Ten years on: key lessons from the 1984-5 miners' strike AMONG the many issues raised by the debate around Clause IV of the Labour Party's constitution is whether socialism can be achieved by peaceful, parliamellary mcals Socialism has to be clarified. It is not just the "social justice' of the social democrats, or bureaucratic nationalisation of a few industries - bankrupt or otherwise - by the capitalist state.
Socialism, to use the words of Clause IV(4), is "the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange... under popular administration and control".
It means at least the 'commanding heights' of the economy being taken out of private hands and run by a system of councis of workers' and consumers' delegates, accountable and recallable, co-ordinated into a national system. This would allow the economy to be planned in a way unthinkable under capitalism, determined by need, not private gain.
Same problem
Could parliament legislate such a system into existence? We do not need to suspend belief and hypothesise about Tony Blair's Labour Party being willing to take such steps. The factors involved would be the same, however determined any party or its leadership might be.
In Britain, we are told that, while other countries have civil wars, revolutions, putsches, etc, we do things differently here -the existence of a stable parliamentary democracy means society can be changed peacefully without such violent ructions. This is based, on several myths. Firstly about British (or, more correctly, English) history.
Civil War The present relationship beiween parliament and the monarchy is based on the settlement which arose after the revolution of 1640 and the Civil War which followed, which marked the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
But we do not need to go so far back for examples. When the British parliament looked like granting 'Home Rule' to Ireland in 1914 the army revolted (known as the Curragh mutiny) to thwart these plans and ultimately produce the division of Ireland which exists to this day.
Spycatcher and subsequent revelations have shown that sections (if not the whole) of the secret services set out to destabilise Labour governments in the 1960s and 70s, even though they were hardly particularly radical.
Contrary to the myth, every indication is that the rul ing class would fight to the last to retain its control of society.
This rarely comes to the fore in Britain because radical, let alone revolutionary, change is so seldom sought. As far as parliament is concerned the debate remains on the trivial level of the best alternative options for running capitalism.
When we look outside parliament, we see how the full force of the state is mobilised against movements seeking even superficiall or minor changes The central demand of the miners' strike of 1984-85 to keep the pits open was not revolutionary in itself, but the police, courts and secret services as well as the media were all mobilised at tremendous cost to make sure they were defeated. This scenario has been repeated throughout the history of the labour movement whenever a threat was perceived to capitalist order.
Thus, a party really committed to bringing about socialism has to forewarn the working class of the reaction to this, and mobilise it to resist and carry through these changes.
The working class would Armed bodies of men: the military moved in to crush Allende's reformist government in Chile need to be sufficiently armed to defeat and disarm those standing in the way of change. Chile slaughter Any failure to do so would lead to the kind of slaughter that ocurred in Chile after 1974, when Salvador Allende's supposedly radical government refused to believe that the army would act against it. Instead of preparing for the clash to come, it called on its supporters to "remain calm" Socialists do not glorify violence or revolution, as our opponents often atgue, but recognise the reality that, as Marx put it, no ruling class in history has ever peaceably given up power. Friederich Engels argued bluntly that the essence of the capitalist state consists of 'armed bodies of men'. Facade Behind the democratic facade of 'Liberty, Fraternity and Equality', he warned, lurks the threat of 'Cavalry, Artillery and Infantry'. Those who try to convince us that change can come about peacefully, that we should obey the law (whether on Poll Tax or anti-union laws) otherwise the ruling class will not obey laws passed by a Labour government, are not only betraying the struggle in the present, but also showing that they will be unwilling to challenge the dominance of the capitalist class in the future.
'Reform or revolution' is not a choice between two different routes to the same end, it represents a choice of two very different end results.