FAQAnar:B.4.4 - Mais qu'en est-il des périodes où il y a une demande importante de travailleurs ?
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Catégorie:En traduction Bien sûr, il y a des périodes où la demande pour le travail excède l’offre de travail, mais ces périodes tiennent les graines de la dépression pour le capitalisme, comme les travailleurs/euses sont en excellente position pour lutter, autant individuellement et collectivement, contre leur rôle alloué de commodité(e)s. Ce point est traîté en plus amples détails dans la section C.7 (Qu’est-ce qui cause le cycle d’affaire capitaliste ? ) et alors, nous en parlerons pas tout de suite. Pour maintenant, il est suffisant de mentionner que durant les temps normaux (ex. : la plupart du temps du cycle d’affaires), les capitalistes jouissent souvent d’une autorité plus étendue sur les travailleurs et travailleuses, une autorité dérivant d’un pouvoir de négociation entre le capital et les forces de travail inégal, comme noté par Adam Smith et plusieurs autres.
Toutefois, cela change durant les temps de grande demande pour le travail. Pour l’imager, imaginons nous que l’offre et la demande égale l’autre. Il est clair qu’une telle situation ne serait bonne que pour la travailleuse ou le travailleur. Les patrons ne pourraient pas facilement renvoyer un(e) travailleur/euse puisqu’il n’y aurait personne pour les remplacer et que les travailleurs/euses, autant collectivement par solidarité qu’individuellement par « sortie » (ex. : quitter et se trouver un autre travail), pourrait assurer qu’un patron respecte leurs intérêts au plus haut point. Les patrons trouveraient ça difficile de garder leur autorité intacte ou de freiner les augmentations de salaire, causant des compressions de leurs profits. En d’autres mots, quand le taux de sans-emploi diminue, le pouvoir des travailleurs/euses augmente.
Looking at it another way, giving someone the right to hire and fire an input into a production process vests that individual with considerable power over that input unless it is costless for that input to move; that is unless the input is perfectly mobile. This is only approximated in real life for labour during periods of full employment, and so perfect mobility of labour costs problems for a capitalist firm because under such conditions workers are not dependent on a particular capitalist and so the level of worker effort is determined far more by the decisions of workers (either collectively or individually) than by managerial authority. The threat of firing cannot be used as a threat to increase effort, and hence production, and so full employment increases workers power.
With the capitalist firm being a fixed commitment of resources, this situation is intolerable. Such times are bad for business and so occur rarely with free market capitalism (we must point out that in neo-classical economics, it is assumed that all inputs - including capital - are perfectly mobile and so the theory ignores reality and assumes away capitalist production itself!).
During the last period of capitalist boom, the post-war period, we can see the breakdown of capitalist authority and the fear this held for the ruling elite. The Trilateral Commission's 1975 report, which attempted to "understand" the growing discontent among the general population, makes our point well. In periods of full employment, according to the report, there is "an excess of democracy." In other words, due to the increased bargaining power workers gained during a period of high demand for labour, people started thinking about and acting upon their needs as humans, not as commodities embodying labour power. This naturally had devastating effects on capitalist and statist authority: "People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talent".
This loosening of the bonds of compulsion and obedience led to "previously passive or unorganised groups in the population, blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women... embark[ing] on concerted efforts to establish their claims to opportunities, rewards, and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled to before."
Un tel « excès » de la participation dans la politique posa bien sûr une sérieuse menace au statu quo, puisque pour les élites qui ont écrit le rapport, il était considéré axiomatique que « l’ opération efficace d’un système politique démocratique requiert _some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. . . . In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it is also one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively." Such a statement reveals the hollowness of the establishment's concept of 'democracy,' which in order to function effectively (i.e. to serve elite interests) must be "inherently undemocratic."
Any period where people feel empowered allows them to communicate with their fellows, identify their needs and desires, and resist those forces that deny their freedom to manage their own lives. Such resistance strikes a deadly blow at the capitalist need to treat people as commodities, since _(pour re-citer Polanyi)_ people no longer feel that it "is not for the commodity to decide where it should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed." Instead, as thinking and feeling people, they act to reclaim their freedom and humanity.
Comme il fut noté au début de cette section, les effets économiques de telles périodes de prise des pouvoirs et de révolte sont discutés à la section C.7. Nous terminerons en citant l’économiste polonais Michal Kalecki, qui nota qu’un continuel boom capitaliste ne serait profitable aux intérêts de la classe dirigeante. En 1943, en réponse aux plus optimistes keynésianistes, il nota que _"to maintain the high level of employment. . . in the subsequent boom, a strong opposition of 'business leaders' is likely to be encountered. . . lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of industry' would be anxious 'to teach them a lesson'" because "under a regime of permanent full employment, 'the sack' would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined and the self assurance and class consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. . . 'discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated by business leaders than profits. Their class interest tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view and that unemployment is an integral part of the normal capitalist system." [quoted by Malcolm C. Sawyer, The Economics of Michal Kalecki, p. 139 and p. 138]
Therefore, periods when the demand for labour outstrips supply are not healthy for capitalism, as they allow people to assert their freedom and humanity -- both fatal to the system. This is why news of large numbers of new jobs sends the stock market plunging and why capitalists are so keen these days to maintain a "natural" rate of unemployment (that it has to be maintained indicates that it is not "natural"). Kalecki, we must point out, also correctly predicted the rise of "a powerful bloc" between "big business and the rentier interests" against full employment and that "they would probably find more than one economist to declare that the situation was manifestly unsound." The resulting "pressure of all these forces, and in particular big business" would "induce the Government to return to. . . orthodox policy." [Kalecki, quoted by Sawyer, Op. Cit., p. 140] This is exactly what happened in the 1970s, with the monetarists and other sections of the "free market" right providing the ideological support for the business lead class war, and whose "theories" (when applied) promptly generated massive unemployment, thus teaching the working class the required lesson.
Alors, même si elles sont détrimentielles à la génération des profits, les périodes de récession et de haut taux de sans-emploi ne sont pas seulement inévitable mais sont aussi nécessaire au capitalisme afin de « discipliner » les travailleurs/euses et « leur enseigner une leçon » _ And in all, it is little wonder that capitalism rarely produces periods approximating full employment -- they are not in its interests _(voir aussi la section C.9). Les dynamiques du capitalisme font que les récessions et les sans-emploi sont inévitables, tout comme elles rendent la lutte des classes (qui génére ces dynamiques) inévitable.
