""My point about distribution ignored.

It's the specifics of how capital and labout are irreconcileable that you continue to ignore e.g. the conflict between keeping down costs versus the need to raise wages to consume more to keep profits rising.""

Not ignored, Auto!! Already answered.

In every equation there is an optimum balance point. Cost versus pay is an equation. Ergo:- solve the equation and you have the best available outcome for both sides.

""Surely compromise is unacceptable to Capitalism, any attempt to put the brakes on causes the Capitalist to withdraw and move on to easier pickings.""

In my lifetime, Ake, labour has never tried compromise as a way to achieve a better result.

A flat out demand for insupportable increases, coupled with demands for job demarcation, and pay differentials which meant everybody moved up a step but nobody was satisfied. That was the history of pay negotiations in the sixties and seventies, and if the boss refused to bankrupt the company by agreeing, then the labour force bankrupted it for him by strike action.

You see I DO have a long memory, too long for the comfort of some here, who might prefer to forget the days when a factory could be shut down for weeks because the wrong employee changed a light bulb.

There have, however, been many examples of (usually, but not always, small) companies where boss and workers HAVE negotiated compromise solutions which have led to those workers receiving more than the current union rate, and they have traditionally been vilified for it by the workforce at large, and been called traitors to their kind.

Much more sensible, IMHO, to have emulated them.


You can talk to me about Capitalist intransigence, but you need to recognise that intransigence has been, and still is, a two way street, and the meeting point IS in the middle of the road.

Don T