— “Zëri i popullit” —
The bourgeois and revisionist theoreticians, sociologists, philosophers and economists have for many years been inventing a whole series of theories, which they have publicised with all sorts of sermons, calling them “guides for salvation from the evils of the old society.” They are the theories of “people’s capitalism,” “the post-industrial society,” “socialism with a human face,” etc. They are intended to mollify the discontent of the working masses, to confuse them in order to prevent the ideas of revolution from striking root in their minds. But, as Comrade Enver Hoxha points out in his book “Imperialism and the Revolution” (p. 155, Eng. ed.), “Under the ever-greater pressure of the crisis and defeats they have suffered in their predictions and their manoeuvres to strangle the revolution, the bourgeoisie and the revisionists are trying to find new expedients and to fabricate other fraudulent theories.” One of them is the theory of the “humanization of labour,” which has to do with the organization of capitalist production.
In point of fact, in essence this is nothing new. During this century the bourgeois science on the organization of production has gone through several stages. It recognizes Frederick Winslow Taylor, whom it has advertised as the “friend of the workers,” as the “father” of the scientific organization of labour. Later, others tried to complement Taylorism. In the period between the two world wars they even set up schools of “human relations.” As far as the theorizings of the apologists of capital about the “humanization of labour” are concerned, they originate from the ‘50s and ‘60s. They are the continuation of the former both in regard to their content and their intention. All of them are characterized by the unsparing utilization of liberal-humanistic phrases in theory in order to justify in practice even more merciless speed-ups.
The bourgeois theoreticians who talk today about “the humanization of labour,” “its democratization,” etc., have also produced in this context plans which are allegedly intended for the “improvement of the quality of life at work,” or the “humanization of the workplace.” From these theories and plans, capital in the second half of the ‘60s has gone into their experimentation in factories, workshops and firms. Thus experiments in this direction have been made in the Italian firms “Fiat” and “Olivetti,” as well as in the plants of the West-German “Siemens” company. According to data from the international Centre of Advanced Technical and Professional Training in Turin, in 1975 the new organization of the production process on the basis of the “humanization of labour” was extended to 338 enterprises in 32 countries. This process is being stepped up. The facts have clearly shown that the bourgeois theoreticians and experimenters are not in the least concerned about the humanization of work, about creating “human relations” in this basic process of social activity. Their main concern is only about the exploitation and mobilization not only of all the physical resources, but also of all intellectual, emotional and creative resources for the maximum capitalist profit. The organizational measures they propose in this direction do not affect at all the existing exploitative relations of production. And, it is clear that in these conditions, as the founder of the doctrine of scientific socialism, Marx, has pointed out, “all the means for the development of production are transformed into means for the subjugation and exploitation of the producers.”
The facts from everyday experience do not show any “humanization” of labour in the countries ruled by capital, but on the contrary show its inhuman and criminal activity. In the various factories, mines and construction sites, the workplace of the worker is becoming more and more his grave. Thus, from information published in the bourgeois press, at least 10 million workers have been injured and about 100,000 others have died in only one year in the United States as a result of the speed-ups. Some time ago, the British bourgeois paper “The Times” admitted that 326,500 accidents at work took place in Britain during 1976. Italy too has a high industrial death rate, and in general the number of victims of capitalist exploitation in that country is very high: from 1956 to 1976 there were 22,600,000 cases of accidents at work or industrial diseases. Apart from accidents, in the countries ruled by capital, millions of workers are exposed to lethal chemicals. The American bourgeois magazine “U.S. News and World Report” recently wrote that at least 6,000,000 American workers are exposed to lethal or very high doses of chemical agents. These facts suffice to show a reality which Engels as early as in his time, had expressed with the words: “…the attitude of the factory-owner towards the worker is no human attitude, it is a merely economic attitude… The factory owner is in no position to understand that besides the relations of sale and purchase, there also exist other relations between him and the workers; they are not humans to him, they are only ‘hands’ and that is how he constantly refers to his workers….”
The sermons of the bourgeois theoreticians about “the humanization of labour” in the context of so-called “industrial democracy” are intended to cover up the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, that between labour and capital, to reconcile the increasing class antagonisms of that society in crisis and establish “social peace” which reaction so longs for. This becomes clear when we see that while coming out with their concepts of “the humanization of work,” the apologists of capital present the new methods of organization of capitalist production as a universal means for the solution of class conflicts in the sphere of production. According to them, if these methods are applied, the exploitation of the workers in capitalism “is overcome,” or even “disappears.”
In this ideological aggression against the working class, which is also intended to sabotage its revolutionary struggles, the revisionist theoreticians play their role by fighting on the same barricade with the bourgeois theoreticians. Thus, according to the Soviet revisionist magazine “MEMO,” “in the conditions of historic changes in our world” monopoly capitalism “has limited its appetite” and, so to say, become more humane. According to the Soviet revisionists, “in the present conditions the tendency is for the bourgeoisie to step up its exploitation of the workers outside the bounds of capitalist production.” According to this distorted presentation of the reality, it comes out that the exploitation of the proletariat by capital is allegedly decreasing.
It is obvious that, regardless of the desires of the old and the new bourgeoisie and the bourgeois-revisionist theoreticians, and in fact contrary to them, the reality cannot be covered up. The facts show very clearly that the proletariat, and the industrial proletariat in particular, remains, just as it was in the past, the principal subject of savage capitalist exploitation. This is clear if we also take into account that not infrequently the big multinational companies achieve their highest rate of profit in the more developed capitalist countries precisely as a result of higher labour productivity, the extremely high rhythms of work and the merciless exploitation of the working class of these countries. The reality shows that the bourgeoisie remains a parasitic class which accumulates fabulous wealth from the exploitation and impoverishment of the broad working masses, and of the proletariat in particular, that, on the basis of this savage exploitation of the proletariat, and the very character of capitalist production which carries it out, the class contradictions between labour and capital become even more irreconcilable.
Only socialism can give the proletariat and, in general, all the working masses, the joy of work, because it liberates all the productive forces of the society from their impediments. Only by overthrowing the capitalist system and its enslaving wages system can work be humanized. This is the historic mission of the working class. And this mission can never be sabotaged by the bourgeois preachings about the “humanization” of labour under capitalism, which aim to present the revolution and class struggle as anachronistic, to prettify capitalism and to consolidate the political and economic power of the bourgeoisie.
“Zëri i popullit” is the organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania
(From the magazine “Albania Today,” No. 3, 1979)
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