Harris lation! The TUC hopes that if they can restrict and police their shop stewards in this E way, they can again be- come influential under the next govemment. They are already volunteering to put their members' heads in the noose of national level 'collective bargaining" with the incoming govemment (or, to be more honest about it, a new national pay policy on the model of the hated and discredited social contract" which slashed the value of wages under Wilson and Callaghan). Of course if the Tories win the next elec- tion, all this pious nonsense will evaporate in the heat of what will undoubtedly be a mas- sive renewed assault on workers' living stand- ards, jobs and union rights. The TUC's plans rely entirely on the retur of a Labour government, whose reactionary trade union policies it has now adopted (though by a much more narrow majority than expected). Yet history shows that only a work- ing class confident in itself and its strength, and intent on change in society turns out to vote Labour and kick out the Tories. The present Labour leadership — with its opposi- tion to each and every manifestation of anti- Tory struggle, and abandonment of even the most limited commitment to pro-working class policies - could not have done more to demoralise and demobilise the best sections of the working class. In slavishly toeing Kinnock's defeatist line, the TUC has ironically made it less, not more likely that Labour will be retumed to office. Nothing could be further from the needs of today's working class, It has perhaps never been tougher to do so, but, as the oil workers have shown, workers must continue to ignore the policies flowing from the TUC, and rely on their own struggles. Page 25
A theory that can't cope with facts 'State capitalism': a theory
The SWP and eastern Europe By Phil Hearse The truth of Marxist theory can only be confined by practice. So, the dramatic developments in Eastern Europe in the last year have been an important test of the competing theories of the character of the Stalinist states.
Every Marxist and semi-Marxist tendency claims to have found confirmation of its theories in the dramatic crisis in the Eastern bloc. None more so than the Socialist Workers Party, which like a laborious Heineken advert insists "only state capitalism can explain this". Chris Harman devoted 82 pages to this task in International Socialism No. 46, and another 19 pages to a review of Emest Mandel's book Beyond Perestoika in /S 47 (1).
In fact, the attempt to fit the Bastern bloc crisis into the 'state capitalist" framework leads not only to chronic theoretical incoherence but also to a very dangerous political conclusion: that, if capitalism is restored in Easter Europe, this will only be the replacement of one form of capitalism with another, and hence simply a "move sideways". This is most surely not the way to attempt to attempt to am the most class conscious workers in these countries for the massive struggles ahead. In this article we look first at the theoretical basis of the SWP's claims, and then at their political conclusions.
At first sight, the idea that the Soviet Union, China,