VI. Workers’ Control of Distribution

In the present conditions of class struggle the Syndicalist distributive workers are organized in the same principles as the factory and other industrial workers. The basis and control of the organization is in the meeting of the workers at their place of employment where their job committee is elected. Thus each large store would have a House Committee. In the case of smaller individual shops, as these are usually found in groups (as grocers, chemists, butchers, bakers, etc.) About cross-roads or minor thoroughfares, workers from each shop would meet to elect their group committee. Similarly the warehousemen in the wholesale trade would elect their warehouse committee.

As in the case of all other syndicates, the shop committees are federated to the local Federation of Syndicates, representing all Syndicalist workers in the locality. In the other direction, the Shop Committees are federated to the District Committee of Distributive Workers, and the District Committees to the National Council of Distributive Workers. The National Council is, like other syndicates, federated to the National Council of Labor, which brings together and co-ordinates the whole of the Syndicalist forces.

The work of the Distributive Syndicates is, of course, not only to wage a struggle for better working conditions and higher wages, but also to prepare for the taking over of distribution by the workers. To that end the Syndicalist shop and warehouse workers study their trade. They observe and discuss where such and such commodities are stored and how they could be distributed more justly and with greater efficiency. This task is urgent, for workers must be fed during the General Strike and Revolution.

The Spanish Syndicalists acted in this way. The bakers of Barcelona, before the Revolution, knew the locality and amount of all stocks of flour, and the oven capacity of the city’s bakeries. On the glorious 19th July, 1936, when the revolutionary workers of Barcelona went to the barricades, their baker comrades ensured them and their families bread. The Peasants’ Syndicate co-operated with the Distributive Syndicates in the collection of food in the country and its distribution in the towns of Catalonia.

During the stay-in-strike of the Italian engineering workers in 1920 the peasants’ syndicates, the distributive and transport workers and the co-operatives combined to supply food to the strikers who held the factories for four weeks.

In Britain the workers in the mining areas, particularly Durham, have shown they can feed the workers by collecting food and running communal kitchens during as strikes of three, four, six months or even longer. The workers can and must ensure their own food supplies in strike and revolution.

The Revolution accomplished, the Distributive Workers’ Syndicate will, of course establish liaison with the productive syndicates most closely related to it; Farm Workers, Food Preparation Workers, Wood Workers, Textile Workers, Clothing Workers, Leather Workers, Printers and such.

It will be understood that the Syndicalist method of distribution, like the Syndicalist method of production, has nothing in common with the principles of political control advocated by most Socialists and even by most politicians of all brands in modern times. Political control means control first of all by Cabinet Ministers who usually have no experience of the technique they claim to direct. A country squire is made Minister of mines, a lawyer Minister of Aircraft Production, a political journalist is made First Lord of the Admiralty. In municipal affairs, parsons, butchers and publicans pretend to run the trams, supervise education and manage the drainage system. Government by amateurs! Instruction by the uninstructed!

Distribution like industry is a thing of technics and requires direction by persons of experience, those who have given time and thought to the theory and practice of their craft. Distribution means more than standing behind a counter, handing over a packet of cigarettes and counting 3 pence change. Every shop assistant should be an expert at his job, and Syndicalism will give him the incentive to develop the interest which will make him an expert. A bookshop assistant should know something of literature and printing, a tailor’s assistant something of clothes, and a provision hand something of food, its care and attractive presentation. They should be able to make the best of the goods and advise the customer.

Of course distribution involves much more than shop-keeping. Each center of population has its warehouses while behind them are the special warehouses of the railway centers and docks. All these need a knowledge of certain technics. Meat refrigeration, banana ripening, ventilations of wood-ware and a thousand other problems require special knowledge and experiences.

Examples of the disastrous effect of government interference in distribution are only too abundant. Resisting the temptation to choose too many of the hundreds of examples available, I pick one from the hat. Here are headlines from the Daily Express, 12 th June, 1943:

“TOMATOES ROT WHILE SHOPS GO WITHOUT”

“In London yesterday shops complained that they had no tomatoes. In Manchester wholesalers complained that their tomatoes were rotting.”

It is left to the reader to supply further examples from his daily reading and, better still, his observation.

But, lest it is thought that all this is due to the difficulties of war-time, let us take examples from the first few months of war, when there was no air raid, no fighting on land, no labor shortage, and plentiful stocks of food abounded.

The following is taken from a pamphlet Chaos on the Home Front published by the Co-operative Movement.

Scunthorpe Co-operative Society had a very successful creamery.

“We had a certain amount of good fresh butter in stock and on September 22, the Food Minister requisitioned it. The butter was kept there for a considerable time. Immediately they took it over they increased the price by 10 shillings a hundredweight, or £10 a ton. We were allowed to draw our own butter out of our own cooling chamber and pay the Food Ministry the increased price of 10 shillings a hundredweight.”

The society had some butter they needed but were not allowed to touch. They wrote a letter to the Minister saying that the butter was going bad and needed turning. The reply told them to send the butter to London, from there it went to South Wales. Was it fresh? The customers were.

“You used to get good sized prunes for 6 pence per pound. The Ministry requisitioned the whole lot and sold them back to the grocers at a price which means that the retailer cannot sell the big fat ones for less than 8 1/2 pence, or the small ones.”

“But the outstanding example of official muddle was fish. On the outbreak of war the Ministry at once abandoned the east Coast ports and set up a fish distribution center at Oxford, with a chain of branch centers. The scheme did not work, supplies failed to reach the places where they were wanted. Much fish went bad because of the length of time taken in unpacking it and repacking it.”

Experience of lecturing on the subject has brought to my notice doubts which I would not otherwise have believed possible, for most of these problems, questions of human and trade relationships, have already been solved, even under capitalism.

The most frequent of these runs like this, “But how will the wishes of the consumer be met? What organization will the Syndicalist set up whereby the consumer may express his preferences?” No organization, I hope. Such a special organization is about the least likely way of his wishes being effectively expressed. Better the way developed by the people themselves.

Goods, as now, will be produced in great variety, for workers like producing different kinds, and new models, of goods. Now if some goods are unpopular, they will be left on the shelves to be devoured by mice and moths or embalmed by spiders. Of other goods more popular, the shops will be emptied. Surely it is obvious that the assistant will decrease his order of the unpopular line and increase his order of the popular. Every shop-keeper does that now and learns, often with uncanny accuracy, to anticipate his customers’ need. Even the newspaper seller at the street corner must anticipate so many of News, so many of Star and so many of Standard; to balance himself between extra customers and left-over copies.

“But what if the productive syndicates refuse to meet the need of the consumers as relayed to them by the distributive workers?” cries our stubborn questioner, defending his last barricade. Well, it is something that just won’t happen. Everyone who makes something wishes that thing be useful and desirable. Man’s work must have social meaning, must be useful, or he is unhappy in his work.

Some years ago it used to be said that one of the worst punishments of the military “glasshouse” was for a man to fill a wheelbarrow with lead shot, push it to the top of an incline then tip the barrow allowing the shot to roll back. He then descended and refilled the barrow, repeating the rest of the process. It was said that this meaningless task, like so many other military tasks, nearly drove the victims to madness. The lack of social meaning was the sting of the punishment, which must have been invented by a student of Dante.

Another “problem” we have presented to us is that of someone wanting an article which is not made. But is this likely to happen? People are stimulated and guided in their choice of goods by what they see in the shops and catalogs. Is anyone likely to make a sketch of the peculiar footwear of the ancient Assyrians, take it to the shoe shop and say, “Have you a pair of shoes like this, size six, please?”

All these are small problems which we can safely leave to the day when they arise. It is for us now to determine the general outlines of the New Society and lay its foundations. It is possible that the further stages will be much easier and more satisfying than we, in the dull, grey age of capitalism, had dared to hope.