The International Socialist Group is a group of revolutionary socialists, convinced that there can be no solution to the continual crises and contradictions of a fundamentally flawed and exploitative capitalist system and its state machinery, which consistently functions only to secure the profits and reinforce the power of the wealthy minority at the expense of the exploited majority.
Labour governments - and many far more radical reformist governments in other countries - have been elected to office over the last 100 years, only to confirm as an iron rule of history that any party committed to "reforming" capitalism serves first and foremost to preserve it and to contain the more radical demands of the working class. Marx and Engels showed from experiences 150 years ago that the state machinery (armed forces, police, judiciary, civil service bureaucracy and parliamentary institutions) is an integral part of the capitalist system, and cannot be used by the workers’ movement to dismantle capitalism.
Drawing on these lessons, Lenin and Trotsky, leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, recognised the need for the working class to organise itself independently of the capitalist state, and to develop its own structures of power. They insisted that it was necessary not to take over, but to smash the state machinery of capitalism if genuine alternative, socialist policies were to be implemented in the interests of workers and the exploited majority.
But they also recognised that in the advanced capitalist countries, especially where capitalism ruled through the "democratic" façade of parliamentary structures, workers maintained great illusions in the possibility of reforms, and in the social democratic parties. To achieve a revolutionary situation it was necessary not only to build revolutionary parties, but also to develop tactics and a programme of action that could link the revolutionaries with the broader layers of the working class, and create conditions for mass struggle in which big political lessons could be learned.
This was the basis on which Lenin and Trotsky insisted that the new Communist Parties must reject ultra-leftism and turn to the masses. It was why they put forward not only the tactic of the United Front, but also, following the example of Marx and Engels, developed a series of ’transitional demands’ to lead workers beyond the demands of day to day workplace struggles to confront the need for bold, revolutionary action.
This approach is still vital for the British left today. It’s not enough to have tens or hundreds of thousands of workers angry and disaffected from New Labour: for this to lead towards a progressive, socialist response to the situation, workers have to begin again to organise, mobilise, take trade union and political action, test out and expose the shortcomings of their trade union and political leaders, learn their own power, and develop their own alternatives.
No amount of propaganda from the left can leap over the need for this type of development. And after two decades of Thatcherism, coupled with the defeatism of most top trade union leaders, have devastated many of the traditional organisations of the working class, the gap between the consciousness and self-confidence of the workers’ movement and the needs of the situation has never been greater.
That’s why we, as revolutionaries, are committed to fight for policies and campaigns which start from pressing issues affecting wide layers of the working class and the oppressed, but which go beyond the day to day demands for reforms, leading towards a more coherent socialist alternative. We believe the left also needs to develop a wider democratic and international agenda.
The ideas which follow are not intended to be comprehensive: nor, in the space and time available are they explained and argued in their fullest detail. However we hope they may prove a useful starting point or contribution to the discussions that must follow.
Our view is that a full socialist programme should include but go beyond these policies, and flow from much wider discussion in the labour movement and the wider struggles and campaigns which must be seen as the base for a concerted challenge to the politics of Blair.