certificate! Marxists and the Labour Party Is social democracy in its death agony in an immediate as well as a general historical sense? Is its demise foreseable within the next period? If so, what will replace it as the mass political expression on the main steam of the British workers' movement? These questions have real a
JOHN LISTER looks at the
current situation of the
Labour Party in a more
historical context. significance in today's situation: depending on how they are answered, the tactics and strategy of Marxists might take widely different courses.
They are not new questions. Since 1914, Marxists have always been keen — over-keen — to pronounce the incipient or imminent death of social democracy, which first gained Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p29
mass proportions through the opportunist degeneration of the
parties of the Second International,
culminating in the "social patriotic"
collapse of 1914 in which each major
"socialist" party voted war credits to its "own" imperialist bourgeoisie.
The first two Congresses of Lenin's new Third International, under the influence of the massive upsurge of revolutionary struggle which flowed across and beyond Europe following World War I, issued ringing denunciations of the reformist parties and proclamations of the death of the Second International.
Yet after the defeat of many revolutionary struggles and in the absence of adequate revolutionary leadership or mass Bolshevik-type parties, the social democratic parties were to emerge once again, in alliance with conservative sections of trade union bureaucracies, potent force for reaction and class collaboration within the workers' movement
Noske and Scheidemann in Germany, the murderors of Luxemboug and Liebknecht, may have been the vanguard of social democratic counter-revolution: but the whole apparatus of German social democracy proved itself in 1918-1919 to be a major obstacle to the struggles even of a mobilised, armed and insurrectionary working class. The defeat of social democracy was again shown to be a political and not an organisational question or one that spontaneous movement by te could solved working class.
The Third and Fourth Congresses of the Comintern were forced to make a more sober analysis the immediate outcome of the post-war upsurges, and to recognise the
continued existence and influence oi social democracy as a major obstacle to revolutionary politics.
From this assessment necessity tor much more tactics for work, particularly in the unions, with the Comintern insisting upon the need toI involvement in even the most partial and limited economic struggles by the working class. In rejecting the "Infantile Leftists" who wished simply to go round the social democratic parties, the Comintern pressed for the tactic of the united front and for a programme of transitional demands designed to make the link beween the revolutionaries and the layers of workers. The concept in each instance was to put forward demands and initiatives which could advance the day-to-day struggles and the political demands of the working class, while leading workers through their own experience to beyond the limitations reformist programme, break from the various wings of social democratic leaders, and embrace programme and perspective revolution.
Of course despite this, and despite the victory of the October revolution and the miserable betrayals of social democracy elsewhere, the World War I period saw not the death agony of reformism, emergence.
This was due not only subjective weakness of the forces of revolution (who nowhere Russia had developed parties comparable to the Bolshevik model, which had come through the test of 1914 and fought tenaciously for internationalism and class independence throughout the war period); but also to the continued existence of the objective base on which social democracy rests.
Large, bureaucratised, independent reformist trade unions provide a basic support for social democratic politics, while pressures of bourgeois society direct resistance along reformist Parliamentary channels, corrupting and sucking in oppositionists.
Mass social democratic parties
exist only in the imperialist countries.
This reflects a fundamental fact about social democracy: its
material base lies in its ability to make material gains for at least sections of
the working class through
collaboration and reformism. Social
democracy thus rests not only
class collaboration in the workers'
movement but also on a willingness of
the bourgeoisie to engage in class
This material base means that in today, the relative position of the | Lenin's
the arose detailed Communist broadest move of the the of post but its re- to the outside vanguard working imperialist experience material but still bourgeoisie. It the revolutionary and vigorously applying "socialist" created. ultimate Communist Parties, class on in Britain
power has been greatly weakened social democracy, tod Comintern. massive persistent crisis as it finds itself less and less able to deliver reforms and itself comes under attack from the is not guaranteed that these union crises will have a positive outcome. Tove canaly be artistrong due defeat in the British General. Marxist movement, Strong Though there were substantial Bringing a toil do 107, emergence of mass neither of the nearly a to where (as in France) its dominant 1927 broken over the working class was in Nor did leaderships capable of of only 7,500 tactical line 3d and 4th lingering Congresses emerge within the new Soon afterwards came Stalin's Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p30
Lenin with delegates to th stranglehold on the CPSU and the
Under Stalin, the CPs were still less able to break the grip of social democracy. The rank opportunism of
1924-27 period brought disastrous adaptation to "left" trade
bureaucrats and helped hunting Conference ban on dual membership of the CP and Labour Party. In December 1925 a National Left Wing Conference heard that
hundred divisional and borough Labour Parties had refused
implement the Conference decigor thor the sidelite en
Othe CP-led Minority Movement also reached its peak despite a still small CP membershij
• combinatio of ectarianisn sections of the British leadership and the catastrophic "Third Period" line
th Icond Congress of the Communist International of the Comintern finally killed the momentum of the National Left Wing Movement in 1929. Under the politics of the "Third Period", Communists once again began pronouncing social
dead" as a current of the working class, now characterising it instead as "social fascism"). This turn left the British CP stranded and capitalise upon the Labour crisis and MacDonald's split of 1931.
By the time of the "Popular Front" turn to cross class alliances involving "progressive" sections capitalist class in 1935, the CP had actually swung to the right of the Labour leadership and militant rank and file workers position repeated in the election of 1945; again during the Bevanite movement of the 1950s; and again today.
In short, at each historic turning Point where a substantial split in the british Labour Party movement, and the emergence of a hard, centrist/revolutionary current has seemed possible, the British CP had missed the opportunity, and confirmed its own isolation.
have failed correctly to analyse developments in social democracy and taken an incorrect line. movement and currents arising from it have sectarian and an opportunist towards the Labour Party — which in most cases have been derived from excessive an numbers of comrades to diagnose the "death agony" of social democracy. there were the attempts to build the RCP as a small mass party outside the Labour Party at a illusions massive government. the RCP and the Healy group's turn did not to entrism problem, however: instead, there was an opportunist deep-entry in Britain, pinning hopes on the evolution oi the Bevanite current in revolutionary direction. of the Nottingham group/IMG, tied to the International Secretariat, was led to opportunism by the concept of the "replacement leadership" which the to become a "current" within the official left, only breaking with this left when it had defeated the right wing. upshot of this was the politics of Ken Coates' Institute for Workers' Control and of Chartist adaptation to reformism. drifted into the Labour Party in the 1950s, members who were expelled from the Labour Party. They tended to put Labour their before the interests of struggle, and to become increasingly sectarian. Their break with the USFI 1965 and burial in in milieu produced a steady rightward prematurely evolution of their politics as democracy late 1950s, become the SLL-WRP, having won unable to important forces from the CPGB after Party building of a trade union base and to the youth as a force for change in the Labour Party. But it then drew false of the conclusions from the success of this separated from the fight within the the most Labour Party. post-war expulsions of 1964, despite an initial period in which the organisation still orientated demands and campaigns towards the Labour Party, Healy moved to entrench that separation and embark on the one-sided "party- and labour building" exercise which abandoned any involvement in the Labour Party. Healy's material from the late 1960s announcements of the death Socialist Viewpoint Vo. 15 February 1987 p3l
But it is not only the Stalinists who imminent democracy, Since World War II the Trotskyist been divided between a line enthusiasm of tiny shop In the immediate post-war period, the Trotskyist time of truly Labour she subsequent split in intoxicated organisations resolve the social practice a centrist OI In the 1950s and 60s the entry work attacked abstentionism ', according Trotskyists must first The - a systematic The founders of Militant, having scabbed in 1964 on the SLL Party membership the class the CLP/YS they Labour Party correctly to the struggles abounds with premature
demise of social
The tendency around Tony Cliff, expelled from the Healy group in 1950, continued entry work (mainly in the youth) on an opportunist line until 1967, when, along with the IMG, it turned to the student-youth milieu radicalised around Vietnam. In the early 1970s the International Socialists rank and fileist line won this group a significant base amongst
stewards which led it to proclaim itself The Party in 1975.
The cases of Healy and Cliff illustrate how the older militants of
Tand semi-Trotskyist movement, used to the conditions of tiny groups in the 1950s, can become
Aby the creation of grouping few hundred or thousand. militants, and imagine that the death agony of
democracy is at hand. In this triumphalist sectarianism (now the pessimistic secatarianism of the SWP), almost a parody of the Third Period of the Comintern and the "infantile leftism"
Aby Lenin, leads to on many actual struggles in the workers' movement. Callaghan: his treachery led to 1979 revolt.
But errors have also been made by currents within the Labour Party. In the exuberance of the "Bennite"
Ffor democracy and accountability in 1978-82, many tendencies drew up schemas for the wholesale "renovation" of the Labour Party, which all leaned excessively upon the "objective" dynamic of the left wing opposition and paid little attention to the subjective political weaknesses of the Bennites, or the specific contribution which Marxists were required to make to the fight.
In particular, most schemas failed to recognise the unique conjuncture which had rallied certain sections of
"left" and not-so-left union bureaucracy behind the unlikely and unaccustomed banner of inner-party democracy. They then failed to
detect the change in that conjuncture after 1982, and especially since the 1983 election, which has produced a predictable but dramatic weakening Labour conference. weak and confused as it Benn current — itself merely a "left" social democratic current - could
strode without interruption from victory to victory against the right wing establishment in the unions and the Parliamentary Labour Party. For that reason, most recent version of the predicted "death agony of social democracy" was also mistaken.
Though it did not reprsent any definitive answer, Bennism clealy reflected a growing preoccupation of sections of the left wing of the labour movement with the problem of social democracy and its consistent betrayal of the independent interests of the working class. Its emergence as a
more left-wing policies and inner-party democracy under the considerable new possibilities for the
The fact that some sections of the Trotskyist movement broke from well over a decade of ultra-leftism and sectarianism in seeking to relate to Mobilising Committee was a positive development. opportunism impressionism meant that the result was _ nor a healthy growth of Marxism fragmentation as various
Teach sought to tailor their political line and practical activity to The present period Since Thatcher's 1979 victory, the ruthless employers' offensive (which had already begun to take shape under the Edwardes regime in BL) has set the scene for the class struggle in Britain — forcing to the surface the political weaknesses of the labour movement (not least
Tand the shop stewards' which developed during the "boom" conditions of the 1950s and 1960s). The highest point of this offensive was the class confrontation of the Miners' Strike, followed now by the hell-for-leather reteat by neatly all wings of the labour bureaucracy.
So is this, now the period of the death agony of social democracy in
It is certainly a period of traumatic crisis for social democracy
Apolitical and trade
leaders. The Kinnock leadership has since 1983 had to repair the damage done to the Party's credibility by its crushing electoral defeat. That is no
But we must be clear that Kinnock has set out to achieve this objective not by abandoning but by reaffirming the political
collaboration, machinery of the capitalist state, and seeking to reverse the democractic and political gains made by the left in
Egged on by the Euro-Stalinists of Stalinist witch-hunters of the LCC; and backed to the hilt by his sponsors - the 'new realist" majority of the groping his way towards a possible new accommodation with the SDP by
Othe Labour Party to the political line it had when Owen, Williams, Rodgers et al. were in the
A basic component of this is to
The betrayal of the miners was no flash in the pan; the hounding of Liverpool is not simply becaue of the Militant connection: these are Kinnock's ritual sacrifices to bourgeois media in his trantic quest for acceptability to "public opinion"
The almost uninterrupted series of betrayals and defeats suffered by the trade union struggles in the period since 1979 has sapped one avenue of possible resistance to this line, and reinforced a drift towards passive electoralism among former elements of the Labour left. Kinnock's careerist bandwagon has lured on board many former prominent figures of the Bennite resistance, while sections of the Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p32
"hard left" (Socialist Action!) have been further divided over perspective during and since the Miners' Strike.
Kinnock's campaign to roll back the progress made by a radicalised rank and file in 1979-83 has not been without contradictions and problems. Nor indeed has it by any means wiped out a vital layer of working class militants (as the Miners' Strike confirmed) or a hard left layer within the Labour Party which will remain committed to class struggle politics, is ready to challenge capitalist legality, and at least questions some basic tenets of reformist orthodoxy (the "viability" argument in the Miners' Strike). Though this challenge has never itself broken from the framework of reformist politics, these class fighters are a crucial building block for the fight for conscious opposition to the Kinnock-Hattersley economic policy.
But this crisis can only develop to the point of the "death agony' social democracy under conditions where a coherent and conscious new left-wing leadership can be constructed. to enable a distinct class-struggle current to take shape and break from social democratic politics and methods. Problems with the "death agony" It vastly understates the strength of Kinnockism and of the trade union bureaucracy which spawned While it has become commonplace for Marxists to argue the organic link between the Labour Party and the trade unions generally in order to make a case for Marxists to be active in the Labour Party - we must remember that the link is a two way connection. Just as the Labour Party leans on the unions for resources and for bureaucratic block votes, so the unions need the Labour Party, to give political expression to the reformist politics Hence the decision even of the EETPU to re-establish that link through the (albeit limited) campaign for political levy ballots.
For many union leaders there is not even a contradiction between social democratic politics and a coalition with the capitalist parties of the Alliance. The task of drawing a clear class line on that issue, and rallying the working class to fight the inevitable attacks that would be mounted by a coalition government, will fall to the most militant minority of the rank and file and the hard left
opposition to the union bureaucracy.
So long as the main union leaders are able to conduct their collaboration free from a seriou challenge from any organised har left with shop floor support, they will preserve the Labour Party in the way their forebears created it,
as a parliamentary vehicle for reformist politics.
While understating Kinnock's strength (even while Marxists face a growing threat of expulsions), the "death agony" analysis also tends to overstate the strength and political independence of "Bennism" and the demoralisation of the Labour Left it is not yet certain that by the next election the hard, class struggle left will politically stronger than was the left in 1974 when Wilson came to power women's rights and gay rights have
established themselves on the left agenda).
Time dulls the memory of the bitter Labour's "left" battles in 1973, and
steel a militant left wing in battles like the Pentonville 5, Cross, pay strikes by postal workers, builders and healthworkers, miners' strikes, and other bruising
Under Heath militancy remained very high, the level of shop various opportunist (Socialist Action, sectarian-opportunist (Socialist Organiser) tendencies of the left, in failing correctly to fight for the political and organisational development of the Bennite forces.
Of course Benn's left wing reputation can be traced to his involvement with these struggles. But his immediate role under Wilson was not to spearhead the working class opposition to wage controls, speed-up or the Tory anti-union laws, but to join the government. He became the figurehead for Wilson's collaborationist Industry Bill, and threatter remained a minister through four phases of wage control until the 1979 election.
In this way "Bennism" showed even at this early stage its acute political limitations as a left social democratic current, unable to offer a coherent working class policy to challenge Wilson/Callaghan.
When "Bennism" moved into opposition after 1979, it did so as part of a major upheaval involving not only the rank and file who had fought Wilson/Callaghan, but also sections of the bureaucracy who had only recently turned against them. Partly because of this, Bennism did little or nothing to organise a current within the Labour Party!. With the exception of Scargill's (unorganised) popular base of support in the NUM, Bennite politics have for this reason always found much stronger support in the conterences, campaigns and gatherings of activists such as Broad Lefts than on the shop floor.
This weakness has continued today. Advanced workers respect and
Labour
Hattersley: no innovation,
logic of class collaboration support Benn and Scargill: but Benn and Scargill do nothing to organise any support within the unions. The See patrol time ready bag,
economic strategy Kinnock-Hattersley.
Some even continue to cherish the illusion that Kinnock can somehow be "pressurised" adopting more radical policies — for instance on the reinstatement and amnesty for victimised and jailed miners. This kind
Coffers instant fodder to the cynical pro-Stalinist forces of the LCC and others who would lure unwary leftists into the Kinnock camp. Even now the "Bennite" wing of the movement is shot through with these type of illusions, lacking any scientific grasp of the role of bureaucracy or of the politics of reformism.
As a "current". Bennism can have Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p33
PHOTO: Andrew wiard, Report just the old no viable existence outside OI separate from the Labour Party. It depends for its support upon the CLPs, and other structures of social democracy: lacking any real alternative programme, it can only survive or appear as a coherent opposi-
within the social democratic milieu.
Its demands may be more radical, from Parliamentarism, upon which it is wholly dependent in its schemas for "socialist policies". Bennism is not revolutionary or even centrist in character. Cut off from the routines and structures of the Labour Party, it followers drawn backwards into the camp of Kinnock-Hattersley social democracy, and a comparative hand ful making the break towards Marxist perspectives and programme.
SKINNER'S VIEW
Potential within the "Bennite This is by no means to belittle or ignore the potential for development contained within the Bennite current. Under this extremely wide and loose heading can be grouped nearly all of the most class conscious activists in today's labour movement.
But we reject any notion that this potential strength can or will simply and of itself crystallise spontaneously into a more organised, coherent current or tendency. we recognise the largely role being played by the sectarian (SWP), propagandist (Militant) and various opportunist (Socialist Action, tendencies of the left, in failing correctly to fight for the political and organisational development of Bennite forces.
We face the task of fighting to correct this historic weakness, sectarian abstention and develop a healthy practical orientation which SAID to be still the best "turn" on the Labour circuit, DENNIS SKINNER MP was in the Yorkshire coalfield recently. Socialist Viewpoint was there to report on the main points of what he had to say. THE "beast of Bolsover" began talking about the
triggered by vicious sacking of the 300 artificial limbmakers by BTR:
"These are people who should be the last in the queue for sackings. Tory-MP Peter Temple Morris is paid £5,000 by BTR subsiduary J.E. Hanger in addition to his £18,000 MP's salary. He has four jobs, and
Cecil Parkinson has ten directorships. There are 250 MPs with directorships -
The government says they can't intervene in J.E. Hangers dispute, just like
every day, arrested their wives,
their famlies - but they weren't interven-
So they can't intervene in Hangers, and
5,000 patients are prevented from receiv-
ing their artificial limbs. Just imagine if the
union had callled them out on strike.
wouldn't have been Myra Hindley on the
front page of the Sun, but those
men and women, scum of the earth, that
had prevented all these poor disabled peo-
ple from getting their artifical limsb
It would have been on every BBC pro-
enables us to fight alongside the best Labour Party and the unions.
The key to future development must in our view be the adoption of tactics and a strategy to mobilise the broadest possible layers of Bennites to fight now and under a Labour government on class issues (defence of jobs, wages, no hand-outs to big
demands for new jobs, internationalism, etc.), on democratic racism, for women's and lesbian and gay libration, etc.) and on transitional demands geared to the certain economic crisis that would tollow the return of a Labour (or a Coalition)
The experience of such struggles can deepen the understanding of the
olitical nature of social democracy
Class struggle and begin to establish workers' control demands through
FIRE EXIT costa
then. We would have said the t Tebbit
We would have said the the TUC
'Stand up for these people! and Willis
would have stood up and run away, like he
did in the miners' strike!
Isn't it sad? So much action, but when it
reaches the top of our movement these
people are in retreat. You can't find them
eading, and you could never have a betSocialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p34
which the labour movement can find
alternative to reformist capitulation in the face of capitalist
Tand struggles must be taken into the ranks of the trade union movement, breaking out of the stifling narrow routine of much Labour Party work, and fighting to workplace exploitation into the more
parliamentary arena of the wards, CLPs and circles
In this way the task of Marxists is seen clearly as one of finding ways to challenge and (through serious mass
immediate issues) break down the political limitations programme for action, designed to connect at every level with the needs of working class, must be developed, and fought for in practice through very possible avenue in the unions he Labour Party and in the variou campaigns of the oppressed and the ter chance than during the miners' strike: 12 months out. That means every union in Britain had a pay claim in during that
Mrs Thatcher couldn't handle more than one dispute during the miners
You're bound to come to the conclusion that some people were engaged in a conspiracy. We had a great chance. We don't need academics from the woodwork telling us why we lost the strike, these people Edgington who never went anywhere near Orgreave, who probably think it's an Australian foot-
remember those glorious moments when the dockers were out; all it needed was for a pay claim to be put in to bring those out at Dover and Felixstowe. It Wayne just needed someone in the T&G to say
'We'll get them out. We'll put a pay claim in! The deputies had it there, with a ballot
wonder when we'll peerages and knighthoods. PHOTO:
We don't need academics to tell us why we lost - we lost because there were people in the trade union
didn't deliver when they had the chance.
You don't need a 300 page book to tell you
Those of us who were brought up in the
crude conflict of battle and struggle know
the signs of defeat. It was written over the
face of Norman Willis as he waddled out of
Transport House.
But I'm not one of those people who
believe it was all downhill. I believe a lot
of things came out of that strike that were
valuable. It destablised Mrs Thatcher.
cost £8 billion. She's now down to borrow-
ing money on a grand scale. In September
1985 she borrowed $2.5 billion the largest
sum ever borrowed by Britain at one go.
Last September she had to borrow $4 billion. Britain's reserves are noW tour times lower than Germany and half of Italy's!
We've got to get stuck in over the next few months. I don't believe the election is all that far away. I believe that as soon as there is a little bit of blue in the sky, she'll cut and run.
That's why the fishing zone has been put around the Falklands. It has nothing to do with fish. She needs the Jingoism of 'Let's duff up the Argies'. If they were concerned about the stocks of fish, why haven't they put one around Britain? It's to raise the flag of nationalism in time for the election!
There was no fight over Hong Kong -with the 'Reds'. Geoffrey Howe went over and signed it away. If it had been Derek Hatton that had done that they'd have hunt him, and blamed me and Tony Benn for it!
150,000 bankruptcies since the Tories came to power. You know about that in Wakefield. Even the shop she was born in, in Grantham, converted to a gone bankrupt. can't survive in Thatcher's Britain.
During the strike it was 'got to make a
Twe shut your pit.' Johnson Matthey bank went under, with no
£100 million down. Mrs Thatcher. She says 'Shut it then, shut it! You don't have to ring me on a Sunday night. If it has no reserves then shut it. MoGregor's told you every night on the BBC - the one that's full of left
'But I just thought I'd better tell you that it's not a pit, it's the Johnson Matthey
'Christ, keep it open! It's run by and Norman Tebbitt's' So they found £100 million of your money! coalfields. We needed it for the health service. But they used it to keep the bank out
It should have been shouted from the housetops. Not left to back-benchers. Hattersley should have been in there pitching.
always imagined it was Militant he was throwing at.
The SDP talk about a middle way. There wasn't one during the Strike. In real life you have to make decisions. Either you go in the gates or you stay out. People who claim there is an easy non-combative way are fooling you. There is no yellow brick road. You are either on the side of those who produce the wealth or you're on the
The Tories have taught us a few lessons
- to look after our own. Things have to pick up now we've got them on the run. That means we've not got to waste any remember the story when they said 'it's only Liverpool, a tiny minority of 1%' Then they went to St Helen's, to Coventry, and Redcar. Then an inquiry into Knowsley.
I call upon this Party to assist in stopping these expulsions and inquiries into people whose only crime is fighting the Tories.
We have to make sure that when we've got a majority we done something with it, that all of us are going to act together like socialists and be accountable to the Party that sent us here, and not get bogged down inspecting our own navels.
There are great socialist landscapes to conquer. Let's do it together!"
LABOUR ANDTHE CLASS JOHN PETERS discusses in more detail the peculiarities of the British Labour Party and the correct tactics for THE prime obstacle to building a mass revolutionary party in Britain is the ideological and organisational hold of social democracy on the working successful socialist revolution will only occur in Britain once this hold has been To recognise the problem is only the beginning: we need to have an understanding of the nature of social revolutionaries in the past in coming to grips with it. The Origins of the Labour Party other European countries where social democratic parties were built which then constructed Trade Unions, the British working class had no independent party for a long time after mass (general) unions were Until the formation of the Labour Committee in the British working class overwhelm- ingly voted Liberal and trades unions This difference in the way it was formed gave the Labour Party a dif- beginning to other social-democratic Outside Britain, European social tionary, with the debate on reformist Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p35
WORKING "revisionism" taking place from the turn of the century and coming to a head in 1914 with "patriotic" support from social democracy to their own capitalist class in each imperialist country at the start of World War I.
debate over reformism, best exemplified by that in the German SPD between Luxemburg and Bernstein, concerned many issues, including the General Strike and parliamentarianism, but is best summed up in the opportunists' phrase "the moment is everything, the goal nothing.
In this debate, the main social democratic leadership, or "centre", took a position of defending the revolutionary programme on paper, but carrying out the programme of the reformists; hence the term "centrists" for those who show themselves to be "revolutionary in words, reformist in deeds "
The British Labour Party however grew from much less theoretical soil — the trade union movement. Trades Unions are, at root, bodies for gainTUC founded the Lour Represen reforms from capitalism. tation Committee as a continuation of that struggle for reforms in the "political" (i.e. parliamentary) arena.
Despite what some (such as Militant) claim, there was never "golden age" of the Labour Party. It was always a party reflecting the limited political horizons of the trade union leadeship.
Arising from this difference in how it was formed is the main continuing difference between social democracy in Britain and elsewhere - that of direct affiliation of the trades unions to the Labour Party. (When initially formed, the LRC/LP did not have in-
dividual membership but only affiliated bodies mainly Councils and Independent Labour Party branches.)
Social democracy, by nature, has close links with the union bureaucracies, but the "open-valve" with direct representation of the unions at all levels and their direct domination of policy making is unique to Britain. The Class Nature of the Labour Party The programmatic nature of the Labour Party clearly bourgeois, regarding parliamentary democracy as sacrosanct, making no challenge to the capitalist nature of the state and the economy, bipartisanship as the noIm "foreign policy" role of British imperialism.
The fact that Labour governments implement some retorms benefit the working class (NHS, education, etc.) does not alter the basic characterisation of the Labour Party programme as revolutionary, defending capitalism rather than struggling to overthrow it.
As Lenin put it:
"...the concepts organisation of the Trade movement' or 'political expression of this movement' are wrong ones. Of course the bulk of the members of the Labour Party are workers; however, whether a party is really a political party of the workers or not depends not only on whether it consists of workers, but also upon who leads it, upon the content of its activities, and _of its tactics.
"Only the latter whether we have before us really a political party of the proletariat. From this point of view, correct one, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois because although it workers, it is led by reactionaries. and the worst reactionaries at that. who act fully in the spirit of the bourgeoisie.
Tan organisation of the bourgeoisie which exists in order, with the help of the British Noskes and Scheidemans to systematically deceive the workers.
(This is from a speech to the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, 1920, in which Lenin also advocated that the British CP should affiliate to the Labour Party.)
However, the Labour Party is securely based on the trades unions, the mass organisations of the working class, and no amount of sociological analysis of its membership or activists alters this.
The Labour Party is best defined as a bourgeois party based on the mass organisations of the working This characterisation clearly shows
Trades its very everywhere and regarding on accepting the which counter- "political Union government the contradictory nature of the part political and the contradiction between historical interests class (the struggle for sociali~ determines the only workers from social democracy party. of consists is nature sociological. Those members. tories in (despite ballots qualifications) confirm this. Social-democratic Party class. Socialist Viewpoint No. 15 February 1987 p36
Labour: an alternative pariy of bourgeois
Cof the , and the programme of "its" party. it is this contradiction which revolutionaries The nature have to exploit if we are to break
This does not mean that the Labour Party is in some way a "two class party" with a bourgeois leadership and a working class base. The bourgeois
programmatic, not who question the "mass" nature of the Labour Party miss the point. It does not have a mass individual membership, let alone an active one. In organisation it is usually a feeble sect, but remains influential out of all proportion to its active
The "mass" nature stems from the organic link with the unions and what this represents in terms of working class support. The overwhelming vic-
Othe recent political fund all the obvious parties depend on inertia, and one of the central purposes of demanding that the Labour
Tact contrary to its bourgeois nature, in accordance with the needs
PHOTO: Stefano Cagnoni, Cagnoni, Report of the working class, is to cut through this inertia and undermine one of the props of capitalist society. Labour Governments
Cof Labour governments follows clearly from this characterisation: they are capitalist governments, but still based on the organisations of the working class.
They are an alternative party of government, often able to push through anti-working class measures which would meet far more resistance if implemented by a Tory government (and, as a consequence, laying the foundations for more reactionary Tory governments).
Labour governments are seen as "safe" by the bourgeoisie when they can be relied on to act against the working class (with little pressure from such as the IMF). A Labour government becomes 'weak" for capitalism when its working class base rises up against it — as in 1969 with "In Place of Strife" or in the 1978-79 "Winter of Discontent'. In such circumstances the ruling class will use the other agencies at its disposal to repress the working class.
Those who argue that it is Kinnock's intention to break the direct link between the Labour Party and
Marxists do not endorse Labour's programme by calling for a Labour vote
John Harris, IFL John PHOTO: the unions, have to explain why it should be in the interests of the bourgeoisie (or Kinnock) to break precisely that aspect of the Labour Party which makes it of use to them.
Whilst removing the link would reduce pressure on a Labour government to act in the interests of the working class, it would also reduce the pressure on workers to patiently bear the cost of capitalism's problems, and restrict Kinnock's ability to utilise union block votes against the rank and file. The United Front and Iransitional demands In the aftermath of the 1914 betrayal by the Second International and the formation of Communist Parties, the leadership of the Comintern recognised that it was not sufficient to point out to workers the inability of capitalism to cater for human needs, the need to overthrow it, and to "expose" the bankruptcy of the reformist leaders in their unwillingness to tight tor the interests of the working class
There was a need to put forward demands which took up the immediate needs of the working class, which if taken up and fought for by those who did not accept the communist programme would show the logic of the struggle for socialism and the treachery of their present leaders. This was the essence of what became called "transitional demands".
Labour Puttine, perple first
Because the unwillingness of reformist leaders to fight for the basic interests of the working class can only be exposed by fighting for them in practice, the tactic of the United Front was also developed. Communist parties were to say to workers: "we do not belive your leaders will fight for the basic needs of the working class, but we are prepared to fight alongside you for these needs and for your leaders to take them up."
Demands were to be made not as an exercise in literary exposure but because the working class needed what was demanded. mobilising demands, mobilising the working class in self-activity they were sterile. The Communist approach fought for by Lenin was to say: "fight alongside us for limited demands, and we will convince you in the course of struggle," not: "first accept our overall view, our analysis of your leaders, then fight."
The United Front meant not only fighting alongside the rank and file
n day-to-day issues, raising trans
onal demands with them and callin on them to raise them with their leaders, but also making direct approaches to the social democratic leaders to fight for these demands
This meant firmly rejecting the sectarian concept of a "united front from below" (seeking to exclude the
bureaucrațic leaders while linking up only with the rank and as epitomised by the "Third Period" ultra-leftism Stalin's disastrous But also to be rejected is any attempt at a bureaucratic "united front from above" between leaderships without the involvement of the rank and file, shown in its full colours by Stalin's relations with the British TUC in the Anglo-Russian Committee prior to the TUC betrayal of the 1926 General Strike.
The united front tactic requries a quite different approach, which above all maintains the political independence of the Marxist forces, especially their right at all times to criticise social democratic leaders and their policies. Governmental Slogans The United Front flows over into the question of governments. Where revolutionaries are not strong enough to stand their own candidates in elections, we generally call for a critical vote for reformist workers' parties while placing clear demands on them.
Marxists do not call for a vote for Labour against the Tories because we see them as "better"; on the contrary, we argue that there is no fundamental difference. We call for a vote for labour because we need to dispel the illusions held by the working class, who believe a Labour government is
a "lesser evil" to the Tories.
As Lenin put it in Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder:
"If we are the party of the revolutionary class and not merely a revolutionary group, and if we want the masses to follow us land unless we achieve that. we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags), we must, first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill.... second we must help the majority of the working class to be convinced by their own experience that we are right. i.e. that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely good for nothing. that they are petty-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that their bankruptcy is inevitable; third, we must bring nearer the moment when, on the basis of the disappointment of most of the workers in the Hendersons, it will be possible with serious chances of success, to overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once..."
(...)
"...with my vote. I want to support Henderson as the rope supports a hanged man - that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens..."
But such a process is not automatic. A call for a vote for Labour has to be tied to demands on the government that it should act in the working class interest and strike at the capitalists. We urge workers to mobilise to enforce these demands. To the extent that we are successful, we will break the working class from
The fact that we have had seven Labour governments in Britain without a mass revolutionary party having been built reflects the fact that sectarianism and opportunism have been the norm in British far left politics, rather than the incorrectness of the policy spelled out by Lenin and The Early Communist Parties Because most of European social-democracy had portrayed itselí as "revolutionary" prior to 1914, break to social-chauvinist support for the war produced major leit-wing splits, even if many of these did not appear fully until after the war. In evey case where a mass communist party was formed, it arose from a split in social-democracy not outside of it.
Even when such mass parties had been formed, they used the united front approach to effect further splits from social-democracy. Thus in Germany there was not only the split of the Spartakusbund to form the KPD, "Independents" (USPD) followed by
the fusion of the KPD and USPD to form the United Communist Party.
When this period of instability and "re-alignment of the left" mediate post-war years was over, and mass communist parties had been formed, the problem of winning the majority of the working class to the struggle still remained. It was in this period that the policy of the United Front was refined by the Comintern.
However, of the vestiges of ultra-
social-democracy and the difficulties of incorporating the principle of the United Front into the programme of the CPs against resolved before Stalinisation of the Comintern, so this policy had little pportunity to be developed anc tested in practice.
The highest point of the United Front is the demand on reformist/centrist parties to form a workers' government independent of the bourgeoisie and "take the power" This demand was intended to be used in revolutionary situation where soviets were being built, with the
Sits peak, though large sections of the working class still followed reformist or cen-
The two best-known uses of this demand were in Russia in Germany in 1923. The first led to the successful revolution; the second to a missed opportunity when the German Communist Party hung back. The de-
"Labour take the Power' loses timelessly in periods of relative social The United Front and Entrism If the united front was a difticuit policy for mass communist parties to carry out, the problems for small groups of revolutionaries are infinitely greater. (In this sense any grouping is "small" so long as it is of insufficient size and authority in the work-
iliate to the Labour Party, workin
vithin it both to win the best militant this advice by a mi majority pted
onference), it couched its applic
on tor affiliation in such terms that:
lowever, many CP members re
Labour Party members, at a However, with the coming of Third
Period Stalinism the NLWM was seen as a "barrier" to workers joining the CP and was wound up. and the Labour Party itself decribed as just another bourgeois party.
Since the degeneration Comintern, the banner of Marxism has been carried forward by the Trotskyist movement, which has never been able to begin from its own mass parties established in the workers' movement.
Building parties in a linear fashion, that is by the slow accumulation militants has proven painfully difficult and falls considerably below the requirements of the period. Only a convulsive process through splits and fusions, nationally and on a world scale, will culminate in the birth of a mass revolutionary party.
Even during exceptionally turbulant periods — such as acute crises of reformist apparatuses — it would still remain impossible to build revolutionary parties with mass influence in a matter of a few years, no céntrist currents appear within the traditional organisations of the work-
In practice, Marxists should have a flexible and open approach to every current coming out of the traditional parties or even the trade union movenent. This policy does not mean ar adaptation to the positions currents. It does not mean either ramming the Marxist programme down their throats in the hope they will swallow it. Marxists must learn how to
revolutionary positions — not the whole progamme but its most fundamental points, the ones that correspond best to common work and point towards a common character of the work that is done to advance the revolutionary gramme and expose to workers the bankruptcy of social democracy re mains a topic for debate between the various Marxist groupings DON'T ATTEND UNION MEETINGS!
WEAK UNIONS ARE EASIER TO SCREW!
causes of ill-health!
BY SUE ARNALL Edwina Currie, Junior Health Minister, marked her first few days in her new job by blaming women for the poor health of working class people in the North.
Long before she opened her mouth and shot to fame overnight, women in the North were aware of our elsewhere. Вигу,, campaign to demand action Currie's Ministry and lighten the load on our backs.
The story is a familiar one. relative mortality rates of people of all ages by class and living conditions has been closely documented since Edwin Chadwick's reports of the mid 1800s.
We know that ill health, infant mortality, and early death in adult life together with overcrowding, poor unemployment, and damp housing. We have known this for centuries, and experienced it — we don't need to be told.
Governments have known that the great improvements in infant expectancy and in diseases such as TB were made as a result of clean water, public health planning, improved housing better diet. The fact that there is still a gross difference between expectancy of the middle class and the working class is no mystery.
You only have to visit our housing estates, see the grim, damp living conditions in see conditions the sweatshops, mills, the workshops to get some idea what the reason might be. And then there is the poverty. How thousands live without electricity because they've been cut off for non-payment? How are they supposed to cook nutritious meals?
Edwina Currie, would remedy to be seen in Education - she says responsible for our "foolish" lifestyle, we need to change our eating habits!
It takes very little to make women feel guilty, and so direct their anger away from this economic policies which poverty wages and unemployment. They can teel guilt tor the cigarettes
Attack the real we have a from 0000000 The 00000 poverty, diet, which guilty for allowing kids sweets to stop them whingeing; guilty for the odd drink to help relax. life simply who the real guilty party was. conquering It was a survey of inequalitites in the nation's health, and it showed that, despite 30 years oi the NHS, manual and workers and their children tended to die younger and to have worse health the life working the many gas or like the Health we are Government's rely on
(DHSS wider. silent about be meals, poor. Black centres screening, the only MUESLI give some relief from stress; radically In Bury, The Black Report in 1980 said fairly starting which University Community than middle class families — and it | of the ward's only NHS clinic in 1985. OUT PATIENTS DEPT I'm sorry. but I'm going in hare to ask rou to pich strows"
warned that this gap was growing
The Tory government has been
Black's recommendations, which were that poverty must
combatted, in particular by increasing child benefit, free school
improved housing and redistribution of wealth from rich to
In terms of NHS charges, Black noted the inverse-care law, that is to say there tends to be less health care in areas where the need is greatest.
called for much greater emphasis in preventing ill health, a concentration of health care in areas of greatest need such as the inner cities, and better community health
providing preventive home care for disabled and elderly and antenatal care.
It is clear that the Black Report was not calling for Socialist Revolution —
realistic measure which woud ever equalise our chances of a full healthy life for all irrespective of class. Nevertheless, the report had a
different emphasis from present government policies.
Greater Manchester, we have a local campaign which takes its
point from the Black recommendations. I live in a world
Thas been studied by the of Manchester ExtraMural Department on behalf of our
Health Council. The report was prompted by the closure
NEATM
The study showed that on the basis of 8 different variables (percentages of households without indoor WC; percentage 0-14; percentage single parent percentage of pensioner households; percentage of percentage without a car; percentage living in council housing; percentage born in Commonwealth), East Ward scored significantly above all other wards in the District.
Nobody living here would be at all surprised. Our main council estate is pre-war, with neither inside WCs nor reasonable heating systems. We all know about the unemployment and deregulation of public transport, the fact that so many rely on the bus is a real problem.
In addition we have a great number of elderly people who rely on their sheltered housing workers or their home care workers for shopping and for the collection of prescriptions. It was helpful, however, to have things down in black and white, because the data showed that our economic, material circumstances were mirrored by higher mortality than the rest of the district.
So people in East Ward don't just suffer from poor jobs prospects, damp houses, lousy bus they also live shorter lives and are ill more often.
Wouldn't you think this information would lead to a massive health professionals? Not a bit of it. In comes the inverse care law. We have neither Doctor nor Chemist in the ward, and we have now lost our
children — who are more likely to suffer from cot deaths, or infant illnesses — now have to travel across town to see a GP or other health professional. Elderly people have to walk across the town centre to audiologist, or the Health Visitor, or And when they need medicine they have to pay for their home carer to
town to
After the publication of this CHC survey we have begun a campaign
which we have no
dropping until we achieve
modest goal: a proper health centre in the ward, accessible to all the residents, which will not
house GPs and chemists but which
could be a centre care, for hot help for a
Currie's hobby
Education!
So East Ward Health Centre
campaign will carry on fighting,
along with the Tenants Association in
their campaign for inside bathrooms,
damp-free homes, cheap
heating and decent play areas for the
kids.
of households; unemployed; and New IN the minds of British trades unionists, for years David Kit- son has been an important sym- chronic membership of the African National Con- since gress's military organisation, his imprison- ment was widely release by anti-apartheid activists, notably and by the leadership of his trade union. camapgin by that same union, its left wing General Secretary Ken Gill. also rates services; sympathies munist Party, in his defence. input of the nearest But this principled and intention OUI simply for preventive Health who are CP members or sympathisers. and propagandist central In
SUPPORT DAVID KITSON years in South African jails after being found guilty of from his former college, Ruskin in Oxford, "internationalism" Now David Kitson is being remembered for something else. Only three years atter his release and return to this country he is vicious persecution An explanation for this remarkable tur- naround is to be found in the politics of the the anti-apartheid David Kitson joined TASS's predecessor union in the late '40s. Given his political as a supporter of the Com- this group his subsequent imprison- ment ensured a CP-supported campaign TASS featured its support for Kitson as representing the union's com- mitment to opposing apartheid. For many in other unions too, it was a tangible link between the workers' movement here and As well as some (limited) assistance to repeated loud and often its pledge to provide for David after his release. In the union's own words, they promised to help him "build a new The means of doing this was by financ- ing a teaching position at Ruskin College David's livelihood - vitally needed since, on his release, he would be approaching official retirement age yet by virtue of his 20 years in a South African jail, was not entitled to any state benefits. promise from TASS was to be subject to political pressures not foreseen at the time it was made though increasingly apparent in the period leading up to David's return The source of these developments was Apartheid as an organisaion has, trom its formation, been heavily influenced by the Communist Party. The aps autude of CP's attitude solidarity work coincides with those at the Oxford Branch. top of the labour movement from where it derives the bulk of its support - including Labour Party, a number of people in the trade unions, This method is essentially moralistic. strongiy against anything but the most token direct action. in AAM (as with numerous other similar international solidarity cam- paigns), the CP has the enormous advan- tage of political links with the organisa- cial support.
tions actually influencing, and sometimes leading, the resistance movements in the countries concerned either through other Communist Parties or, in the case of
National
Recent events in the CPGB have com-
Tand now there is fierce competition between the CP majori ty and the (mainly expelled) dissident wing around the Morning Star.
The latter faction are particularly keen to assert their right to inherit the franchise
"orthodox" Stalinists concerned with
against CPGB ma"revisionism"
On the issue of South Africa Ken Gill, being the leading trade unionist in the
Thas a strong factional interest in slavishly promoting the ANC and, it seems, is prepared to do so even at the expense of his union's
respected
The background to this has been events in AAM, the leadership of which has had a long-running battle with its now-expelled City of London Group. Over recent years
Chad pursued a policy of solidarity action radically different from mainstream AA methods.
Influenced by the Revolutionary Communist Group, it adopted a militant, direct
approach typified by is effective and much-publicised Non-Stop Picket outside South Africa House
Bother independents Kitson's family, understandably keen to support increased action against
became involved, as tensions built up between City Group
After David's return his family's involvement with City Group led to controversy and a demand from AA that he condemn this section of anti-apartheid activity something he refused to do. A further consequence was the suspension of David and his wife Norma from membership by the London ANC, though without charges being laid or them being given the right of
For Gill and the TASS leadership, this issue of David's "relations with the ANC" has been used as the reason for the union reneging on is financial support for the
Ruskin teaching post, which is now due to end completely in the summer of this year,
despite unanimous opposition to the TASS
stance within Ruskin, reaching from the
college Principal to the students
Within TASS, David's own Divisiona
Council have backed his case, as has the
In Oxford, the Trades Council, District
Tand Oxford City AA
Group, having had a request for a meetin
vith Ken Gill turned down, and been tol
the Executive Committee of the union
"regard the matter as closed", have issued
an appeal to the labour movement na-
tionally for protests to be made to the
TASS leadership demanding an end to this
victimisation and for continuation of finan-
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