SOCIALIST Outlook is a marxist paper written and sold by a network of activists inside the Labour Party, the trades unions and a range of campaigns. For us, the struggle to defend Clause IV is urgent and vital.
We disagree with those who say that the attack on Clause IV is about Labour's loyalty to real socialism. For instance we have seen the opinion that "Clause 4, despite its archaic language and formulation, represents the party's commitment to socialism, its links to the trades unions, to Marxism and above all to the Russian revolution" (Tony Aitman, Militant, 25 November).
Labour has never been an explicitly socialist party. It has always been tied to seeking reforms from capitalism through parliamentary legislation. Clause IV itself was certainly a response to the Russian Revolution - aimed at preventing any similar movement in Britain!
Real meaning
According to one of its original authors, Clause IV aimed to "rehabilitate Parliament in the eyes of the people" and channel discontent away from marxism.
The Clause proposes common ownership but (like Militant) fails to outline any strategy for taking the power from the ruling rich, for challenging their state, and for introducing a real pluralist, self-managing democracy.
But while we think it is a big mistake to assert that Clause IV offers a road to socialism, that is not the main issue at stake.
The fight to defend the Clause could inflict a defeat on Blair's right wing 'modernisers', and would create the most favourable conditions for united action and political struggle for socialist policies under a Labour government.
State
Of course even nationalisation wouldn't bring us socialism while we still have a state machine — police, armed forces, judiciary, civil service — that is virtually unaccountable to the people.
It isn't difficult to see what would happen if an elected government tried to take industry, the banks and finance houses of this country into common ownership -there would be a massive showdown with the ruling class and the state.
There is no purely parliamentary road to socialism.
Even the limited reforms introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour government in the 1970s triggered talk in the officer corps of a possible military coup. The grim example of Chile in 1973 shows that capital will stop at nothing to defend its interests.
Experience proves that only by smashing the corrupt old capitalist state apparatus and building a new state power, composed of workers themselves organised and elected through mass bodies and armed for the purpose, is it possible to achieve socialism.
There is a vital connection between this strategy for socialism and building the resistance to welfare cuts, fighting now to defend Clause IV, and the fight against racism and sexism. Exploitation, misery and war are in-built features of capitalism which divide and weaken the working class..
Today more and more people see the need for a feminist, internationalist and revolutionary movement to face up to the opportunities and challenges of the Labour government and beyond. Socialist Outlook upholds that vision.
• For a copy of our pamphlet Socialism After Stalinism and details of our local readers' meetings send an s.a.e. to PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. ARTHUR SCARGILL embrace the market is not only a repudiation of basic socialist faith. It is beginning to sow the seeds of defeat at the next election. I didn't join this Party to ensure that it ran capitalism better than the Tories. I joined to change this rotten corrupt system of society into a socialist society where men and women would own and control their own lives and their own destinies -with common ownership at the very forefront. "You can have as many clauses as you want on racism on equal opportunity on women's rights -on a whole range of issues. But do not allow yourselves to be misled into linking them with the destruction of Clause IV part 4. I say to people in the PLP like Peter Hain and Clare Short, who say that they are in favour of Socialism, that the only way that you can do something positive in defending socialism is to defend clause IV. "I believe passionately that we can have in our lifetime socialism as was envisaged by the Labour pioneers. We owe it to them to defend Clause IV but more importantly we owe it to ourselves."
[Defend
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.73-74, December 1994, Page 13 disregard of Indian
DICK UNSON UNSON UNISON
Clause IV British Gas
(NUM PRESIDENT) "To see the Labour leadership