spain saw themselves as enlighteners.  The
Spanish Popular Front (which included the CNT, POUM, Socialist Party,
Communist Party, and Catalan nationalists) appropriated Soviet methods,
including Stakhonovism, socialist realist propaganda art, and even labor
camps for recalcitrant workers, staffed by guards recruited from within the
CNT.  Despite their disagreements, the followers of Marx and of Bakunin
united in their efforts to extract more labor from the workers. In Spain,
the disciplinary actions meted out to workers by unions and the leftist
state owed not merely to the exigencies of the war with Franco, but were
consistent with the ideological foundations of Marxism and
anarchosyndicalism, especially the project of rationalizing production, and
the glorification of science and technology, including an enthusiasm for
Taylorism. Other progressivist projects the Spanish revolutionaries
championed were large public works such as roads, dams, and other
infrastructure, and they demonstrated a fondness for the modernist urbanism
of Le Corbusier, which envisioned  massive automobile circulation.

    In the initial stages of the Spanish Revolution, piecework was abolished
and wage differentials leveled. But as the CNT and UGT encountered ongoing
resistance by workers to exhortations to produce more and sacrifice for the
war effort, piecework and wage differentials were reinstated. Workers
engaged in all manner of goldbricking, theft of tools and supplies, faked
injuries and illnesses, and reluctance to attend union meetings or pay dues.
The Popular Front responded with fines, dismissals, campaigns to curtail
work stoppages on fiesta (saint) days, and Grinch-like efforts to eliminate
Christmas celebrations and New Year s bonuses. Unions and collectives
insisted on using their own doctors to examine claims of illness or injury.
The label of  sabotage  was applied with a very broad brush to workers who
complained, were impolite in serving customers, took nonurgent telephone
calls on the job, and didn't ask for more work after completing a job.
Slacking off was even equated with fascism:  The lazy man is a fascist,  as
one slogan had it. All adults between 18 and 45 had to have a  work
certificate,  which could be demanded for inspection at any time. There were
campaigns against vices such as drinking, gambling, and pornography. Workers
were reminded by the UGT that  the revolution is not a party time,  while
the CNT asserted that  the masses must be reeducated morally.

    Seidman throws doubt on the notion that organizations outside the
mainstream of the CNT offered a significant alternative to its compromises,
corruption, and bureaucracy from the standpoint of resistance to labor
discipline. For example, the Friends of Durruti, whom he calls  extreme
leftists,  called  for more work, sacrifice, and even forced labor. Durruti
himself spoke of the need for the revolution to be  totalitarian.  Mujeres
Libres, the women s group affiliated with the CNT, admired the supposed
Soviet success in abolishing prostitution.

    In France, the strategies of coercion by the Popular Front were softer
than in Spain, reflecting the higher degree of accommodation of the French
working class to the industrial system, and the greater overall stability of
the society. Seidman is at pains to show that the role of unions and
leftists was not purely coercive, that they also, depending on the
situation, assisted workers  demands for less work. Although they came to
power on a massive wave of strikes in 1936, French leftists were concerned
not with building a dictatorship of the proletariat in conditions of spartan
economic development but in fighting to integrate the proletariat into the
emerging consumer society. As a Communist slogan of the time put it:  The
Riviera for all  (i.e., not only for the rich). The main political purpose
of the Popular Front may have been as a short-term alliance to check the
rise of fascism, but it was also an acknowledgment that a Soviet- or
syndicalist-style revolution in France was not a real possibility, although
it lingered on as a rhetorical pitch.

    In contrast with Spain, the main controls on the working class in France
were instituted by the capitalist class itself. French capitalists did not
need to be trumped by left-wing industrial militants in implementing
Taylorist scientific management or piecework. Discipline on the factory
floor was tight, and foremen in France were, as Seidman puts it, loyal
sergeants  in the army of production, whereas their counterparts in Spain
often actually sided with workers in fights against bosses and senior
management. Although not as radical as the Spanish, French workers were
insubordinate enough to make the captains of industry wish that the
conditions in their factories and workshops resembled those of  the
countries of order  (United States, Britain, and Germany).

    Before the Popular Front, a 48-hour workweek was common in France. The
two main achievements of the Left government headed by Socialist leader L on
Blum were the 40-hour week and paid vacations. Employers gritted their teeth
and submitted to the reduced hours of labor. But workers showed their
gratitude for these leftist- and union-brokered  gains by constantly
demanding more in a thousand unsanctioned ways. The strikes of 1936 that
brought the Popular Front to power, and later ones as well, were largely
spontaneous and initially caught militants off guard before they slowly
brought them under control. As in Spain, workers exhibited lateness,
drunkenness, theft, slowdowns, resistance to piecework, fake injuries, and
disrespect for authority. The unemployed would often avoid accepting offers
from government placement bureaus. During the strikes there was considerable
destruction of machinery and other property costing many thousands of francs
worth of damage. Disobedience continued after the strikes abated. The
rhetoric of the Popular Front called on workers to fight fascism, but
workers had their own ideas about this; for them, the real fascism was iron
discipline in the workplace.   Democratic  bosses, foremen, engineers, and
other taskmasters were often referred to by
workers as fascists (there were, in fact, enough future admirers of Marshal
P tain in their ranks), as were strikebreakers. Seidman cites one example of
a model worker in the Stakhanovite mold being followed home by hundreds of
his fellow workers who spat on him from head to foot.

    Blum criticized workers for refusing overtime, including weekend work,
and lowering productivity. But he seems to have been genuinely popular. He
promised that the Socialist government in France would not open fire on the
workers, as the Social Democrats in Germany under Noske had after World War
I. He managed to keep that promise, but then, France never really came to a
revolutionary situation in the 1930s, so that pledge did not meet its
supreme test.

    The Left, like the Right, conducted a civilizing offensive on the
working class aimed at controlling lifestyle in the interests of
productivity. Even the expansion of nonworking time was part of this drive.
The licentiousness of popular culture would be fought through the
organization of leisure time (not to be confused with idleness or laziness)
and the promotion of consumption.  Militants scolded workers for smoking,
drinking, playing cards, or betting on horses. Meanwhile, the era of bargain
stores for the masses and credit buying plans had begun. The CGT instituted
a vacation savings plan. Vacations were viewed in a utilitarian light, as a
necessary restorative in preparation for more work. The automobile was
starting to take over, although at this time most workers could not afford
one; most commuting was still done by bicycle. The Communists whined that
French auto makers had failed to  democratize  the automobile.

    The end of the Popular Front in Spain came, of course, through Franco s
military victory over the republic. In France, it came about for various
reasons, including the increasing reluctance of the bourgeoisie to suffer
competitive disadvantage in international markets because of the reduction
in hours of labor. Increased wages were accompanied by increased prices,
which angered the middle classes.  The increasing international tensions
caused by Hitler s moves contributed to the desire of the French ruling
class to put its house in order so as to meet the threat. The Daladier
government, dominated by the Radical Party, a liberal ally of the  red
parties in the Popular Front, told French workers that they must cut out the
nonsense and start working harder and longer. As much as the Socialists,
Communists, and unions tried to enforce this task, it was not enough for the
champions of order and the  right to work.  Another spontaneous general
strike ensued in 1938 to prevent the extension of the 40-hour week; it was
blamed by the bosses on the Communist Party, and the PCF was eager to claim
credit for organizing it. When this strike failed, the momentum of the
Popular Front was gone.

    It was the resistance or indifference by workers to schemes of workplace
utopia that contributed to coercive responses from the state and labor
activists, Seidman asserts.  One can speculate,  he says, that  the
bureaucratization and centralization of the CNT and the state may have been
slower had workers sacrificed wholeheartedly. Democratic workers  control
could have had more chance to succeed, and the centralized war economy might
have had fewer advocates. But he doesn t offer any proof of these
speculations, which makes me wonder why he offers them at all, especially
since they seem to contradict the main theses of the book. Is he hedging his
bets? Seidman shows another conflict by acknowledging that workers
resistance to increases in worktime and productivity hurt the war effort
against franquismo in Spain as well as French military preparedness in a
time of Nazi-directed German rearmament. (French aviation workers balked at
weekend work in their effort to defend the hard-won 40-hour week, whereas
German workers in aviation were turning in 50- to 60-hour weeks.) But
elsewhere he points out that the real thing to regret is that German workers
didn't follow the example of their French comrades in asserting the right to
be lazy. This is an issue he might have explored in greater depth.

    Closer to home, American readers might want to compare Workers Against
Work with John Zerzan s Elements of Refusal for an analysis of the
relationship between labor unions, the state, the capitalist class, and
workers  everyday struggles against work in the United States during the
same time period.

    The achievements of the French Popular Front seem paltry today. A
40-hour week? Paid vacations? The near revolution of 1968 seemed like the
beginning of the end for this quantitative death on the installment plan,
but it is still very much with us.

    The author concludes by invoking Paul Lafargue s  Right to Be Lazy,  and
suggests, along with Lafargue, that the abolition of the state and of wage
labor (Seidman never says abolition of work) depends on an automated
cybernetic utopia  in which machines do all the work. This is a problematic
concept that goes unexamined at the end of Workers Against Work.  One may
speculate that the way to eliminate resistance is not by workers  control of
the means of production but rather by the abolition of wage labor itself.
He also says that the workers  resistances he describes should not be read
as false consciousness, backwardness, or sympathy for the Right. Well, who
would come to that conclusion? Few among the Left/union organizers and
activists of today would think of reading this book, and fewer still could
stomach it if they did. Seidman s phrasing here betrays an academic timidity
in seeming anticipation of the disapproval of his leftist colleagues in the
sociology or history department.

    According to Seidman,  resisters did not articulate any clear future
vision of the workplace or of society.  This statement points to one of the
mysteries inherent in the struggle against work. Now, as then, resistance to
work is ubiquitous but inchoate. It has no need of militants, indeed scorns
them, but agitators of the zerowork persuasion may play some kind of secret,
undefined role in its encouragement. Unorganizable, it is like a magma
beneath the surface of contemporary society. We don t know whether its next
great eruption is very near, or more distant, or in what country it will
happen next. And maybe this book can help.

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
C.A.L. Press
POB 1446
Columbia, MO 65205-1446
USA
Anarchy magazine web site:
http://www.anarchymag.org


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