DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

While the working class is the only force with the social power to overthrow capitalist rule, even in a country like Australia where the working class comprises the vast majority of the population, it cannot succeed in abolishing capitalism and beginning the socialist reconstruction of society without support from its allies in intermediate classes. At the same time, these allies — the traditional petty bourgeoisie and self-employed or salaried professionals and technicians — share an objective interest with the working class in breaking the domination of monopoly capital.

The composition and character of the middle classes have undergone significant changes as the structure and composition of the working class itself has changed. But these changes in no way reduce the importance of forging an alliance with them. Unless the workers' movement can demonstrate to broad layers of the middle classes that it can offer a solution to the problems monopoly capitalism imposes on them, they will tend to come under the influence of demagogic representatives of big capital who will seek to mobilise them against the working class.

The mobilisation of the middle-class allies of the working class in Australia poses problems far different from those in countries where the working class is a minority and is surrounded by large numbers of petty-bourgeois producers, including a massive peasantry.

The traditional middle-class allies of the working class have primarily been small independent producers and proprietors — working farmers, small shopkeepers and artisans. However, changes in the structure of industry, agriculture and the labour force through the growth and further monopolisation of Australian capital since the Second World War have radically reduced the social weight of these classical petty-bourgeois layers.

Nevertheless, the importance of these traditional petty-bourgeois strata is greater than their numbers would indicate. The products and services provided by these small proprietors make an important contribution to the standard of living of the working class. Working farmers in particular supply food, fibres and other agricultural products essential to the well-being of the entire population.

While the monopolisation of Australian capital has reduced the relative weight of the petty bourgeoisie, it has not eliminated it. In fact, monopolisation continually generates a strata of small proprietors who fill small but important gaps in the system of production, distribution and provision of services. Some sectors of the petty bourgeoisie — those offering specialised services and technical skills — even increase in significance relative to the population as a whole and relative to their own previous position.

The modern petty bourgeoisie is a highly variegated social class, hybrid between capital and wage labour. Within it are those who have accumulated enough capital to begin to hire others to work alongside themselves and who are thus on the verge of becoming fully-fledged capitalists. But as well, there are those (like independent owner-drivers) who simply own their own tools (even if they are expensive tools), hire no labour, and with each downturn of the capitalist business cycle find themselves thrown back into the ranks of the working class. The deepening capitalist economic crisis also generates a layer of semi-proletarians — small producers forced to supplement the meager income provided by their own business by selling their labour power to an employer.

The working class and the independent petty proprietors form the two exploited classes within capitalist society. Big capital exploits the latter through bank loans and state taxes, and through monopoly pricing arrangements. The monopolies extract surplus value from independent producers like small farmers by forcing them to sell their produce at low prices and to buy the raw materials and producer goods they need (seed, fertiliser, farm machinery, etc.) at high prices.

In addition to new groups of small proprietors, monopoly capitalism has created a spectrum of professionals, technicians and other salaried occupations — the so-called new middle class.

At one end of this spectrum are sizable numbers of teachers, low-paid technicians, and other employees on small salaries. The ruling class does its utmost to create the illusion that these people belong to the middle classes. However, the levels of income, social status, and conditions of work of most of these salaried employees are increasingly similar to those of ``blue-collar'' industrial workers. Thus, the distinction between a teacher, a lower salaried technician or a bank clerk, and a manual worker on an assembly line is increasingly a distinction within the working class itself between skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers. Most of these salaried employees have no perspective of ever being able to make a living other than by selling their labour power and are thus part of the working class.

At the other end of the spectrum of professionals and technicians are the self-employed or highly paid lawyers, journalists, accountants, university professors, doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. The remuneration they receive is often sufficient for them to make sizable investments. This layer as a whole tends to consciously identify with the employing class, its political command, and its ideology. However, even these professionals, especially the younger ones, can move in an anticapitalist direction under the hammer blows of the growing social crisis of monopoly capitalism.

In seeking allies among intermediate layers, the workers' movement must distinguish between salaried employees required to maintain capitalist relations of production, and those needed to maintain and expand the forces of production. Among the former are those whose function is to maintain or increase the rate of exploitation (for example, managerial personnel, supervisors, time and motion experts) and those whose role is related to the state's repressive apparatus (for example, police, prison guards, certain social workers). Among the latter are scientific and technical researchers, engineers, draughtsmen, statisticians, etc. Historical experience has shown that while the vast majority of the former group remain enemies of the workers' movement, many of the latter can be attracted to the socialist cause.

Occupying an intermediate position between wage labour and capital, the middle classes vacillate between the two decisive social classes and have no independent social perspective or program for society as a whole. In critical situations they tend to throw their support behind one of the decisive social classes. It would therefore be fatal for the working class to attempt to forge an alliance with the middle classes by abandoning its own program and accepting some specious ``middle-class program'' that respects capitalist political and economic power.

Such an orientation would divide the working class, the main force for progressive social change. It would pit its most class-conscious and combative elements, increasingly won to the perspective of socialism, against its backward elements, still under the sway of capitalist ideology. It would demoralise workers struggling against flagrant exploitation or abuse of their rights by the exploiter section of the middle classes.

Moreover, such an orientation would not help to cement an alliance between the working class and the middle classes. The problems confronting the oppressed and exploited sections of the middle classes are generated by the deepening crisis of monopoly capitalism. As these problems grow worse the middle classes will look for radical answers to their problems, breaking from the ideological hold of the traditional capitalist parties. An alliance policy that does not challenge monopoly capitalism will inevitably fail to provide cogent answers to their problems, leading radicalised sections of the middle classes to turn away from the working class toward ultraright or fascist political forces.

The working class can forge an alliance with the middle classes, particularly their lower, exploited and oppressed layers, only by demonstrating that it has clear answers to their problems and the workers have the power and will to implement them.

The small independent producers — many of whom face expropriation by big capital — must be convinced that the socialist aim of expropriating capital does not threaten their property. It is necessary to prove to these layers that there is no antagonism between, on the one hand, workers' control of production, the abolition of commercial and banking secrets, the nationalisation of the banks, freight companies, agribusiness and industrial monopolies, a state monopoly of foreign trade and, on the other hand, reduced freight charges, lower prices for industrial products (fertiliser, machinery, consumer goods), cancellation of debts and provision of cheap credit terms, and which can also stimulate the voluntary formation of cooperatives.

A series of working-class demands can meet the most pressing needs of these layers: introduction of fair taxation, radical improvement of the social security system, and development of the social infrastructure (housing, hospitals, schools, childcare facilities, etc.).

The determination of the workers' movement to respond positively to crucial social problems, such as the destruction of the environment and the threat of nuclear war, and to fight for the political, social and economic rights of the specially oppressed sections of the population can draw broad layers of the middle classes to the side of the workers.

By supporting the progressive demands and struggles of the middle classes and linking these struggles with those of the working class, the socialist movement can forge a broad alliance between them, mobilising and unifying the labouring masses in action against the political and economic power of monopoly capital.