[Translator’s introduction: In December 2005, the management of the Swedish company Electrolux announced the closure of the AEG factory in Nuremberg, Germany. AEG -- Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, or General Electric Company -- was once one of the largest companies in the world, and its factory in Nuremburg produced electronics and household appliances since the 1920s. Electrolux, which bought AEG in 1994, announced that it would relocate production to Poland. The workers, represented by IG-Metall, Germany’s metal workers union, responded with a 5 week strike and protest until a settlement was reached in which the workers were given a severance package]
[Lecture and discussion by Peter Decker in Nuremburg, March 9, 2006]
The subject is AEG if only because this strike was without doubt the hardest struggle that has taken place in our region in a long time, because of the duration of the labor dispute, because it was a strike that attracted nationwide attention and has been seriously observed everywhere. Now that it is over I want to draw a balance from it. A balance, obviously, that looks different than the strike committee of IG-Metall no doubt wants to draw. The strike leader said: Do not allow this result to be trashed. And he immediately added: you showed that the workforce did not deserve this, you can be proud! One quickly notices why the call to not let the result be trashed is necessary: Because then it is completely contestable. And this way of saying that anyone who disputes the result is the same as someone insulting the workforce, ignoring the pride entitled to the workforce, well, that’s not exactly subtle. It must still be permissible to consider the purpose and means and result of the struggle even if it does not lead directly into praise of IG-Metall or their objectives.
In advance, I want to address the second, probably much tougher, much more commonly accepted rejection of all possible considerations of the type that I want to make. This is the tone, this is the argument: in the situation of things, what should we have done differently? Meaning, we are so screwed, nothing else is left!
I know that constraints prevail here, but the answer that you give is not yet the same as the position of constraint itself in which you stand. And if one looks at the strike and its outcome, these are defended with the argument that nothing else is possible than what one has in front of oneself anyway; this is again a confession to the sort of merciless realism that the German workers' movement has already had for a long time. The merciless realism is to always allow capital to give the situation and then make the best of it. What should one do differently in our situation? If the situation just is, then, like always, we make the best of it. Here I have an argument on my side, i.e.: nevertheless, one sees where you end up with so much realism: The result of the labor struggle, the result of this realism is now the lay offs. So the question is now whether it is particularly realistic to always -- in every situation that can be given by the other side -- to want to make the best of it. Or whether one does not have to somehow approach things completely differently.
In this case, the best thing achievable was just a contract with the content: The employees waiting for layoffs agree to their layoffs and get a severance and early retirement package that significantly exceeds the usual level in this area. I do not want to talk badly about this part of the result, of course that is a high compensation, approximately 60,000 € or 100,000 € for someone who was in there for 20 years, that is a huge sum of money in a worker's household. But let us not deceive ourselves: That is nice for someone who immediately finds work again. That is a nice sum of money. For those who must live on it, who are only transferred at the end or the middle of this year or next year to the retraining company and then after one year of unemployment benefits must use their funds, or what is left of the funds after taxes are deducted, and the taxes are between 20 and 30% on this sum, that will be used up terribly fast.
As I said before, so I soberly say now: It was a contract in which those who were to be laid off consented to the layoffs and got a generous social plan for it, this is seen so soberly neither by IG-Metall nor the strikers and the Nuremberg staff. One has to think about it in a different way and judge it. One fluctuates between disappointment and realism once again. For six weeks the slogans went this way: We stay here! AEG must remain! We are fighting to keep our jobs! The strike is barely over -- I now essentially keep to the newspapers – and more or less 100% of the staff says: oh well, more was probably not possible. Didn't they already know that before? Did they play a game? Did they show optimism before or do they now admit to a strike goal that they never meant at all? The thing is barely over and the old goal fades from view and one already holds that more was probably not possible. The strike committee also offered help: given the legal situation in Germany, given the balance of power, even given the solidarity of all possible workers and messages of support, in our considerable isolation in the actual fight, the Nuremberg workforce essentially stood alone. And yet again the realism of which I so steadily despair: The sentence “nothing more was really possible” is not the prelude to: “And that is not enough, it is becoming clearer and clearer that what is necessary is something completely different!” But “any more was just not possible” is the sentence with which one ignores the order of the day and says: We tried the possible and you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, from now on everything goes back to normal again. “More was not possible” is not the prelude to: and that is not enough; but it is the prelude to the end, the issue is over.
Now I want to say: Of course, the result was foreseeable, necessary, of course it is true when people say they already knew this would happen anyway. Only: this was inherent in the objective of the fight and its means. And now I want to say a few theses that I will substantiate. Thesis one:
This completely contradicts the tone of the strike, contradicts the whole attitude that prevailed in Nuremberg and found a lot of understanding from all possible sides. Especially in view of the layoffs, it is preposterous to declare one’s love for a job. Certainly, one must admit that whoever is laid off is in for a social disaster in this capitalistic world. The source of income is screwed, and in a world in which everything costs money, a person without an income is in for a disaster. It is already bad if one is laid off, but, because of this, to make the conclusion “the job is good” given that losing it is anything but good, this is a reversal that one should not make. Look rather at the thing turned around: The fact that it is so easy to lose and the yardsticks, criteria, viewpoints under which one gets and then loses a job shows that it is a shitty source of income. A few managers decide that they want to do things differently, and bang, 1700 people are without food! That is the job! And the managers who drop these decisions and apply these criteria, which says under what considerations people are employed and laid off: it is sometimes both the same: They say it -- and to it is also no secret -- they say: We go to Poland, the Poles are more profitable for us. Because Poles do the work for less money. The information is almost primitive: the information means that your job is and has always been the place of exploitation that the company sets up in its interest. A job is there because we can produce a plus with you for our capital. It is there and it is there as long as we find no better way to invest our money, as long as we do not find a better way to make more money from our money. That is the job! And even the arguments with which Electrolux approached the employees and said: Yes, the Poles are simply cheaper, therefore we cannot say no, therefore we must say no to you. Precisely these considerations could make clear to every AEG employee how he is calculated on, how the capital stands towards him. Indeed: they want the labor performance, and they want to pay as little as possible for it so that the difference between costs and profit, which is the concern of the company, is as large as possible.
The whole thing is thus absolutely no reason to ever feel homesick for the job. The entrepreneurs say, yes, this is what the existence of working people depends on in this country: On the fact that capitalists do not find a better opportunity to increase their money than with these people and their work. And as soon as they find something better, they drop them and take those who are even cheaper.
That is why it is so absurd to demand a job, to want to endorse it: It is nevertheless the demand: Use us! Only in this way can we live! It is the demand: put your money into us and it is the affirmation of the criterion. Anyone who wants employment under this criterion wants to affirm the criterion by which he will be laid off! One cannot be in favor of the criterion for employment as good and object to layoffs. That is, one can do it poorly, one can do it beautifully, but there is and remains a contradiction, a stupidity, which also takes its revenge.
Something else is betrayed by the layoffs, by the way: The layoffs betray, of course not only during layoffs but also before when one is employed, that the income for which the employees of course go to work originates not because someone needs an income, but even when he can obtain an income by services for the economy, the income is not the purpose of the company, but only a side effect of profit making. It is there if the work of the people is good enough for the entrepreneurs to make the profit on which they calculate. And it is not there if the entrepreneurs are of the opinion that here and now they no longer need it. The life of the people is a byproduct of profit making and the life of the people is the unfortunate cost of profit making and simply nobody looks this fact in the eye! Because those who would look it in the eye would not line up for jobs. Now the difficulty is, and I well understand if someone or other in the area -- maybe from the strike support, maybe from somewhere else – they say, you are so right, but this is nevertheless old news! There I must say, maybe this is old news -- it is, by the way, completely irrelevant whether it is old or new -- the absurdity is that this is so well-known, but so few let it apply, so few people who are affected by it are ready to look the thing soberly in the eye and say: yes, this is how I stand here in this country!
Now I want to point out some examples of this: the fact is not missing at all, it is well known! The companies’ method of calculating is well known also. And yet there are many ways by which one does not permit what one finds out repeatedly to apply. What I mean is this: The strike newspaper is full of such theoretical performances, errors. It tells of the Stuttgart administration office manager who, with a history of solidarity, drove up and gave a speech in the strike tent to those present and sharply intoned in such a way that one would like to say: how right you are, man, right, right! He says: “Work in Germany is as cheap as dirt! No matter whether they manufacture washing machines, cars or sugar cubes, it is not about people, it is only about profit!” He is right, this man! If one wanted to comment on something by this man, then it would be about this “only profit”, but I will speak about that later. But otherwise: Yes, that’s how it is! But do you think he persists here? It is like that, now we look the thing in the eye? The next sentence he says: “This is an absolute decline in customs!” Here he says, this would virtually be a violation against the rules, of how it goes in Germany, really. This would be a deviation from the justice that is usual in our country and how it sees itself. But this is no deviation! It is exactly the way of calculation that has governed for 50 years, since the last war ended, and before it was also no different, it is exactly the way of calculation that has counted the whole time! No custom is broken here, there is no principle injured.
One must be clear here: there once was a time of full employment in Germany because for a while Germany played a role in exactly those issues of wage levels and productivity and quality on the world market such as China plays today. Yes, if one has totally superior products and at totally low prices, then there are phases where the work for capital is so mercilessly profitable that the entrepreneurs always recruit ever more people and are actually willing because of the scarceness of workers to pay higher wages and even go so far as importing more workers from foreign countries so that Germany can grow ever more. But there is no change in the position of the entrepreneurs, it is not a new way of calculation, in former times it was not a “social capitalism”, a virtually different custom and another custom today. Rather, it is exactly the same morality, the same calculation, where such an insane demand for work exists that one cannot get enough of it as an entrepreneur to the point where work has been made relatively redundant for capital. Relatively in just this sense: productivity has risen since 1955 by perhaps 300 to 400%. Now so many workers are no longer needed! And in Germany, European-wide, worldwide, there are mercilessly many unemployed persons. And those who are just exploited. Who are exploited, not because someone became evil today and exploits those today who he could have exploited yesterday, and did not exploit, but could not exploit because they were not even there yet: Open borders, a lot of redundant workers and other countries with general production conditions so that one can also build modern washing machines there.
That was thus the leadoff to his speech, in which he says everything correctly and then says: But this is a departure from how it actually should happen in Germany! The next point is the “only” in the sentence. You know Lafontaine [German leftist politician – trans.] was here and he says “turbo-capitalism”, Peters, the IG Metall chairman was here and he says “predator-capitalism”. It is always noticeable: none of them says capitalism if they then say predator-, turbo-, shareholder value-capitalism, if they always need these additions, then it is an apology for the principle. It is the denial that it would be the principle! It is the assertion that it would be decadent capitalism, distorted, a deviates-from-its-good-course capitalism. And one does not want to admit that it is capitalism from which one suffers. Although one can recite beautifully: That is the hunt for net profit, that is the desire for maximum gains, and so on. One can say all that, and nevertheless it should not be the principle of our social order! Now he says “only” and adds this to many statements on this subject. It is only about profit and not about the people. One hears already what is wanted: it should be about both. Yes, about profit, that is all right, but about the people too. It is not acknowledged what it is, what profit is about. They will not let it hold that profit means that the person is the negative variable of the society, when it is about profit they are the costs, they are there as service providers to be squeezed and as cost factors to be badly paid. That is profit! When production occurs so that a surplus arises from an advance. Then the person has this double role: as service provider to be squeezed and as cost factor to be held low. If this is clear to me, then I can no longer set an only in addition, for example: well, I am a happy cost factor, but it should still also be about me. How should this be reconciled then? Here I am the negative variable and then it should also be about me? Here one must say, either or! It cannot also be about me if it is about profit. And it cannot be about profit if it is about people! And the union, and this is actually their mission, always takes the position that these two things would have to fit nevertheless. These two things should be able to go peacefully with one another!
Now I read something else. The radius of this dispute, six weeks, produced radical commentary, and nobody lets his radical comments, which he at once makes, simply stand, and simply says: It is like that! Now listen to this: It was on February 15, which is now already three weeks ago, in the newspaper, regarding “Electrolux is not a case of reorganization”. And there is a very sharp, accusing tone in the following: “Nearly 200 million € in net profit, 7% more revenue and a quarter billion in dividends to the shareholders, are those the numbers of a company with a threatened existence that must close the factory as an austerity measure? Not only in the AEG strike tent is the answer clear,” thus we should learn no. “Unlike the stock market: they cheered the action of the Electrolux management. The shares of the company rise and rise. And the Swedes are no isolated case”: France Telekom, Volkswagen, and so on, everywhere large waves of layoffs are announced and the share prices go up to the sky. Now comes the newspaper again with its comment: “Is the whole stock exchange thus nothing but a haven for unscrupulous crisis profiteers who increase their wealth at the expense of those who are robbed of their vocational existence?” Here one would like to say, yes! Yes, that’s it, you said it! He said so himself: the stock market is jubilant, the people thrown out, the company reduces its production costs and rewards the shareholders with higher prices for their shares. Here it occurs to the author that he has a responsibility in the democratic state as a journalist. And he says: “No, that would be too simple.” He said how it is, and now says that would be too simple. Now all you need to do is to look at what the answer is: without the stock market our whole economic system would collapse. Without profits companies could not invest. And create new jobs. And now an interesting question: Is that at all a no to him in what has been presented? Previously, they were all crisis profiteers (this is the wrong term here) who unscrupulously increase their wealth by the fact that they plunge millions into disaster. And now he says in answer: but one must not say that, because the stock exchange is necessary! At least he could say: because we are all dependent on these unscrupulous crisis profiteers! That is the true answer when he says we are all dependent on it! And now I say: Yes, but that is shit that we have to depend on such dirt bags! The fact that your living conditions depend on whether the stock market thinks it is worthwhile to speculate on Electrolux. That is evil! But now he says: But without the stock exchange Electrolux would never have money. And without profits Electrolux could not invest. Basically he only states that others have the power and everything depends on it! And although this should inform us that our misery is that they have the power, the message is: So one should not be so much against them because they have the power! It is a completely insane procedure to simply write the information and then need to say: do not to let it apply then. Thesis one has been that one should not fight for jobs because the job is a place of exploitation. And one notices this just then, when laid off. The interest of capital and the interest of those who must live on work are irreconcilable. The second thesis is:
Electrolux demonstrates this: the history of the strike also demonstrates it in its own way: The managers, on behalf of the shareholders of the corporation, decide with whom, at which location, and what amount of washing machines or something else is produced. They buy people when they need them and they toss them out when they do not need them any longer. Those who depend on being employed can’t by any means force the interest in their exploitation, thus force capital’s interest in their exploitation. That is absurd. Capital is the side that is free to pick for itself whether it needs someone or not. Yes, if the people are needed, if the people do their service for the company, then organized union workers can make the most of the interest of capital in their services; to see whether or not better working conditions and better wages can be extorted because capital wants and needs the work. But if capital says we do not need you any longer, then the pressure is gone. It is impossible for the workers to force further interest in their employment. Such a strike, if the people are no longer needed, can’t exert pressure! This is in the speeches, of course: “exert pressure, maybe we will still be needed for another half year, perhaps they mess something else up in the settlement, if we now do nothing, we raise costs”, but by and large it is and remains the basic principle that if the people who capital wants to get rid of say all at once: we now terminate our willingness to serve! Then you must say to them: now it is too late! If you did before, but now no more! But if we ourselves have nothing, this is also no secret that the AEG staff would not have known at all. All this is not so unknown. The fight for jobs, as it was led at AEG, had a completely different character in the first instance than it received in the last instance. Precisely because workers cannot force the interest of the exploiters in their exploitation, as a rule the fight for jobs exists not in a fight, but in making an offer. The first phase of the defense of jobs at AEG was that Stockholm said we are going to Poland, it is too expensive here and it is cheaper in Poland, then the works council ordered an appraisal that should prove to management that Nuremberg is totally profitable. The workers paid a few scientists so that the scientists submitted to management an expert's assessment, which says: Renovate prudently, they are still profitable! One actually refers to one’s own willingness to serve. As if fighting! One refers to one’s own cheapness and to one’s own efficiency, or to one’s on the job performance, and says: but you do well with us in exploitation, so continue to take us! When management shows these well-intentioned offers the cold shoulder, the staff was ready to offer new sacrifices. Not only to say, “but we were always profitable”, no, they said, “now we will work three hours free of charge for you.” And in addition, and this is already a quite beautiful absurdity: they would agree to a huge number of layoffs if the location site were saved! Then the defender of jobs is ready to go to any length to diminish jobs so that any remain left!
The procedure of offering to prove to the company how helpful one is for its profit, heard just when the capitalists pit the workforces in Poland and Germany against each other -- this is really only one example, this takes place currently everywhere, in all industries – as part of the advertisement for one’s own profitability, this is trash talking about the other. Thus it was not only that we are ready to sacrifice, it was also: where AEG goes, soon it has Polish standards in it! Here one must say that this was no longer the high tone of the fighting Nuremberg workers. It is recognizable, it is objective, that the comparison that AEG or Electrolux makes is not about their work. The company maneuvers the Germans into contrast to the Poles and says to one and the other: you are threats to each other. And someone who does not want to look beyond his job will say: that is correct, the other is my threat. The view: No, you are my threat, you, Electrolux, with your calculations threatening Poland and us, this point of view belongs to the ideals of the unions, but in practice at least the other side also belongs. Indeed, then the Germans say that they are actually better than the Poles, and Electrolux should take kindly to the Germans and should leave Poland, and not in reverse. This fits the muck properly. Now I’ll read you something else from the strike newspaper about pitting workforces against each other, also from a solidarity visit by INA Scheffler in Gunzenhausen, he comes over (they make ball bearings) and tells his story, by the way, exactly the same story as the case of AEG. It is what currently takes place everywhere! So he says: “First they pressured us into a 18 hour shift system, or else they would relocate to Portugal” (and one already knows what “pressured” means: the works council agreed to it) “what they are doing now anyway. They told the Portuguese first of all that they would also have to work in 18 hour shifts, otherwise they would go to Romania!” Yes, so the shop runs! And now: “by all means we must prevent the entrepreneurs from continuing to pit the workforces against each other.” He already has this problem that they are pitted against each other. This also functions when capital says to one and the other: we take you or the others or the others or you and everyone from the two sides always acts by referring to the other side. You already notice that this is a problem. But the other side is: They really want the jobs to remain in Nuremberg and not go to Poland. This leads to the end that they allow themselves to genuinely maneuver in the competition. In truth they do not know a means against the competition. And here I immediately say to you: There must be only one means if one has a common interest with the Poles, and the point of view that AEG must remain in Nuremberg is no common interest with the Poles!
With these methods of proving to the company that one is nevertheless profitable, and if the company rejects this, of making offers to the company so that one could be profitable to an even greater extent, and to talk trash about the company’s alternative, the workers in Poland, this is the true “fight for jobs”! And as long as the AEGers believed that their jobs could be saved, those were the methods. It is a sad irony of history that the radicalism of the strike generally only took place on the grounds that it was clear to the AEGers that nothing more was salvageable.
This is something we in Germany have not yet heard: that a trade union organized a strike and says: we want to produce the greatest possible damage for the company! Here one must say, hats off, hello! But the absurdity is that by this point of view, someone on the AEG staff, and indeed the whole IG Metall, is only ready just because they are so sure that this association, this company, leaves Germany! Every other strike that IG Metall or any other labor union organizes strives to produce no damage because it wants the company to continue to remain competitive and employ again in the morning.
Now Verdi [a public sector union, which includes road crews – trans.] strikes against the unreasonable demand that they should work longer and longer without any monetary compensation, to simply work a few hours free of charge. Now one week ago there was the snow chaos. Here comes some politician -- well, who was it, of course Westerwelle, he is the politician who represents the good breadwinners -- and he says, these striking workers are to blame for the collisions and accidents and injuries and possibly deaths that occurred. What did Verdi say? They could just say: yes, you know what happens if you do not want to pay your workforce, then you just have a mess on your streets! And the consequences connected with a mess. Our strike must exert an effect, otherwise you do not hear us! No, they say, we are not to blame for the traffic conditions, they strictly prove that the chaos was largest where there has been no strike at all, and where there were strikes there were no obstacles at all on the roads! They thus provide arguments that their strike is ineffective! Because they are so safe, and because they are so for Germany, the German economy, the German state, because they are for this whole way of calculating, because they are subject to the suspicion that they could produce a loss somewhere, they deny it without fail. And at AEG exactly the opposite: there a union said: we want the greatest possible damage. And the staff strikes for six weeks! One must imagine this for once! The courage, the audaciousness, the toughness rev everything up! But in fact it is only because they are all sure that the child has already fallen into the well. They dare to strike courageously and tough because they know that nothing more is to be lost by radicalism because everything has already been lost. But this is really just the same, because they know that a strike affects nothing else. In any case, not in the crucial question. Thus the strike becomes something quite peculiar: a kind of punishment action for a country-hopping capitalist. One is even not ready to regard the matter and say soberly: so the company calculates! But one acts as if Electrolux has violated a responsibility to make profit and the livelihood of people compatible. A responsibility that they do not have, which does not exist. One acts as if a responsibility is violated and one punishes them for this violation of their responsibility! To act in such a way is the opposite of examining the way we are calculated with, and so positioning ourselves towards it! It is the decision to not let apply what one finds out. Now my third thesis:
A fight over the question who actually decides what is produced, and when and where and by whom and for whom? If one really means a fight against layoffs, and calls for this, then we must take the freedom away from the entrepreneurs to decide who they want to use and who not! A true fight against layoffs, a fight against the fact that people are simply spat out on the street and possess no more food, a true fight against this is the fight for power in the economy! Or said another way: the fight is against the right of the owner to have the power with his title to ownership to decide what is to be produced, for what purpose, and by whom.
But it is quite clear that nobody thinks of this exactly when they say fight for jobs or we fight for our existence. The only thing that would really be necessary is to abolish the freedom of the entrepreneurs so that they should not decide according to their criteria who produces for what, but the workers decide according to their own criteria about what life needs are produced, for whom and so on. Nobody who says fight for jobs means this. That is an absurdity!
Look again at the dispute and how it has been argued. It is always noticeable with just a bit of distance, if you only dissociate yourself for a moment, then you realize how ridiculous the considerations are. From Würzburg the works council chairman at the VDO came and said: “That is your factory here! And in Würzburg it is our plant! We must not let it be taken away from us!” You already know what is meant by “your factory, our factory.” The circumstance that they are threatened by layoffs is proof that it is not their factory. The owner is not threatened by layoffs. But this is ignored. It becomes a totally different tone altogether, it is actually a plea for moral rights. It is the tone: Actually, it should belong to us. We have a moral right to the factory because we have been working here for 20 or 30 years (earlier, as those who returned from the war sometimes said, we built it!). Here we always want to say to people: You built it and now it belongs to the capitalists! Those were the rules! You signed or didn't you sign? And always continuing: Do you still sign or do you no longer sign? But that’s not what you meant! You meant that it would only be fair and just if we also had a recognition-worthy claim title. And then they act as if by saying it, it would already be settled. As if they would then also have it. Of this thought – “but it would only be fair and just” -- one can say, nicely, that is just a wish, people often have many wishes. But one must still be able to distinguish between what is a wish and what is a recognized wish, a valid claim. The man says: this is your factory. I want to make it clear first of all: how much further along would this man be, and how much further along would his listeners be, if this man stepped before them and would say: this is not your factory! And notice that this is not your factory because they just threw you out. It belongs to them, it is their factory, it is not your factory! And if you think that it should be your factory, then that is something else completely than stating that you have a moral claim which nobody redeems to you. How much further along would the workers be if they said, yes, this is not our factory, and we must ask ourselves whether we want to live with the fact that it is not our factory and raise a claim to the fact that it must be our factory. The whole tone always has the character: one says a statement and means a wish. In the strike speeches one can read: “Electrolux cannot simply take off like this!” One would like to say: But! You see that it can! No, it is always this middle! This is a hard point. Would they beat away on their chest, Electrolux cannot simply take off, we have a right to it! Then they would go to a court, and say, redeem us our right! There they would get to know that they do not have it. Or they would see directly that there is not this right at all. A right that does not exist, I also do not plead for. Then, however, I know how I stand, I know what consequences I must draw because I do not have this claim at all. And the German workers' movement goes from decade to decade with the stunt of acting as if, actually, they have this claim, but not really. They never decide whether they do not have it or if they really do have it. Always on a tightrope, really. That is the way one says: I have nothing in principle against our order. Because I believe -- against all experience -- that there is also a little place intended for me. Now you experience the irreconcilability, one cannot learn it any harder, and the point of view is still not given up that we have here nevertheless also a little place! But now they have no little place! This is precisely the absurdity!
A serious fight for jobs would be a fight against the freedom of property. A fight for power over the economy. And it is clear: This fight cannot be a fight of the AEGer, thus the AEGer as an AEGer. Now the whole power of the whole society opposes them, and, by the way, all workers at all other companies who do not think of fighting because AEG closes. The fight over the question who decides in the economy why and what is produced for whom, this demands a total social fight of all those affected by this order, who always get nothing from the success of this order. They must get together! Then the issue is not so small as: “save the AEG in Nuremberg!” For the issue, save the AEG in Nuremberg, cannot lead to a fight that exerts the power that saves the AEG. That is impossible. But for another issue, that of course already can be done. However, as long as the workforce finds capitalistic exploitation not credit worthy only when the capitalists lose interest in their exploitation, then the direction is not united. That is obvious. Because if it is always only those who are in the terrible condition of no longer being needed, and who have therefore no more pressure in their hands, and others are barely concerned at all because operations just continue, then everything remains the same.
However, there is still something else in it: then the fight would no longer be a fight for jobs, or “work for all”, or any such thing. The fight for the question who decides what is produced, in what amount, in which place, this struggle is about the reasonable and appropriate organization of the necessary work, and not about the fact that all have work. Now comes my fourth thesis:
Anyone who demands jobs takes the plight into which the society has maneuvered him as his own wish, he positions himself behind it, and chooses a goal which in itself -- one understands already that one is forced, people who have no earnings in this society are quite badly off here -- but sets down a purpose that in itself is completely crazy. Work, work, always more work! A society in which work is distributed appropriately and rationally among the people does not at all know the problem that there could sometimes possibly not be enough work for anybody. Which in Germany seems so natural: Müntefering [ a leftist Social Democratic politician – trans.] says, there is too little work in Germany, and nobody laughs to death and says: did he loose his marbles? Everyone understands it: Yes, that is the phraseology: There are millions of unemployed persons. But really: there is not enough work? That is nonsense! Only because ordinary people’s lives are bound to the condition that they must perform profitable work for capital, only because of that are they badly off if there is not enough work. Only because they are in a situation of exploitation for their whole existence. Only because of that is there at all the problem that they need work. But no one needs work. What one needs is the product of work: the food, the useful things, and they must create just that. But nobody needs work. And in a society where people share the work there is no problem when the work is finished. Then one says: stay in bed, you are not needed! And all are content. And the more often that one is not needed, the more beautiful life is! In capitalism it is exactly the opposite: someone who is not needed is finished, because he can live only if he is needed for profit.
This is why with growing unemployment we are witnessing one of the worst absurdities that there can be in a society. In our country the misery increases to the degree that the ease of producing increases. The entrepreneurs constantly increase the productivity of work. Not in order to save on it for the people who work, but to save on wages. According to the productive power of labor (by the way, today in a detailed article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine: a 4.1% annual increase in productivity. Multiplied, as they calculate it, the output of work doubles every 20 years! Every 20 years there are twice as many cars, houses, everything that one knows to be useful things, with the same expenditure that the society must exert) life could always be enriched, the use value of wealth increases ever more and this in a progression. This is expressed in capitalism so that less and less people are needed for the production of things and this is not, hello, free time increases, but in capitalism free time takes the form of unemployment.
And it is still important to say: all this is the absurd reason for the distress that people are in. In this it becomes clear how unreasonable it is to always answer the people with all their urgent necessities: I lose the job, so what I need is: Work. Yes, it is true, in their blackmailed position they stand in such a damn stupid way! But if you take a little distance, and ask why do I actually need work? What is actually missing? Then one makes an idiot of the other side and does nothing good for it.
Thus: this was the attempt to draw a small balance of the AEG strike with four theses. I wanted to keep this short so that we can discuss it, so that one hears other tendencies, opinions, and see whether what I say is understood, or meets a lack of comprehension. I am finished and now discussion is needed.
Public: If we want to recreate the society here, then we make ourselves -- as Germans and Poles, or Chinese – competitors with each other. And there is also no German and no European society that one can change, but there is actually only a capitalist society, which one can address only as a whole. And there we all let ourselves be played against each other.
Decker: I do not understand the second half: “we let ourselves be played against each other”?
Public: We try to take the jobs away from the Poles and so on. And everybody fights somewhere. And in India they fight for their jobs that they take away from the Americans. It is like that all over the world.
Decker: That is the situation now. That is the actual situation, that is globalized capitalism. Now there is hardly any corner of the globe where this order does not rule, and now all people with their will to survive are under this condition. So they stand in antagonism to each other or at least the entrepreneurs put them in this antagonism. So far I understand that. But how does this fit the first half of the argument: “if one wants to change the society …” I did not understand the relationship between these two sentences.
Public: We cannot change the society in Nuremberg.
Decker: Now I understand it. There the cat bites its own the tail: We Nurembergers cannot do it in Nuremberg, the Indians can’t do it in India, and then we cannot do it all somewhere.
Public: And besides many still try to cheat the others.
Decker: This point I would not want to take part in the same way.
Public: We are not in solidarity with the Indians. But nationally we are still against the Poles because they take work away from us.
Decker: Once again: I find the amalgamation of these two things inappropriate: Either I say: Now, how all people stand here -- and no one there wants to recreate the society, first we do not need to impute that to anyone really -- how the people stand today in the landscape, they are pitted in competition against each other by the companies, which play the locations and the workforces against each other. Everything is like that, as you say.
Assuming that there is in Germany or somewhere else the point of view: We no longer want to calculate this way! Now we want to produce the things which we need, we do not want to always work any more, we do not want to always sell any more, we want to produce only what we need, someone who takes this point of view does not take a job away from any Poles! Then it is a question, clearly, a question of the struggle for power: Yes, can one do it in Germany if the European Union rules over virtually every economic law? And then one must just see that this goes, but that is another question. And the union of those who say: now we no longer produce according to the principle of ever more sales, ever more growth, ever more profit, someone who does this also does not stand in competition with someone else. That does not take a job away from Poland.
Public: I find it very nice that you have shown the absurdity. If one reads the newspapers, if one stops for a moment, then one notices how absurd the arguments are. But to think it through, that is the problem. What you said makes us a little bit dumbfounded at the moment, to think further. From the brief thought, we want jobs, to think it out a little bit further, as you have said here, we must first reach it. I think, however, we are not so far yet at all.
Decker: Who here is “we”?
Public: I, I do not know, whoever.
Decker: But this point is important: One must decide whether one is a representative of a popular opinion who by no means sees the thing the way I have propagated it here, or whether as someone who sits here now and agrees a little bit with how I want to show it; whether one aligns with one, or the other. If you talk as he who sits here -- and that would be appropriate -- and not as a representative of popular opinion, and says, I also find it very absurd and I also agree with you in many questions, then you must say to me where you do not agree with me, or where you contradict me, or where you stop short of me, or which consequences you do not approve of, so one gets further. One gets no further if one says, where you are we must first reach it and we are not all there yet. Because then neither the difference nor the identity of the points of view become clear!
Public: I think what you said today is not a general opinion. It is quite unique. The AEG strike was not thought out in the way you said just now. It is very obvious that we here do not think what you say. I say nevertheless “we”. Let us first read the newspaper for some background, then see it completely differently, that you also said a few times. Let us read the articles once more closely and not only so superficially! But that is the problem! Otherwise no AEGer would strike in the way that he went on strike. But what you said was very different!
Decker: You must decide: Does one now want to say that what I said would be logical, but it was different, then it is not quite so logical maybe at all? Or if one wants to say, it is logical, then one needs only to see whether we can find someone from AEG who gives us a bit of time and listens, and then maybe he finds it just as absurd. Nevertheless, it is nothing more than this question! I would only like to fend off something that makes it a riddle, a secret. Yes, I just have an opinion, which other people do not have. I try to speak my opinion as convincingly as I can so that other people say: it is correct, that is correct, I now also see it like that! To do this, I can also only advocate to everyone here in this room, there are no more. And then find others. And by the way, even if one does not find them, then one has just not found them. Then people are just to bear the hardships of capitalism into all eternity if they prefer the other. Nevertheless, we only need to put to ourselves one question: Do I know someone who I must tell this? Don't I know something that I must tell you? I would only like that one does not make a problem out of it, that is why I got going with that “we are not yet so far!” That is so superficial!
Public: In the newspapers it appears that the discussion about the strike always goes in this way, which is so absurd. This shows what the general opinion is, from which we also do not get away, even if we have a short meeting. And that is the problem. I would simply like to think about it, no more, no less. Because what you said today is not common knowledge and to say this is simply important to me.
Public: Isn’t that somewhat hypocritical? Suddenly he says that he cannot yet think it, this is nevertheless a contradiction! How can he prove that he that will think it if he cannot think it? And still what about: Pride in one’s own work, is there a little bit of pride in Germany? Is this psychological moment relevant to the discussion?
Decker: We leave the point with “we are not yet so far in thinking, we cannot yet think towards that”. You said this is a contradiction because nobody can say he cannot think towards it because then he already does. I meant that this explains what I already stated a while ago: It is a lack of clarity whether one speaks about oneself or whether one speaks as a representative of popular opinion, which does not see it this way at all. Only if one leaves it unclear can one make such a sentence. Either I say that about myself, then I can only say, everything that I so think, because I think that. And where I do not think that, then I also reject that. Then I also know why I am against it.
Or, however, I talk about the others: I can say of the others, because they do not think in this direction, then I can ask myself why. But this “because we cannot go there yet in our thinking”, this is a lack of clarity whether one speaks about oneself or about a collective. The sentence actually lives on this suspension of the subject (if I should now talk in a complex way!).
The second point is the story of pride. Pride has a sad dialectic: When German workmanship counted a lot in the world, the workers in Germany were even more inclined to say: Stuff it! Because they could be halfway sure that they were needed. Now it is certainly a kind of desperate advertising for one’s own value in which one virtually says to the company Electrolux: What we make here is quality! One explains his pride in his work and acts as if one has yet another argument that the other side has to recognize and honor. To that extent, this is not primarily psychology, but a tricky way to advertise oneself. But this is really only a side issue.
Do we have any trade unionists at all from the AEG strike here? He could say: This is not correct, everything that I say! That would be to me the best. If someone would say: this is not correct! Then one could say: But it is correct! And then one could talk about it.
Public: Why would the public service want to take the role of forerunner in working hours that go to 42 hours? The public service will probably not be better and also in reality no jobs can be diminished there. Is there a political reason that they take a forerunner role so that the companies can also go to 42 hours?
Decker: The employers in the public service want to expand working hours to 42 hours and now the question was why do they do that at all when they are not calculating capitalists? Why do this then at all? Here one must say first: The national budget is an amount of money and the national budget is cash-strapped, it has more and more debt. The state acts as an employer like an entrepreneur acts as an employer. Its financial difficulties could be cured by the fact that the people deliver the work more cheaply. And it is clear: working longer is the same as working more cheaply. Longer work always means that five do the work that six did formerly, or four do the work that in former times five did; someone becomes redundant. If they throw someone out, then they save 1/5 of the wages in the public service. Or they do not throw them out, if they do not want to do layoffs, then they just no longer hire the young, then the age distribution in the public service just becomes worse and worse, they do not care. The basic pattern is: The state saves money if it saves on people. And that is first of all the point of view. I would take that as the first point. And not immediately ask the question, what ulterior motives are there now, in addition? This was more the direction: do they want to play the role of the forerunner in order to undermine the former work time regime in the private economy? That probably also plays a certain role. And that also certainly takes place. This is the marvelous procedure: One says to the people in the public service: You can quietly work longer, you are not threatened by layoffs! And if they work longer, then one goes to the others, and says: In the public service the 42 hour work week is required, that will also be possible for you! This basic pattern, they pressure the one and with the argument that they can pressure him they go to the next and say: but it is only fair if one creates equal conditions for all that you too are pressured! They could of course say: then we do it in reverse! If we already have the privilege here of not being laid off, then we want that the others are also not laid off, instead of we have to pay for it. But this is only the second level, the first is simple, direct: The state saves money if people work more cheaply. Other elements of the new public collective bargain are also part of it: beginning salaries are much lower. The principle that the salary category rises with age is abolished. Instead it is made dependent on a performance evaluation by the supervisor, whether and how much one gets bonus pay. All these are techniques to get work more cheaply. That is a major goal of the government: They should make the work cheaper for us, then our treasury is in better shape.
Public: I have found that we turn something in a circle. What you said was not continued. Because after your last thesis the question was opened, if it is not about work, but people must be supplied, nevertheless, you need an income. And this income must come from somewhere. Only, how do we do this?
Decker: I want to refer to the sentence that it can be no objective that more and more work is created; that is understood, that is approved. But: The people want to live, must live, but you need an income for it! Where should this come from, how should this be done? Let us once again take a radical turn! And leave the thought that they need an income so that they can buy themselves something. One must say: income equals what one buys, or else one must say: They need food.
Public: Well, they are nevertheless connected. The mediator is money.
Decker: Now however I want to immediately place into question the reasonableness and necessity for this money mediator!
Public: Oh!
Decker: Yes, I want to say not so fast with: Then we need incomes, and then we need of course successful sales, otherwise there is no income, and then we need of course successful and competitive production! And then with the necessity for an income we lead backwards to everything that we actually wanted to abolish! My sentence should say first of all: The people need all these useful things: housing, food, etc …
Public: Here we begin this again: Things! What is generally useful?
Decker: Useful things are not such a big mystery. 80, 90% of the products in the society are beyond doubt those that are useful. Stop with articles of fashion, with useless rubbish, with bullshit serving whims, then the question develops. But that is a boundary area. First the whole food supply is necessary, then housing, then transport is necessary, thus one does not need to open up questions about what is generally useful. Now I wanted to say here only the following: The thing must be produced in a quantity that there is enough for all so that everyone gets what they need. One must determine this quantity. And that, by the way, takes no art to determine, this is more or less known in a society. There one merely needs to ask how much Metro, how much grain, how much sugar and so on, how much they need in a year, they already know that. And then this must only be produced. Income does not have to come up. It depends only on people dividing the work that they themselves decide is necessary. They work for what they want to have. There is nothing more to it!
There one needs the whole idea of Götz Werner, the drugstore chain owner who raised the idea: We want a basic income for all so that the terribly low wages that are paid in industry do not matter! This is a combination of humanism and realism! He just thinks completely on the basis of how capitalism goes here: Capitalism makes ever more totally poor, and nevertheless, actually, people would not have to simply fall into ghettos and social disorder and crime, and all that would not actually have to be, and then he goes on: There is anyway already an enormous state pot which is spent on this whole sector, but one could nevertheless save a lot on bureaucracy by simply transferring to everyone a check for 800 €, and that would be a good basis then so that everyone 1. can accept low paid work, and 2. try to earn a little bit more. In as much as he knows this side, this is also his whole humanism. Thus the pressure of money is not to exist, on the one hand, no longer completely in its normal way, it is to no longer be so vital, but should still be there nevertheless. He relates an idealism. This is just a forward thinking citizen and entrepreneur who says: The whole society goes to hell in a hand basket if there are more and more so totally poor! And pleads for something that, as everyone knows, does not really fit our society properly. So it is not taken up, it will not be pursued any further, because ultimately a guaranteed existence is a money issue, where you ask the state itself or business, which will be charged for this reason, wonders, what for actually, must this be? It is for the economy, its growth. It is for the state, its power, the growth of its financial resources. It does not spend money only so that it goes well for the people! He asks whether this is really necessary and there are then even those who think further: And generally if one equips the people with existence-securing finances, then the compulsion to work diminishes, this only undermines discipline! A marvelous confession to the fact that all work is hard labor for us! Just enforced by money, through financial difficulties, and this is absolutely clear to those who it does not suit at all to have us supplied with money. And if so, then on this level: 345 € plus living space. Thus this is no way out. What Götz Werner has thrown on the table is a social idea on the basis of all the bad economic ways of thinking that I spoke of just now. So much for the subject: How should it proceed? Already the conception that one would need an income is still very much tied to the society as we know it. What is really needed is the organization of the necessary work and the supply that takes place with the goods, according to needs. Nothing more is needed.
Public: Then I would like to hear your concept now, because it is not so simple then, because otherwise I would go into the Metro or into the purchase yard and would take for myself what I need. That cannot be done! They need a means of exchange. The means of exchange up until now was always money.
Decker: I would not be so sure that there must always be money. Who wants to get more from the Metro than he really needs?
Public: The hoarders, because they are always afraid.
Decker: Who hoards and why? Everyone who hoards fears that there will be nothing more tomorrow. People hoard only because of that!
Public: The things will thus be manufactured by him or him, I also need my things, because I must eat. What possibilities do I have to get this? What has to be the intermediary there?
Decker: Nothing has to be an intermediary!
Public: But I cannot simply go in!
Decker: Certainly!
Public: No, that is nonsense! Well now, I am all ears!
Decker: Nothing more is now necessary!
Public: If one sees the necessity for the intermediary in this way, then it seems natural that we are separated from everything here. But, ultimately, I need no intermediary. I need such a thing only under relations where in principle people do not produce for themselves, do not produce what they need to live, but where they are in principle and precisely by money excluded from everything.
Public: If one needs money for everything, then it is clear that someone without money gets nothing. Then it is also clear that money is not at all a mediator, but it separates me. I get the sugar only if I put down the money. The money is the purpose and the sugar is only the means for it. Each week the newspaper is full of such stories: grandma cannot buy soap any longer! There is plenty of soap, everywhere, but she does not have the money any more!
Decker: That is correct, that is very good: Money defines all useful things as instruments of economic power. It makes all useful things the means to access what the other one has, thus an article of exchange. To that extent it is not an aid by which useful things come to the places where they should go, but money is the social institution which makes all useful things objects of bargaining, to be the object of: I pull as much money from your pocket as I can with what I have to offer you.
Public: And if I cannot pull this from your pocket, then you get no more toothpaste! And none of the newspapers say: this is what happens here? Granny cannot clean her teeth any longer?
Decker: This was a contribution to the subject that money income is needed because otherwise people would have nothing. That was a solid clarification in addition. No, money income is not the means to the end of what people have, but money is first of all the definition that all useful things, rather than becoming useful, before they become consumed, are a means of economic extortion against others, an economic lever for the purpose of coercing others to give over what they have. To that extent that is not a contribution to a better supply.
Public: I do not completely agree. Maybe he means it really in the way he says it: The mediator, money, is a means to easily exchange comparable things, so a pound of butter equals approximately one carwash. One must still supplement this: Money then becomes the mediator when it is used by a third, by the ruling power who sanctions it. And then it begins. Because the money is the only kind accepted, this costs seven marks, that is nevertheless marvelous! That makes it easy for everyone. That is above all the thought in this system.
Decker: Perhaps you mean the word exchange seriously: Then this is, of course, different again. If I want to use my production as the lever for those things that I want to take from the production of others, if that is what commerce actually is -- and so goes the entire economic theory of money – yes then, money makes a mess useful. Because without money exchange would be completely difficult. But this is a mere tautology. The question is why supply should be organized at all as exchange. That is the real question. Money is first of all the definition: everything, all use values, comes to its destination, where it is used, only by exchange. Therefore it is so ridiculous to say money is a good thing when there is to be exchange because money is the definition of that which must be exchanged.
Perhaps another argument to conclude: We always get asked -- and I know this, it is always like this -- “How should it look, the other society that we want to establish?” I must say at once: first we agree about the criticism of the present. If we really agree about it, then it is no great mystery as to how the other should look. The point of view that the criticism is ok, but something different is nevertheless unlikely, difficult, and maybe not at all possible always overlooks that the causes were already stated in the criticism, why it often looks so bad for the care of normal people. And if the causes are identified and if these causes are not a natural catastrophe, and in modern society it is not really the case any more, in former times one starved because of harvest failures, today one starves because labor is so productive. If it is not because of natural circumstances that a comfortable life is missing, then it can surely be established, then the social causes can also probably be eliminated. The further inquiry about how it generally goes and now we already make a plan as to how it should go, this question is at least too in principle. Because it should already headed for.
And second is the recommendation: People, do not let yourselves always fall for the logic of capital that you suffer from! This is the same as the recommendation: conquer the power to try out for yourselves how to organize things best! And that is not the same as: I came in 2006 with a plan and made myself ridiculous in a world where nobody wants to abolish capitalism. That is laughable and not necessary and not helpful. The structure of another society, which finds out what is necessary and useful, is made then, when that is the task. Up until then the task is a completely different one. We must spread the opinion that capitalism is intolerable and this opinion is not common, that is the starting point. This is important because the debate about how you imagine the organization of production and distribution and so on, one can make a lot of speeches about it, but basically one makes oneself ridiculous in front noisy people who are not at all of the opinion that it must be changed at all.