Letter: Shut Up and Shut Out (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shut Up and Shut Out

At the meeting of the "Hackney Committee Against Racialism”, controlled by the IMG, I explained to the chairman that I wished to explain the Socialist case. Though I was invited, as my name is in the Hackney Council brochure, the chairman stated that I was not to speak. I did not quarrel at all but suggested a speaker from the Socialist Party. "Oh dear no, Tariq Ali is our man.” In brief, red fascists are no different from black fascists.

Recently a poster on the wall at the London School of Economics announced a meeting of IS. I knocked at the door and asked if it was all right to sit and listen. They knew I was a member of the Socialist Party. The answer was "No”. I suppose they’re a secret society.

S. Highams

London N.1

Letter: Ideas and Struggle (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ideas and Struggle

Dear Comrades,

I found an old copy of your magazine Socialist Standard at a friend's place. I was very interested to read it and there were several thought-provoking articles.

Have you got anything on Trotskyism? Several of my friends have very nearly joined such parties as the SWP. Militant and the RCP. A few years ago, I was on the periphery of the RCP, but their ruthless party building (and total rejection of real working class issues) turned me off . . . fortunately. I find that the Trotskyists have a very patronising attitude to the working class that I presume results from Lenin's theory that, on their own, workers can only reach a trade union consciousness and thus, hey presto, the need for the guiding light of a revolutionary party—it does not seem to have done that much guiding so far! And what do you think of anarchism? I have occasionally read anarchist papers—some of them are nothing more than liberal rubbish (such as Freedom), but others do have more sense (e.g. Direct Action) in that they emphasise the class rather than the culture!

I must say that I do have my differences with the SPGB analysis, particularly over how socialism will be achieved. I completely agree with you that a majority of the working class needs to be fighting for socialism, but. as Marx said, "ideas change in struggle". To me this means that at any time there is a possibility of real change because in mass struggle the ideas of the working class do change. For example, if the miners strike had spread to other sectors (as it had to in order to avoid defeat), then we might have seen a possible revolution. I think that it is very Leninist to underestimate the abilities and potential of the working class. You say "the democratic conquest of political power”— what about the real power in this society, the economic structure? Thatcher is merely a puppet of the bosses' interests. To talk of revolution in such mild terms makes me think of naivety such as what would you do if there was a military uprising against the new socialist government?

I also think that you emphasise educational activities far too much. I would never deny the importance of propaganda, but getting back to that original quote from Marx: “ideas change in struggle” . . . not through passive book reading. So I would argue that socialists should be fighting back against this rotten system in their own lives in the here and now (for example, agitating for a strike in their workplace, leafletting their community about the Poll Tax and helping to set up Anti-Poll Tax Unions) and supporting all other working class people in their struggles against class society. I think that it is only through such a movement as this that society will be changed—but I am very interested to hear what you have to say

Norman Davis

London, N16

REPLY
1. Yes, as Marx said, ideas change in struggle. But this does not mean to say that ideas change suddenly. In fact, the process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class, as the Leninists do, when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we accepted, for example, that if the miners' strike had spread "then we might have seen a possible revolution". The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. If the miners' strike had benefited from greater solidarity amongst other workers, it would have improved the miners' position, and would have been a sign that class consciousness was growing. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority.

2. Yes, Thatcher is a puppet of the bosses' interests. But political power within capitalism cannot be overestimated—the bosses spend millions through their parties securing and organising political power. In Britain today, the state forces including the military are, as a matter of concrete fact, under the control of a parliamentary government which is given electoral support by the very workers whose interests it opposes. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. With the growth of a socialist majority, determined to end capitalism, the notion of a military uprising to prevent this is nonsensical. How would such a military force even exist or survive against the solid and hostile opposition of a socialist majority throughout society? The greater degree of class consciousness which that would entail on the part of the majority would make it more than likely that such a military sect would be starved of food, of power and electricity supplies, of uniforms, of weapons and of credibility.

3. You say that "passive book reading” and educational work are not enough on their own, but must be combined with active campaigning, e.g. against the poll tax, or for strikes at work, as, going back once again to Marx, "ideas change in struggle”. It is false to make such a rigid division between passive reading and active action. Reading and learning is itself an activity. Furthermore, the substance and subject matter of what socialists write and read about is, of course, the subject matter of the class struggle itself. And, on the other hand, a lot of so-called radical actions are actually nothing more than feeble attempts to reform and modify capitalism, to dress up oppression in a new guise. But, as far as trade union and strike action are concerned, or democratic efforts by workers to combine and improve (or just maintain) their wages and conditions of work, the Socialist Party fully supports such action. As active members of a whole range of trade unions, many of our members have worked very long and hard at such active struggle. But as a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race now in 1989: are we. the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain harmfully in the hands of about 1-5 per cent of the population, or are we at last going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism?

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1961)

Party News from the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• Socialist Current were a small orthodox Trotskyist group based mainly in East London. Members included Sam Levy and Ted Crawford. (The latter spoke at the Westminster Branch of the SPGB in 1968, when he was a member of the International Socialists.) There is an extensive archive of Socialist Current material over at the excellent Splits and Fusions blog.
• The German Story was a 1956 East German documentary film by Andrew and Annelie Thorndike.
• R. Donnelly' of Glasgow Branch was Dick Donnelly. His obituary appeared in  the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• 'R. Reid' of Glasgow Branch was Robin Reid. His obituary appeared in  the January 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• R. Russell' of Glasgow Branch was Robert Russell. His obituary appeared in  the June 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• H. Weaver was Harold Weaver. His obituary appeared in the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Party News: Durham Miners Gala - Part 2 (2026)

Party News from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

As ever a fabulous day out where there is always a real buzz all day. I would recommend it to anyone. What I find really heartening is the number of people who are willing to come over to our stand (and presumably the other political stands) and have an open and straightforward discussion about politics. There was very little rancour in the discussion. We had the opportunity to discuss our case in a degree of depth with many people ranging from anarcho-syndicalists to some older members of a local boy scout group. Wandering around the Gala field is also very interesting. As usual there are the various leftist groups who all hate capitalism, but not quite as much as they hate each other. The Gala organisers either by luck or judgement managed to place the various Trotskyist splinter groups in a way that meant that the Trots were firewalled from each other, usually by some hardline Stalinists or the Labour Party. What becomes apparent when you talk to them about their politics is that generally speaking they just want to cosplay the 1917 October Revolution and that the differences between each group is that their different leaders fell out with each other because they thought it was their turn to wear the Lenin or Trotsky costume. They really should stop referring to themselves as political parties and call themselves what they are: Historical Re-enactment Societies.

T. K.

Your Party hits the rocks (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the Central Executive Committee, the ‘collective leadership’ of the (ridiculously named) Your Party, decided to enforce the condition for joining that you should not be a member of any other political party. Up to then such ‘dual membership’ had been tolerated and the condition was only applied to some of the top leaders of the SWP and to candidates seeking election to the CEC. Members of Trotskyist groups, including the SWP, continued to be active and hold office in YP’s ‘proto-branches’.

Actually, the resolution passed at YP’s founding conference in November did not completely ban being a member of another political party as it allowed this subject to CEC approval. What the CEC decided on 12 April was that members of a certain type of political organisation can no longer be YP members or join, the type which it said ‘operates as a democratic centralist party or organisation, maintains its own national political membership structure, and requires political discipline and accountability to an external leadership or programme’.

Clearly what they had in mind were Leninist would-be vanguard parties. In fact a list circulating ahead of the CEC meeting named as examples ‘the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Party, Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), Scottish Socialist Party, Socialist Equality Party and Revolutionary Communist Party’.

The ‘Socialist Party’ is not a reference to us but to a section of the old ‘Militant Tendency’ which since 1997 has been trying to usurp our name. The full name they have given themselves is ‘Socialist Party of England and Wales’, or, appropriately enough, SPEW. The list wouldn’t have needed to include us of course since we are opposed to Your Party as we are to all other political parties that support capitalism in one form or another. The inclusion of the SEP (one of the fragments of the once premier Trotskyist organisation in Britain, the Workers Revolutionary Party) seems unnecessary as it opposed YP from the start, denouncing it as a joint Corbyn/SWP plot to divert the working class from revolutionary action (ie following the lead of the SEP).

The two biggest Trotskyist ‘entryist’ groups, the SWP and SPEW, took the ban graciously and instructed their members to withdraw from YP. Some of the smaller ones may decide to practise ‘deep entryism’ by remaining secret members of their vanguardist group.

So, where does this leave YP and the groups that have been excluded? For the latter, it’s back to what they used to do (and what they would have continued to do had they been allowed to stay in) — exploiting any discontent to try to build up a following for their particular, vanguard proto-party, through taking over existing protest groups or setting up their own front organisations such as Stand Up to Racism, Stop the War and ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’. In fact, the last, which is a front organisation for SPEW, nominated candidates for this month’s local elections even before the ban was enforced.

YP’s attempt to be a strong left-of-Labour electoral force hasn’t taken off and it looks like it never will. It was bad luck for them that, as they were preparing to launch themselves as such a party, the Greens elected an eco-populist as leader who stole the clothes they were about to put on    — tax the rich, renationalise the utilities, improve social services, rally to beat the Reform party. It is clear that most of the 800,000 who expressed an interest in the idea of forming a new leftwing party have come to see the Greens as this. Since the Green Party does not even claim to be a socialist party, this shows that most of the 800,000 didn’t want a new system to replace capitalism but merely the implementation of ‘progressive’ reforms and policies within it.

If it had taken off, YP would only have been a Labour Party 2.0. Now, it won’t even be that but a party whose MPs will mainly be pro-Gaza local Muslim dignitaries (denounced by the Trotskyist ex-entryists as ‘landlords’) and whose councillors will be representatives of localist ‘independents’ engaged in pot-hole politics.

Had Sultana’s ‘Grassroots Left’ rather than Corbyn’s ‘For the Many’ won a majority on the CEC, the Leninists would have been allowed to stay in as ‘factions’ and the party would have been advocating policies without much electoral appeal, such as ‘Smash Israel’, ‘Leave NATO’ and ‘Abolish the Monarchy’. In other words, a small party similar to previous attempts to unite ‘the Left’ including the Trotskyists in a single electoral party such as ‘Socialist Alliance’, Respect and Left Unity and which are now just history and where YP is heading too.

What is required is a mass working-class party dedicated to the establishment of a genuine socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production so that production directly to meet people’s needs can replace production for sale on a market with a view to profit. A party that avoids advocating reforms to capitalism in order to avoid attracting the support of those who only want that; a democratically organised party in which vanguardist factions would not be welcome.

Adam Buick

Why we can’t support Your Party (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the weekend of 29-30 November some 2000 attendees at a conference in Liverpool founded a new political party called simply ‘Your Party’.

After Labour lost the 2019 General Election long-time left-winger Jeremy Corbyn resigned as leader and was succeeded by the man who is now the Prime Minister. During the four years during which he was leader Corbyn had tried to steer the Labour Party towards the left. Starmer decided not just to reverse this but to turn the Labour Party into a mainstream capitalist party, even to the extent of describing itself as a better ‘party of business’ than the Tories.

Corbyn himself was suspended as a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party (though not of the Labour Party itself). Starmer could have let him stay a member (as Corbyn would have wanted) but he and those around him were adamant. They wanted to completely change the Labour Party by in effect lopping off its leftwing. Corbyn’s supporters were expelled. Corbyn himself was not allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 general election. They put up a candidate against him; which meant that as he stood against a Labour candidate he was automatically expelled from the Labour Party. He won, easily, as an Independent.

From that point on, there were calls for Corbyn to support the formation of a new left-of-Labour party which would in effect be the Labour Party’s former leftwing as a separate political party. Whatever the reason Corbyn dithered and another suspended Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, precipitated things by announcing in July that she was resigning from the Labour Party to co-lead a new leftwing party with Corbyn. This was an announcement that a lot of people had been waiting for and up to 800,000 were said to have expressed an interest in the new party, though by the time of the conference only some 53,000 had actually joined.

Sortition

A new party cannot be created just like that. It has to have a statement of what it stands for and a constitution. Corbyn and his advisers drew up a plan which, in theory, seemed reasonable enough (as long as the provisional committee played fair).

A provisional committee is set up to draft a statement of aims and a constitution both to be put to a founding conference. These would be subject to amendments suggested by meetings of members. Those attending the conference are to be chosen by lot (now called sortition) from the membership. Conference will debate the finalised documents and selected amendments. These will be voted for or against online, not just by those chosen to attend the conference but also by the rest of the membership on the basis of one member one vote.

This — including sortition — seems a democratic way of going about founding any new party whatever its aims. Choosing those attending a founding conference by lot should ensure that they will be a representative cross-section of the membership and reflect the views of the average member and not just of an activist minority. More generally, it is an alternative to election but still a democratic way of choosing people to carry out particular tasks (as it already is today for choosing trial juries) and could have a wider use in a classless socialist society.

This, however, did not go down well amongst the activist minority made up of the various Trotskyist groups that had decided to ‘enter’ the new party (as in the past they had ‘entered’ the Labour Party). They argued that this would exclude experienced activists like, er, themselves.

In the event, it didn’t exclude them. It just ensured that they were represented in accordance with their proportion of the new party’s members. The Trotskyist groups were pleasantly surprised that quite a few of their militants were chosen to attend, even some from the more obscure grouplets

Do as I don’t

The Trotskyists also objected to a provision in the proposed constitution barring dual membership with another political party. This was in fact already in the application form to become a member and take part in the founding process. This, however, wasn’t enforced and members of the SWP, the old Militant Tendency (now calling themselves SPEW) and most lesser Trotskyist groups joined and participated freely in the pre-conference Your Party meetings.

One objection to Trotskyists being in the new party was set out by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Robert Griffiths, in an article in the August issue of their paper Unity, where he criticised ‘the readiness of the ultra-leftist sects to infiltrate broad-based mass movements in order to divide them, pose as a “left opposition” to the leadership and recruit from those they influence and mislead’.

Which is indeed what Trotskyists plan, though it’s a bit of a cheek coming from the CPB as it’s what its antecedents used to be good at. (Incidentally, the CPB position is not to join the new party but to vote and campaign for its candidates under certain circumstances).

The Trotskyists lost no time in forming a ‘left opposition’ and campaigning to make the constitution of the new party as democratic as possible. This was not because they believe in democratic organisation but because it would give them a wider opportunity to work and recruit within the new party. They joined a ‘Socialist Unity Group’. One of its constituents calls itself the ‘Bolshevik Tendency’; which would have been a better name for their faction.

They are hypocrites because their own organisations are not organised democratically. Take the SWP, for example. It is run by a Central Committee which is chosen in this way:

‘The outgoing Central Committee selects and circulates a provisional slate for the new CC at the beginning of the period for pre-Conference discussion. This is then discussed at the district aggregates where comrades can propose alternative slates. At the Conference the outgoing CC proposes a final slate (which may have changed as a result of the pre-Conference discussion). This slate, along with any other that is supported by a minimum of five delegates, is discussed and voted on by Conference’.

What this means is that the SWP is run by a self-perpetuating group that in effect renews itself by co-option. The slate ‘selected’ by the outgoing committee is virtually assured of winning. It was how the Politburo of the CPSU was chosen in the old USSR. Their constitution also states that ‘permanent or secret factions are not allowed’.

When the SWP led a move to ‘seize control’  of the conference agenda by means of an emergency resolution, the conference organisers took this literally as a call to storm the platform and invoked the paper ban on dual membership to expel the leaders of the SWP (and hire a security firm to guard the platform).

In the end, the conference voted not to endorse a complete ban on dual membership but to make acceptance of being in another party more difficult. So the Trotskyists are still there.

What does the new party stand for?

Before adopting a constitution the conference also adopted a Political Statement setting out its general aims. This began:

‘Your Party is a democratic, member-led socialist party that stands for social justice, peace and international solidarity. Our goal is the transfer of wealth and power, now concentrated in the hands of the few, to the overwhelming majority in a democratic, socialist society’.

This is rather vague and says nothing about how quickly — or how slowly — this ‘transfer of wealth and power’ is to take place nor what the end result will be like. It is what the Labour Party promised in its election manifesto for the February 1974 general election. In fact, it is even rather less radical in terms of rhetoric as that manifesto talked about ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.

The Statement doesn’t go into what they envisage this ‘transfer of wealth and power’ as involving but it will be much the same as Attlee set out in 1932 (Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42):

‘A Labour [read: Your Party] government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’.

So, different private profit-making sectors of the economy are to be gradually brought into some form of ‘public ownership’; taxes on the rich increased; services provided by central and local government expanded and improved, and money wages increased. All this to take place initially within the framework of the existing mixed private/state capitalist economy. The end result — several decades down the line — would be a society where people’s incomes and what they owned would be more equally distributed than now and in which they would be working for some ‘public enterprise’ paying them a good wage and be provided with well-funded public services and amenities.

This is the old Fabian dream of the gradual transformation of capitalism into a more equal society by means of nationalisations and social reforms. It’s not as if it has not been tried, and failed. It always was impossible because it involves trying to make capitalism work in a way that it cannot.

What drives the economy under capitalism is the pursuit of profits to be accumulated as more capital invested for more profit. If a government interferes with this, the result will be a slowdown in the economy depriving the government of the tax revenues to proceed further towards a more equal society. Based as it is on profit-making, the capitalist economy cannot tolerate a growing increase in the purchasing power of workers and their families at the expense of what is the source of the purchasing power of the rich, profits.

The last time it was tried

All reformist governments with such a programme have failed everywhere, the most recent, spectacular one being the Syriza government in Greece in 2015. This failure is particularly significant as Your Party has a lot in common with Syriza, whose name is an acronym in Greek for ‘Radical Coalition of the Left-Progressive Alliance’ and which included Trotskyist groups as constituent parts.

Leftists explain the failure of Syriza either by a lack of determination or by a sell-out. In fact, it failed because the leftwing government came up against how capitalism works and realised that if it continued to try to apply its policy it would make things worse (they reasoned that if things were going to get worse it would be better that this should be managed by them, who had some sympathy for the working class, rather than by their political opponents who didn’t). A Your Party government would face a similar dilemma.

It is all very well Zarah Sultana saying, as she did in her closing speech to the Conference:

‘We are not here for tweaks of a broken system. We are not here just to lower some bills and sprinkle a wealth tax. We are here for a fundamental transformation of society’.

It got her a standing ovation and it will on May Day and at the end of the next Conference and similar ceremonial occasions but, in practice, in between, Your Party will be campaigning just for ‘tweaks’ and ‘sprinkles’ and seeking votes and popular support on this basis. It will be yet another reformist party. Support built on that basis will be of no use in furthering the cause of socialism. Which is why we cannot support the reformists who have formed what we can only call ‘Their Party’.

Adam Buick

Beyond trade unionism (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The poor workers whose job is to paint the Forth Bridge: no sooner have they finished putting fresh paint on to one end than the paint is peeling at the other. It is a never-ending exercise in human frustration. Watching Norman Willis plodding and nodding and huffing and bluffing his way through the Trade Union Congress's annual conference evokes vivid images of those painters.

It is not because trade unions are wickedly corrupt that they achieve so very little. Compared with most institutions under capitalism the unions are remarkably democratic. They do their best. They win a wage increase here; they stop some new. intolerable conditions being introduced into the workplace there, they provide lawyers for the persecuted wage slave; they pick up as many crumbs as they can from the cake which the working class has baked. Without such defensive action the workers would be exploited entirely at the bosses' will. Of course, workers need trade unions.

What unions can do is dictated by capitalism. Indeed, trade unions, far from being something to do with socialism, as the ill-informed believe, are features of the capitalist system. Only where there are two classes — the buyers and sellers of labour power — are unions needed to defend the sale of the workers' sole possession: our ability to work. Wages and salaries are the price which workers are paid for being turned into human commodities, there to form the basis of the affluence which the capitalists derive from profit. Where does profit come from? It comes from the legalised robbery of the working class. It comes from the payment of workers less than the value of what we produce. Trade unions are there to negotiate the rate of exploitation; they exist to preside over the act of robbery and ensure that it is not too vicious, to see that the exploiting minority leave the unexploited wealth producers with enough crumbs to nibble on.

Trade unions cannot bring about ''fairness". Capitalism is fair, insofar as it determines what justice is to mean. What would happen to a trade union official who went to the boss and said. "Look, my members are being paid £130 each a week; by 5pm every Wednesday they have each produced goods worth well over £130 for you; they have even covered your costs of machinery and electricity; why should they work Thursdays and Fridays. Be fair and let them work for what they are paid and no more." The boss would look at the trade unionist as if he had just arrived from the kindergarten and would explain that in this world (under this system) workers are not employed to make them happy but to make profits. Profits come from the workers' unpaid labour. The trade unionist is not entitled to question the employer's right to rob the workers, only to haggle over the rate of robbery.

The Left entertain huge illusions about the power of trade unionism. A picket line to a Trotskyist is like a bone to a dog. It's where things are happening. Picketing is a necessary activity by workers who, when on strike, have a class interest in ensuring that other workers do not take over their jobs. The scab provides safety for the boss and undermines what combined strength the workers can muster. For the Left picket lines are where the class struggle takes place. It is where the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil are to be found. It is where the student-vanguards. equipped with the collected works of Trotsky and a few scraps of Gramsci and the odd Sun article by Derek Hatton, can find proletarian recruits for their Bolshevik fantasies. That is why the Left enthuse about strikes. Sadly, many strikes end in dismal failure. The workers go back defeated, or winning victories which are cancelled by the losses incurred while striking. Even when real victories are won — and trade unions do win real victories more often than is usually realised — all that it amounts to is a return to wage slavery on new terms. There is nothing glorious about strikes or pickets. These are the actions of workers driven to fight for survival. Socialism, which the Left falsely claims to stand for, is about rather more than mere survival.

The "workerism" of the Left, which sees workers only where it sees blue collars and struggle only where it sees strikes, misses the crucial point that the working class comprises not only those men and women who work in factories or offices. The working class are all those who are forced to work to live, including millions who are non-unionised and vast numbers who are self-employed. The Leftist caricature of the cloth-capped, machine-operating worker excludes from its vision workers who look after homes, rear children, are children, are retired, are disabled. are unemployed. . . In other words the working class is far more than what Ron Todd contemptuously calls "our people".

Karl Marx, whom the Daily Express no doubt thinks was an adviser to the NUM, expressed the view that workers must not overstate to themselves the importance of trade unions. At best, trade unionism is a struggle to prevent their living standards being pushed down: "They ought, therefore, not be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. "Instead of confining themselves to the futile demand for fair wages, which Marx called a conservative demand, they should advocate the abolition of the wages system. (Marx, Value, Price and Profit) That advice is over a century old but it is as valid now as it was when it was written. What point is there in workers endlessly running breathlessly in order to stand still when, with no greater energy, we could demand not a better price for selling ourselves but the right to be free from selling ourselves?

When workers establish socialism all the means of wealth production and distribution will belong to everyone. Instead of working for a boss we will work for ourselves, for the community. Instead of the coercion of the wages system, we shall have a society in which each will work according to his or her ability and take according to his or her needs. Wages will not exist. And without wages to negotiate or bosses to fight, why would there be any need for trade unions to protect us from ourselves? As the owners and controllers of society the people of a socialist community will require no bodies to defend them against the rival interests of a ruling class. There will be no rulers or ruled. Trade unionism will have no role to play.

The Left are of the view that to speak to workers — "ordinary" workers — about such big ideas as abolishing the wages system and creating a society in which trade unionism will have no function is all too much for our little minds. Instead, run campaigns to replace Union Leader A with Union Leader B; spend endless hours manipulating committees and getting Red Ron put in the chair instead of Pink Pete. Instead of organising to remove the system which causes the workers' misery, the Leftists applaud the windy rhetoric of posers who make vague, rhetorical noises against profiteering and "bad" employers. In other words, the Left perpetuate the illusions of trade unionism. Just as at election time they throw aside their revolutionary outfits in favour of a Labour government to run British capitalism, so on the economic field they cannot see further than a bit of pushing and shoving within the wages system.

When workers' consciousness of the need for socialism grows, the form which trade unions take will change. As millions of workers begin to think beyond the limits of the profit system they will ensure that the unions are there to back up the majority will for socialism when it is expressed. Unions whose members are committed to the revolutionary objective of abolishing the system which created them will be able to make plans for how their particular industry or service will be run (or disbanded in the case of useless areas of work, such as banking or ticket collecting) once production for use is introduced; trade unions can be units of planning for socialist society.

It is up to the socialists in their trade unions to constantly urge their fellow workers to look beyond the narrow horizons of wage or salary slavery. To see that beyond the crumbs there is the whole cake and beyond that there is the bakery itself which we should take into our common possession. In the meantime painters will gloomily set about the ceaseless task of painting the Forth Bridge. Norman Willis will complete his apprenticeship for the House of Lords and many, many workers will wonder why they are struggling so much for so very, very little.

Steve Coleman

Profits of doom - capitalism’s left wing (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advent of capitalist production in sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Britain was marked by the transformation of the peasantry into wage-workers. Peasants had been isolated, and concerned with increasing their individual land holdings. But as workers, forced off the land into the workshops, survival necessitated some kind of association. The revolt of workers against the conditions they were forced into went through certain phases. At first machinery was destroyed. Riots and arson were, however, easily crushed since they were isolated and unorganised. Destruction proved counter-productive. Then trade unions were formed to ease the downward pressure on wages which resulted from competition between workers. The unions aimed to establish uniform wage scales, to regulate apprenticeships and also, often, to oppose the introduction of machinery. Their role was of necessity contradictory' and sectional. The kind of political association which could potentially overcome this problem of division appeared for the first time on a large scale in the form of Chartism. This was the first attempt by workers to gain direct access to the state through extending the franchise.

The response of the ruling class to previous waves to discontent among their workers had consisted mainly of vicious and brutal oppression to outlaw trade unions and democratic association. The Combination Acts, the Tolpuddle martyrs and Peterloo are the British equivalent of the killings in recent times in Gdansk and other parts of Poland. In the late nineteenth century they began to fear how workers might react to this once they could vote. This fear had a very long history. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, at the time of the English Revolution, the aptly named Colonel Rich had said:

You have five to one in this kingdom that have no permanent interest . .  if the master and servant shall be equal electors, then clearly those that have no interest in the kingdom will make it their interest to choose those that have no interest. . . there may be a law enacted, that there shall be an equality of goods and estate. (Quoted in The Century of Revolution, Christopher Hill. p. 120.)

In addition, employers faced the problem, after the Education Act of 1870, of increasing literacy among their workers which posed the threat of growing knowledge and understanding. So in place of violent suppression, there evolved the idea of social reform. According to many liberal capitalists of the late nineteenth century, the discontent of workers could be placated without revolutionary change, provided their employers were prepared to make minor concessions. This idea was sold to the capitalist class over a period of time by politicians like Joseph Chamberlain, with his question: “1 ask what ransom will property pay for the security it enjoys” (at an 1885 Liberal Party meeting discussing the financing of social services — Life, J. L. Garvin, 1932, Vol. I. p. 549).

The experiences of workers continued to show that the fetters of capitalism prevented their needs from being met. The question of getting rid of capitalism arose, but was drowned by the clamour for piecemeal reform of the system. The formation of employers’ federations in the 1890s and the anti-trade union court rulings around the turn of the century led to the formation of the Labour Party, which then grew from a trade union pressure group to an alternative capitalist government to the Liberal Party, out of which it had in part grown. The lip-service paid by the Labour Party after 1918 to nationalisation is now frowned on by many workers, particularly those who have worked in state-capitalist industries and found it no better than working in the private sector. The Tory statesman. Peel, had already proposed the nationalisation of the railways half a century earlier as a threat against private monopolies, so the idea had a long, respectable history within capitalism.

From the start, the Labour Party was not united on any principle and attempted to catch votes by empty promises which had nothing to do with the self-emancipation of workers. Labour governments have smashed strikes, supported wars, passed racist immigration legislation, presided over soaring unemployment, cut medical and social services, wages and housing programmes. In fact they have done everything the Tories do, and anything which has been demanded of them by the present, capitalist system which they say we “have to work within”. The last Labour government, for example, imposed a five per cent limit on wage rises through the “social contract”, and at the 1975 Labour Party conference called for wage restraint with the exercise of the "socialist imagination” — in other words, take less but imagine you're getting more. Jack Jones of the TGWU justified his support for these measures with the assertion that "Socialism means being able to take part now and not just dream dreams”.

Alternative Economic Strategy 

At the moment the Labour Party, the Communist Party, the Liberal Party and the SDP are all proposing to deal with the 14 per cent rate of unemployment by the Keynesian policy of increasing public expenditure. Keynes saw himself as the saviour of capitalism; he hoped to prove Marx wrong by showing that the profit system could work in the interests of all. He hoped for 5 per cent unemployment as a "natural” stable level. But the policies of all the governments since World War Two have followed Keynes without success. For example, during the seventies, annual government spending was increased about four times over, and unemployment shot up from under half a million to over two million. This was simply the outcome of one of the periodic trade slumps of capitalism.

But according to the Labour Party we should not yet reject the whole system, for they have a few more policies for us to try. Have we tried them all before? Well, yes, they say. but why not try again, after all. Labour MPs might join the dole queue otherwise. The rest of the "Alternative Economic Strategy” consists of import controls, and controls on wages and other prices. That these measures cannot serve the interests of the majority has been amply illustrated by our own experience.

The situation which an incoming Labour government would face is probably comparable to that of Mitterand in France. The same kind of promises about public expenditure and expansion were dropped very quickly, as the PSF government introduced its austerity programme and wage freezes. The nationalisation they introduced, does not particularly affect the interests of the capitalist class, as was made clear in this announcement in French newspapers. with the heading: Nationalisation. An exchange of holdings.

If you are a shareholder in one of the companies which was nationalised on 11 February 1982, your shares will be exchanged freely for guaranteed state bonds, with variable rates of interest, on 13 April 1982.

The ideals of "industrial democracy” and "workers control" within the capitalist system are simply modern replacements of the older. Tory defence of property as based on freedom and enterprise. They lead to exploitation supervised by the exploited themselves, masking the fundamental class division of capitalism.

Why, then, do the so-called revolutionaries of the Left still involve themselves in the Labour Party? It used to be because it was the "mass Party of the working class”, even though numerically you might just as well describe the Nazi Party in Germany in the thirties in that way. But recently the Labour Party has been in decline, with its individual membership falling by hundreds of thousands. The reason for the Left’s continuing involvement is their sticking to the old-fashioned idea of secret infiltration rather than open persuasion. Leninist groups such as Militant Tendency and the SWP think workers are incapable of understanding socialism — even though their own conception of it is at best vague and often oppressively anti-working class and dictatorial. Because of this arrogant belief that they have understood something which others cannot, the attitude of these groups has been somewhat contradictory. For example, in the February 1974 election the manifesto of the International Marxist Group said "VOTE LABOUR — but rely on your own struggles". Then in their Red Weekly (now Socialist Challenge) of February 22 they said:

Labour's attitude to the working class involves outright lying . . . the (Labour) programme is a big con. designed to trap the working class movement into accepting further cutbacks in its standard of living while prices soar.

On 23 February, 1974. the SWP’s Socialist Worker advised that "every socialist, every worker must spend all the days before polling day shouting two simple slogans at work, in the home and whenever anyone will listen: DEFEND UNIONS — VOTE LABOUR”. A few months later, on 6 July 1974, the same journal slated:

Wilson’s wage cuts will have to be fought with stronger organisation and stronger industrial action — stronger even than the action that booted out Heath and the Tories.

Leninism

These U-turns are made because these parties blindly accept as a dogma the statement made by Lenin in a pamphlet at the turn of the century, that "The working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness”. (What is to be Done?) Poles who know the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto have recently been saying that a spectre is haunting Leninism — the spectre of trade-union consciousness. The irony really is complete, because Leninist groups insist on the need for a leadership to take workers beyond the trade-union struggle, and yet spend much of their time talking about the trade-union struggle, even when the workers they are "organising" find that reformist campaigns which fail to touch the root of the problem cannot be in our interests as the majority class in society. As the “vanguard" repeat their circular slogans and arrogant dogmas and the rest of us find more and more evidence that we must get rid of the system they say we must work within, it is not hard to see why Marx spoke of the need to educate the educators. In the early days of the Russian Revolution, Lenin declared that to establish state capitalism would be a victory (The Chief Task of our Times), and he has been quoted:

If socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permitted it. then we shall not see socialism for at least five hundred years. (Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed. p. 263)

There is in fact no reason at all why the majority of workers could not easily understand that the present system of production for profit must be replaced by production for use, and private and state property replaced by democratic control and common ownership. The abolition of the world market system does require the full development of socialist political consciousness on the part of a majority of workers. We are quite adequately equipped, biologically and socially, for this task of taking political action on the basis of understanding, in order to transform society.

The organisation of the Leninist left epitomises the hierarchy, the bureaucracy, and the deadening nature of capitalist hypocrisy. Much genuine and potentially revolutionary discontent is absorbed and channelled into the kind of rebellion against fragments and details of the system which proves ultimately innocuous. These basic assumptions lead to the state capitalist regimes such as Russia — however much the Trotskyists may try to deny this by dating the beginning of oppression in modern Russia from the time when Lenin died and Stalin took over. And Russia, with its concentration of most industry in the hands of the state and the suppression of trade union activity, is basically a capitalist state:

During the first year of transition to the new system industrial enterprises obtained 3500 million roubles extra profit. The level of profitability rose from 13 per cent in 1965 (in industry as a whole) to 22.5 per cent in 1969 (for enterprises transferred to the new system). (Labour Remuneration, Labour Incentive Funds and Soviet Trade Unions, Novosii Press Agency, Moscow, 1972.)

No Socialism without Socialists

Militant is now in a state of panic over the dreaded Labour Party "Register”. In the end. they will either be kicked out or accommodated. Their history of a reformist leadership holding back the rank and file is an unfounded myth. To support the principle of leadership signifies lack of socialist consciousness. Leaders like Wilson and Foot were regarded as being on the Left at one time. The successive movements of politicians across the wings of the Labour Party merely reflects their stagnating acceptance of capitalism. Society will change through conscious desire, not the eighteenth-century Jacobin tactics of secret conspiracy and infiltration, or through the manipulations of self-styled vanguards. The limited way in which both the Left and Right wings of capitalism define what is “possible” and what is not crushes any real dissent from the prevailing form of society. They are ideological harnesses, holding back uncertain workers from developing the confidence necessary for self-emancipation, as advocated by Marx. The capitalist system has produced four tons of nuclear explosives (TNT-equivalent) for every man and woman on earth, but still leaves an average of one person to starve to death each second. Only a conscious majority of workers, organised democratically, can take the political action necessary to end this tragedy, by sending delegates to take over and dismantle the state machine. Before this can happen we must rid ourselves of any illusions about the outdated and destructive system we live in at the moment.

Clifford Slapper

Trotskyism regurgitated (2025)

Pamphlet Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why you should be a communist. By Fiona Lali. Wellred Books. £2. 2025.

Fiona Lali is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (ex-Socialist Appeal, the section of the Militant Tendency that stayed in the Labour Party after most left in 1991 until they were themselves finally expelled in 2021). She stood as their candidate in last year’s general election and has become their poster girl (literally as she appears on many of their posters). This pamphlet has been written as part of a recruitment drive by the RCP, at the moment the Trotskyist group that seems to have been the most successful in recruiting young people.

The pamphlet starts off with an attack on capitalism and is aimed at young people who realise that something is wrong with the world and want to do something about it. There is not much that can be objected to here. It’s the second part — about what is to replace capitalism and how — that is open to criticism. It starts off with the absurd claim that ‘the Russian Revolution of October 1917 — led by Lenin and Trotsky — was the greatest event in human history’. An important event in 20th century history perhaps, but in the whole of human history?

We are told that the regime it ushered in, while far from perfect (due to Stalin being in charge), was able, thanks to its ‘nationalised planned economy’, to industrialise the country and provide the workers with ‘extremely low rents’ that included ‘energy and phone services’ and retirement at age 55. The implication is that what happened in Russia in the last century is something to be emulated. But what the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 led to was a form of state-run capitalism that left the workers propertyless wage-workers, indeed forcibly changed the peasantry into these. It had nothing to do with communism or socialism. Lali is deceiving herself and misleading others in suggesting otherwise. It is not the path to go down.

She presents the Bolshevik seizure of power as the model for the future. In a section headed ‘need for a revolutionary party’, she tells us that ‘what is required is a party of trained class fighters — cadres — who dedicate themselves to the study of the class, its history, and the theory needed to liberate us’ and that:

‘In the not too distant future, Britain will be convulsed by revolutionary upheavals. It is essential that we build a revolutionary party in advance of these titanic events. This is what we are doing. And we appeal to you to join us in this effort.’

Apparently, hundreds of young people, of which Lali is one herself, have responded to this appeal. It’s the classic formula, successfully applied in the 1960s and 1970s by the founders of Trotskyist groups, to attract young people discontented with capitalism — promising them exciting times of ‘revolutionary upheavals’ and ‘titanic events’ in ‘the not too distant future’.

There are good opportunities to advance the socialist cause at the moment but to make extravagant promises like these can only lead to disillusionment when they don’t materialise. The only positive outcome would be that some will be able to sort the Marxist wheat, which they will have had to study, from the Leninist chaff.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Doubletalk (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

An accomplished variation of the three-card trick was performed by Mr. Paul Foot — the International Socialist — in The Times of 14th August. After quoting the words of a dispirited shop steward at Norton Villiers Triumph where the Labour government has failed to provide further financial backing, Foot draws the following conclusion:

“These are dreadful times for socialists who put their trust in Labour Governments.”

This is coy stuff of course, one of the very last places a Socialist would put his trust is in the Labour Party. But there is method in the madness. He attacks the government in its attempts to run capitalism at a time, as he puts it, of “unprecedented capitalist collapse” for the following reasons:

“Labour’s elected representatives become isolated from their power base, impotent to resist the demands of the system which they try to manage. They mouth the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.”

All unsparing language of course, but we fail to recollect when this “power base” ie, the Labour Party supporters, expected or desired other than the continuance of capitalism. In thus discrediting the leaders specifically, the illusion could be created that they alone are deliberately perverting the desires of their supporters. He accuses the “helpless puppet” (the Labour Government) of recently being forced by economic conditions to “tear up two manifestos” but fails to note that each one of those manifestos was filled from cover to cover with “the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.”

Having pointed out that such an unlikely vehicle as the Labour Party has failed to introduce Socialism, he uses some loose logic to reject the whole parliamentary method:

“The parliamentary road to socialism has turned into another blind alley. The revolutionary road is beginning to open up.”

The “revolutionary” road to Worker’s Control is what he refers to. However we recall that Foot’s paper, the Socialist Worker, had little doubt, on 16th February 1974 when advising before the oncoming election that “The working class has to respond with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote…” exactly which “helpless puppet” they favoured.

[From the So They Say column, Socialist Standard, September 1975.]

Smash! (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Election Programme?

The most hilarious buffoonery of the election was the International Marxist Group’s putting up three candidates. At a press conference their representative was reported saying hopefully: “In an atmosphere of confrontation a few hundred votes can turn into tens of thousands” (Times, 13th Feb.). A different view from the one in their leaflet distributed on 1st May last year: May Day — End or New Beginning.

Shorn of all its flowery phrases (like “Mass Action”. “Mobilization”, “Confrontation”, “Counter-offensive” and all the boring old stuff about the failure of the wicked trade-union leaders who won’t “mobilize a united struggle to smash through Phase 2”), what this leaflet does is advise strikers to fight the police. It actually says this explicitly. We quote:

To do this [defend the picket lines] the local Trades Councils have to centralize our resources for fighting the police.

The absurdity of the entire content of this ridiculous document is apparent, for instance, in the first paragraph :

A large majority of the working class are striking work together and coming out onto the streets.

In paragraph 2, however:

Millions of workers feel that this stoppage will have no immediate effect on the Government policies. In this they are correct.

We also would say that the millions of workers are quite right. Not only did the General Council of the TUC know this very well, as they showed by deferring their strike-call date till after the Government had passed the Phase 2 Bill; but we now know that the TUC leaders were having secret meetings with Prime Minister Heath one day before the May-day marches, to be followed by the open meeting to fix a deal.

What concerns us here is the dangerous folly of the baloney being peddled by the IMG. Why on earth they have the insufferable impudence to call themselves “Marxist” only they can know. Everything in this nonsensical and pernicious propaganda is utterly foreign and contrary to all of Marx’s teachings, and especially to his actions in the International Workingmen’s Association, of which he was a founder member and author of its address, or policy statement.

We would highly commend to the IMG the statement by Marx in that address which they would do well to deeply and quietly ponder:

One clement of success they [the workers] possess, that of numbers, but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.

Is there the slightest sign that, amidst all the hysterical outpourings about “smashing Tory governments” and “treacherous trade-union leaders”, the IMG have given one moment’s serious thought to the meaning of what they are spreading?

Read through their leaflet! The workers must centralize their forces to “develop a General Strike to get rid of the Government itself”. The central task in holding the line is to “prepare the counter-offensive in the autumn" because the Government “presented the leaders with a clear choice, either accept pay restraint, or mobilize a united struggle which would smash Phase 2, bring down the Government and so raise the hopes of the working population that the social order itself would be threatened”.

As was pointed out explicitly in a recent Socialist Standard (and even that was re-quoted from 1919 and has been confirmed by history ever since), in every strike, above all the 1926 General Strike:

The masters are in a far stronger position than the workers on the economic field and will beat them, at will, any time they wish.

This is why Marx wrote in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s Association that

To conquer political power has become the great duty of the working class.

(Selected Works of Karl Marx, Moscow, p. 440)

As for all the other rubbish about smashing (these idiots are obsessed by the word SMASH; it recurs repeatedly in their manifestoes) Tory or Labour governments, this cannot be done by strike action alone. If a government feels that it has lost popular support, as shown in Italy or Denmark, and estimates that it may lose the next election, it may well resign, go into opposition, and laugh its head off at the troubles of the new government trying to grapple with the problems. So far from being “smashed” by resignation, there is every sign that they positively enjoy it.

As for “threatening the social order”, this probably is the stupidest nonsense of the lot. Trades unions are organized on a job basis: the vast majority of trade- unionists are not Socialists and have no desire whatever to threaten the social order — they uphold it. Neither would “threatening the social order” mean any real progress in changing it in orderly fashion. It could merely lead to chaos.

As for all the other tripe about the naughty, wicked trade-union leaders, we have pointed out repeatedly that they operate by the approval and consent of the members.

Let all strikes be called at the most favourable moment — when the bosses are doing allright-thankyou and don’t want them. Let them be short and sharp; if they are not won quickly they won’t be won at all. Let the members decide by democratic vote and, if things go wrong, democratically decide to retreat back to work in an orderly united fashion.

Above all, ignore and reject the dangerous, meddlesome folly of these academic hot-heads and professional hooligans who run about “smashing” everything and call on trade-unionists to “fight the police”. This plays straight into the hands of the authorities and is in fact all they need to crush strike action. On the industrial field the workers’ strength is in the withdrawal of labour. This may get them a rise in wages; but only political action can control the police (and the army) and establish Socialism.

Horatio.

"Revolutionary" Left unite behind Labour (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sham socialists show their true colours

Ever since the SPGB was founded we have at all times resolutely opposed all other political parties. We maintain that political parties are the expression of class interests and that the party seeking working- class emancipation must organise consciously and politically for the capture of political power for the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement by Socialism. The Socialist Party must work only for Socialism as this is the immediate task facing the world working class. No other political party in this country holds this revolutionary position.

The blood-and-thunder left consistently cloud and confuse the clear-cut issue — capitalism or Socialism. Bitter experience has amply borne out the correctness of our long expressed judgement that the Labour Party is a reformist capitalist party and has nothing to do with Socialism. However the period immediately prior to the February 28 General Election saw pseudo-socialist organizations and parties advocating and encouraging workers to vote for the Labour Party. Examples of this confusing and cynical exercise in political futility are documented below.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

(Aim: to achieve a socialist Britain in which the means of production, distribution and exchange will be socially owned).

‘‘Three aims need to be achieved [says the CP Manifesto]: a Tory defeat, the winning of a Labour Government, and the return of Communist MP's . . We need a different type of Labour government — one that would bite into the power and profits of big business” (Morning Star 14 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP

(Aim: the overthrow of the capitalist system).

‘‘Of course, in any election called now socialists must argue for a vote for the Labour Party where there is no revolutionary alternative. The victory of the Tories would be seen by the working class as a set back and would decrease confidence and combativity. A victory for Labour would have the opposite effect . . . The slogan ‘Vote Labour but rely on your own struggles’ must be the key one for any election campaign” (Red Weekly 8 February 1974).

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

(Aim for independent working class action for the abolition of capitalism. ‘‘The struggle for socialism is the central struggle of our time”).

“KICK OUT THE TORIES VOTE LABOUR”

“No worker should have any doubt about what is at stake in the election . . . The working class has to respond [to the Tory campaign] with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . . Labour is as much committed to keeping capitalism intact as the Tories ... So while fighting for a Labour victory, we have to step up our efforts to build a real alternative, a revolutionary worker’s party, by arguing the full-blooded socialist case” (IS National Committee Statement, Socialist Worker 16 February 1974).

WORKERS FIGHT

(Aim: to build a party which stands firmly for the interests of the working class and which preserves its political independence.)

"Until we have the possibility of a genuine, socialist working class government it is in workers’ interests to elect Labour . . . ACTIVE and unconditional support for Labour against the Tories !” (Workers Fight No. 43, 9-15 February 1974).

WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY

(Formerly Socialist Labour League).

“We call on all Labour Party members and trade unionists to vote Labour in constituencies where the WRP is not standing. We call on the electors to return a Labour government. In the struggle to compel the Labour leaders to implement the socialist policies we have outlined, they will be exposed and will be driven out.” (WRP Manifesto).

SOCIALIST CHARTER MOVEMENT

(‘Labour’s Revolutionary Voice’. Aim: to build a new revolutionary leadership in the Labour Movement to defeat the Tories and their system.)

“CAMPAIGN ON A SOCIALIST PROGRAMME”*

“. . . Labour Party leaders must present a programme for their next government which really offers a way forward for society out of its present impasse . . . A production plan based on common ownership . . . For this programme we need look no further than . . . the Constitution of the Labour Party, Clause four, Paragraph four.” (Chartist February 1974).

YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE

“Join in the fight now to rout the Tories and elect a Labour government with Communist MPs to back it up . . . mobilise a great mass movement to sweep away the Tory government and return a Labour government compelled to carry out Left policies . . . This is the great issue of 1974.” (Challenge February 1974).

Gwynn Thomas

Gerry-built (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party is Always Right. By Aidan Beatty. Pluto Press. 2024.

This is sub-titled the ‘Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism’ though in truth most of it has been told before. The interesting addition is the number of interviews that have helped to add colour and richness to a grim story of political failure and an even grimmer tale of internal strife and abuse.

Alongside Ted Grant of the Militant Tendency and Tony Cliff of the Socialist Workers Party, Gerry Healy was one of the three gurus of the British Trotskyist movement. While all three led organisations that had authoritarian tendencies, Healy’s outfit was by far the worst. Called the Socialist Labour League until it changed its name to the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in 1973, it became a byword for cult-like sectarianism and was infused with a rancid, hierarchical political culture which was framed and dominated by the leader himself. Healy was a tyrannical bully who often directed and oversaw violence against his political opponents (both inside and outside the party) and who was an expert manipulator. Indeed, that was arguably his main ‘talent’ such as it was and what kept him at the top of the organisation for so long.

Unlike Grant or Cliff, Healy was no theoretician with a knowledge of Marx, even though he liked to paint himself as such. Most of his attempts at establishing this sort of reputation for himself only served to expose his limitations, which were considerable. He was obsessed with Marxist dialectics, but his forays into this were generally just nonsense (Beatty quotes a few examples in case anyone was in any doubt).

Healy also seemed to possess relatively little knowledge of Marxist economics. He was the perennial catastrophist, constantly predicting that capitalism was in its final death agony and that the revolution was imminent. He was effectively saying the same thing in the 1970s and 80s as he had been in the 1950s. Yet the collapse never came.

Some argue that he had a certain charisma, which is why he was able to keep his hold on the party for so long. It was certainly enough to woo a number of high-profile celebrities into the orbit of the organisation, starting with the actor Corin Redgrave and then his more famous sister Vanessa, but including many others from Frances De La Tour to former Spurs football player Chris Hughton.

But this charisma – if that is what it was – was ultimately to prove the downfall of both Healy and the WRP. In 1985, Healy’s secretary Aileen Jennings wrote to the Political Committee of the WRP alleging that Healy was a serial manipulator and sexual abuser of women, naming 26 female victims, mainly party members. This eventually led to a predictable slew of lurid tabloid headlines and was a proverbial ‘hand grenade’ against its supreme leader from which the WRP never recovered. It split into myriad warring factions over the following years.

Healy himself then founded the Marxist Party with loyalists Vanessa and Corin Redgrave but died aged 76 in 1989 and this party – never more than about 50 or so – dwindled away to nothing. The surviving WRP led by Sheila Torrance is also now tiny (estimated at around 120 members at most) though still stands General Election candidates, as periodically does another small surviving faction, now called the Socialist Equality Party and linked to a US organisation of the same name led by David North (a Healy protégé).

At its peak the WRP may have had 3,000 members but when the split happened the party’s finances became one of the biggest bones of contention as it emerged that many of its assets were not actually registered in the name of the party itself, but through other byzantine and opaque structures – allegedly for security reasons. There was a Head Office (with no signage) on Clapham High Street in a building now occupied by Caffé Nero, eight apartments around the corner in Clapham Old Town (Healy himself lived in one of them), a ‘College of Marxist Education’ in rural Derbyshire, and a state-of-the-art printing works in Runcorn that had enabled the WRP to produce the first colour daily newspaper in Britain, News Line. There were also several ‘Youth Training Centres’ it had set up, at one stage several bookshops, and also fleets of vehicles including Healy’s BMW.

The party’s finances were actually another Achilles Heel, as it over-extended itself in a way that couldn’t be sustained through membership income and paper sales alone, however hard the leadership pushed the members and gave them impossible targets to meet. Hence Healy’s well-known soliciting of money from Iraq and – in particular – Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan regime (which also gave the WRP printing works considerable contracts, including for mass copies of the Green Book). Beatty is sceptical of some of the wilder claims that have been made about links with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the PLO as well, but there is little doubt that money came from both Iraq and Libya and was not unconnected with the virulently pro-Arab nationalist tone of much WRP literature.

This then leads us on to another theme – the paranoia and secrecy at the heart of the organisation. Healy was obsessed with the security services, spies and moles, and saw them everywhere. Anyone who crossed him was lucky to be called a ‘subjectivist idealist’ or similar, the alternative was that they were really a spy. Anecdotes about speakers at WRP meetings being asked to speak with their backs to the window (in case MI5 listening devices could pick up sensitive vibrations from the glass) were not entirely unfounded. In fact, the British state did show an interest in the WRP (especially in the 70s and 80s) though this was more because of its links to industrial disruption in the early 70s and then later links to foreign governments and their money, than any assessment of them being a credible domestic revolutionary threat.

Beatty says that the standard description of the WRP as a cult has something going for it, but is, of itself, inadequate because its internal practices were directly a product of its elitist political outlook:

‘Dismissing the WRP as a cult means ignoring the connection between the WRP’s authoritarian culture and the party’s Leninist structure. The WRP can and should be understood also as an extreme manifestation of Leninist vanguardism and its anti-democratic praxis’ (p. xvii).

We could not have put it better ourselves.

Dave Perrin

Cooking the Books: No such thing as a workers’ budget (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘What would be a workers’ Budget?’ the Trotskyist Workers’ Liberty asked on Budget Day. With graffiti on a wall saying ‘Tax the Rich’ as an illustration, the article expounded:

‘A workers’ budget would tax the rich heavily’. ‘A workers’ budget would rebuild public services and restore real wages and benefits’. ‘Increase corporation tax’. ‘No easing of the rules can square the circle and win the resources needed to rebuild public services and real wages without taking from the millionaires’.

Taxing the rich to increase wages and benefits and provide better public services is fantasy politics. It’s not going to happen and, if it was tried, would precipitate a massive economic crisis.

The article cites a calculation that ‘a wealth tax, increased capital gains tax, and a few other items could raise £50 billion a year’, but that’s only 6.25 percent of the £800 billion currently spent on health, education, and pensions and other benefits. So the bulk of the money ‘to rebuild public services and real wages’ would have to come from taxing profits. The article mentions doubling corporation tax to over 50 percent of profits (but even that wouldn’t raise enough). This would reduce both the incentive and the amount for private corporations to re-invest in maintaining and expanding production. Hence, the reduction in production and a massive increase in unemployment.

The slogan ‘Tax the Rich’ assumes the continued existence of the rich, the continued division of society into the rich and the rest, into a class which owns the means of production and lives off an unearned property income (profit, interest or rent) and a class which, excluded from such ownership, depends on working for an employer for a wage or salary.

The assumption is that the rich should continue to exploit the workers but that part (most) of their income should be taxed away to pay for higher wages and better public services for the rest. It is the fantasy of capitalism being made to serve the interests of the non-capitalist majority.

The absurdity, let alone the infeasibility, of such a social arrangement — the capitalist as capitalist for the benefit of the working class — is obvious.

Some naive leftwingers might believe in this but we doubt if the leaders of Trotskyist groups do. For them, proposals for a ‘workers’ budget’ will be an application of the cynical tactic of proposing something to attract worker support but which they know won’t work, in the expectation that, when it doesn’t, the disillusioned workers who fell for it will turn to them for leadership in an assault on the capitalist state.

Real socialists are honest. We say that under capitalism there can be no such thing as a ‘workers’ budget’ as this implies that capitalism could be made to operate in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. But experience has repeatedly shown that it can’t. The only budget that there can be is a capitalists’ budget.

What the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, set out on 30 October was what the British capitalist state plans to spend in the next tax year (which in the UK, for some odd historical reason, starts in April) and how it intends to pay for it.

The various measures she announced were based on the supposition that the government can bring about growth. But it can’t. The most it can do is to create conditions that could encourage business investment. This in fact is what all budgets have to try to do and why they must all be capitalists’ budgets. There can be no such thing as a workers’ budget.

Blogger's Note:

A leading member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Martin Thomas, replied to this column on their website.