rubbish - no. This book represents that very rare creature - an integrated world outlook from a left reformist viewpoint. It deserves to be read and its component parts debated.
Labour lost the last election because it was unable to convince working people that its shopping list for the welfare state could be financed from anywhere but their pay packets. The disarray of the party spokespeople as support collapsed in the last two weeks of that campaign back in 1987 still lingers in the mind.
This weakness must have been reinforced by the memories of those cursed enough to be able to remember such phrases as 'the pound in your pocket has not been devalued' and references to the IMF along with Phase 1, Phase 2, and so on of wage controls. If Labour confines itself to the same old game (capitalism) and plays it by the rules, then many of the Party's natural constituency will opt to back those who invented the game in the first place.
Starting from the need for a radical economic policy, Ken writes convincingly and plausib ly on the need for a complete review of policies- economic, social, international and environmental - to empower and create a natural Labour majority, drawn largely from sections of the population at present marginal to the labour movement.
The central theme, strength and weakness of the book is the attempt to analyse the stagnation of the British economy and SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 18, October 1989
REVIEW prepare an economic strategy which goes beyond classical Keynesianism. Britain, argues Livingstone, is the embodiment of a nation based on finance capital (much of Lenin's seminal work im- perialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism was based on the work- ings of the British economy. Con- scious decisions were taken 150 years ago to use the strength of the British economy (based on the 18th century slave trade) to create large free trade area within the empire. This cap tive market and source of raw materials cushioned industry and shifted the balance of economic power towards the City. Both nineteenth and twen- tieth century investment patterns have been characterised by a flight of capital away from domestic development, which yields a lower return than foreign investment in low wage areas or completely 'unproductive' speculation. The remedy proposed is to force the City to invest in domes- tic development, cut defence ex- penditure to the levels of other West European nations, thereby releasing £9 billion to create jobs via a programme of public works which would stimulate domestic demand. Allied to this would be a programme of skills training and research and development- an area where Britain has laged behind its competitors since the late nineteenth century.
Livingstone: looking right or left? C DON INDUR Ken and Neil agree Labour is the party of production
Leaving aside such debates as "can we support any level of arms expenditure?', the question is can such a strategy work? What is absent from the book is the issue of ownership. Nationalisation is usually mentioned in the same sentence as "Morrisonian bureaucracy'; control is seen in terms of planning agreements at the "carrot' end, while the heaviest stick proposed is that of punitive levels of taxation.
To this extent the policy is less radical than the Alternative Economic Strategy of the mid 1970s. It is however a good deal more radical than Labour's Policy Review, which represents no challenge at all to the entrenched power of the City.
At root it is a populist appeal which ken poses - to some extent as great a symptom of the rightward shift as the Policy
Review. Aiming against the domination of finance capital through the Tory government, he ST counterposes Labour as the party of produc- tion - a phrase which brings back more memories of Wil- son and 'the white heat of the technological revolution'. Is industry straining, year- ing to get out from under under the iron heel of finance capital? Or are they mostly members of the same multi-national corporations? At the end of the day, the old ques tion keeps coming back: what about the workers? The failure to devise a truly socialist economic strategy based on public ownership and workers' control leaves the good intentions of both this book and the Party drifting rootlessly in the wake of a govemment which has increasingly set its own ruth- less agenda for the economy. While we're in nostalgic mood, we should remember that even the 1974 Labour govern- ment came to power promising an irreversible shift in wealth and power in favour of working people. Ken doesn't even go that far. Page 31