THE CHAMPAGNE corks were clearly popping in the offices of the Observer and the Guardian after Tony Blair's latest keynote speech in his campaign to scrap Clause IV of Labour's constitution.
Under the euphoric and completely misleading headline 'Blair puts faith in clear-cut socialism', the Observer (January 29) welcomed him aboard as a fully committed liberal who has publicly jettisoned any pretence of socialist politics.
Barely able to contain his enthusiasm, political editor Anthony Bevins drooled over every weasel word, declaring that:
"Tony Blair yesterday offered his party a crystallised version of socialist values ..."
Of course on closer examination the "personal statement of faith that could yet form the basis for a revised Clause Four" proves to be a forthright renunciation of any aspiration to remove and replace capitalism now or even in the indefinite Tuture.
Anachronism
Clause IV, argued Blair means the "anachronism of a command economy, common ownership with no boundaries."
"Not a mixed economy of public and private sector. But common ownership of industry, retail and finance. Now that just does not make sense - either on the grounds of socialist principle or economic reality."
So in the name of 'socialist principle', Blair insists on the need to retain not only capitalism (politely termed the 'mixed economy') - but also capitalists:
"We believe in success. We believe in enterprise. A just society cannot exist without its public servants and private entrepreneurs."
Poor Tony cannot imagine a "just society' without its Robert Maxwells, its Rupert Murdochs, its Cedric Browns and other such pillars of 'social justice'.
Of course an unjust society also needs exactly the same personnel: Blair gives no hint as to how he imagines their embarrassing excesses could be restrained. His vision is of a fantasy world in which the lion lies down with the lamb, and capitalism is somehow persuaded to act not for profit but in the public interest:
"We need both dynamic markets and strong public services; and both public and private sectors should be properly responsible to the public good."
What is the 'public good'? If it is different from healthy profits, who is to impose it on Blair's cherished entrepreneurs? Canute-like, Blair appears to imagine he can stem the tide of capitalist profit-seeking.
Missing completely from Blair's blinkered world view is any understanding that the exploitation of labour is central to the drive for profit. His idea of reform is restricted to making capitalism more democratic.
Relying again and again on the idealistic notion of "social justice' within a capitalist society, Blair insists that it represents a 'left of centre view' "That a nation must be governed not for a small elite, but for the broad majority of people"
But when the small elite own the vast majority of the wealth and means of production, retail and finance, the reality is that they will continue to call the shots over the 'broad majority who are forced to work for the means of subsistence.
Property relations The exploitation of workers under capitalism is not enshrined in explicit laws which declare them unequal, but in the economic system, the property relations or capitalist society.
For Labour to renounce any intention to confront this root of exploitation would be to deprive millions of the hope that eventually the capitalist system would be replaced by something better.
Blair has of course cynically retained the word "socialism', even while he strips it of any meaningful content. His aims and values are quite explicitly restricted to those of liberal (bourgeois) democracy.
His rallying call is the idealistic notion of social justice' within a capitalist 'mixed economy'. It is hard to see this as a slogan for mass mobilisation. "What do we want?" "A mixed economy with social justice!" "When do we want it?" "As soon as the entrepreneurs agree!"
His speech argues that socialThe French revolution struck a devastating blow against clericalism and obscurantism ism is built not on social ownership, enabling genuine planning, or on production for need rather than profit, but on the "commitment to freedom, equality, democracy and solidarity."
To hear this passed off as 'socialism' is a sick joke.
Two centuries ago, French revolutionaries took to the streets under the banner of 'Liberty, Fraternity, Equality'. They were rather more convincing in their fight than Mr Blair.
To get their demands they had to overturn the old order, execute the King, and challenge the power of the Church (of which Mr Blair 200 years later is still a devout adherent).
This was much more radical than anything on offer from Labour: but it was not a socialist, but a bourgeois revolution. By removing the roadblock of absolutist rule, it laid a framework for capitalist development.
In England, a similar process, establishing the power of Parliament, took place earlier, in 1640, and culminated with the beheading of Charles I. Just as well Mr Blair was not in charge then.
Far from looking forward to the next century, Blair's minimalistic political aspirations are a pathetic, timid echo of the democratic demands which fuelled the great bourgeois revolutions - and which have led not to socialism but to capitalist states and governments.
While Blair invokes 200year old slogans in his quest to ditch any call for nationalisation, we should recall that one of the early blows struck by the French revolution in 1789 was the nationalisation of church property!
The new, rising capitalist class which derived the principal benefits of the new regime are today the enemies of any extension of democracy. They saw the end of absolutism simply as a means to strengthen their power and enrich themce ved We now see their system in world-wide crisis and decay. Unemployment, poverty, brutal exploitation, mass starvation, environmental destruction, racism and a succession of vicious wars spell out the bankruptcy of a system which produces only for profit and in which the market is the new absolute ruler.
'Social justice'
Tony Blair tries to persuade us that the system can be tamed, planned, and redirected to deliver 'social justice'. Socialism, he insists, is no more than 'a belief about society'.
This concept of "society' is an empty abstraction, an illusion. We live in a class society. That's what capitalism means.
Timid echo of the classical bourgeois democratic demands There is no collective social expression of the needs of both classes.
The property and interests of the wealthy are protected by the state, which is a capitalist state, its laws, its police and armed forces, its judiciary, its civil service and its machinery of In case Tony Blair hasn't noticed, far from sharing any common "society', the interests of the exploited, the working class, are counterposed to those of the capitalists who exploit them. They will always be counterposed.
The trade unions and Labour Party were set up as part of the fight to challenge that exploitation. Clause IV, for all its limitations, represents the aspiration for a fundamental change of system, an aspiration to genuine socialist values. This is why Blair is so opposed to it. Preemptive betrayal In seeking to slam the door on this hope of something better, Tony Blair is breaking new ground in only one respect: instead of seeking election on radical policies and then betraying later, he seeks to get the betrayal over before the election, and run for office offering nothing more as a platform than the fact that he is not John Major.
Almost 100 years ago, Rosa Luxemburg, leading revolutionary in the German social democratic party, fought the ideas of an early Tony Blair. Her words ring terribly true today:
"The final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the social-democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order."
For genuine socialists in today's unions and in the Labour Party the fight for socialist politics begins with the battle to defend Clause IV, but must lead on from that to the development of a fighting programme going well beyond the illusory quest for 'social justice' under capitalism.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.77. 11 February 1995, Page 4