The long stated aim of the Labour Party is to run the market economy better than the Tories. What they really mean is that they want to try and run capitalism better — though, as yet, they haven't mustered the courage to use that word. To most people now, the Labour Party is an alternative to the Conservative Party only in the same way that Pepsi is an alternative to Coca Cola
There is a profound dishonesty about the Labour Party’s discussion document, Labour's Objects: Socialist values in the modern world, which is the basis for discussion throughout that party and for its special conference abandonment of Clause Four next month. We use the term dishonesty advisedly, for, the document is a work of confidence trickery, designed to convince Labour’s rank-and-file that it is about “strengthening socialist values”, when in fact it is a total capitulation to the ideology of capitalism.
Of course, Labour has always been a capitalist party in the sense that it has never sought to abolish production for profit and establish production for use. Even veteran left-winger, Tony Benn, whose knowledge of the Labour Party is rather longer and broader than that of Tony Blair, has repeated persistently that "the Labour Party is not — and probably never was — a socialist party” (Independent, 17 May 1989) and that "Socialism has been explicitly repudiated. Capitalism is hardly ever mentioned. The only political choice seems to be between two management teams, both committed to . . . the status quo. " (Tribune, 8 April 1994). Most Labour activists know that Benn is right, so the current talk of “socialist values” is nothing more than fraudulence.
Neither democratic nor socialist
Never in recent times has the term “socialist” and“socialism”appeared so often in a Labour Party document as in this latest one. It is there as a sop to the party's members. It is an insult to their political intelligence, treating them as mugs who will be won over by empty words. Sadly, in many cases it will succeed. But the mugs will pay their price, for once the leaders have their new constitution you can be sure that the term “socialism” will be as absent from future speeches and literature as it has been from every recent Labour Party manifesto. The truth is that these power-seeking politicians are embarrassed by those of their “comrades” who joined the party thinking (mistakenly) that it was socialist.
Not only is it dishonest, but also undemocratic. Blair announced that he wanted to change the objective of his party. Having stated this and called for debate, when the first response to his view came in a Guardian ad placed by a number of Labour MEPs who totally repudiated his position he admonished them for daring to criticise him in public, declaring such action to be “immature”. Is that Blair’s idea of a democratic discussion? According to polls, the overwhelming majority of constituency Labour parties are opposed to scrapping Clause Four. Blair’s response is to move the goalposts and insist that all book-members of his party have a vote, ensuring that the constituency activists will be outvoted. When the current document was circulated there was no invitation to opponents of the leader to circulate their points of view' in the same mail-out. Such democracy would not even occur to a fundamentally undemocratic party like Labour. Indeed, worse than that, on the green “Response Sheet” within the bogus consultation document, incredibly, there exists no place to state any support for Clause Four.
Contrast this with the Socialist Party where all policy is made by conference, which is mandated by all members, or by a party poll of each and every. member. Any move to change our Object or Declaration of Principles would be thoroughly debated, undoubtedly the subject of a party poll in which all sides would have their views published and circulated at the party’s expense, and then decided by a vote of members after full discussion without any priority being given to leaders (we have none) or officials That is the only way to conduct socialist debate and those who stray from the ways of democracy have absolutely no right to call themselves socialists.
Capitulation to capitalism
On page two we are told that “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party” which is a lie: it is neither democratic nor socialist. But you have only to read on to page eight to see just what that means to them: "We believe in an economy that works in the public interest. A competitive market economy, with a strong industrial and wealth generating base is in the public interest. ”
Now, you are either in favour of production "in the public interest” (i.e. for need) or within “a competitive market” (i.e. for sale and profit). The two aims are mutually exclusive. The market cannot be run in the public interest because it is a market in which most of the public are themselves on sale, as items of labour power to be bought for less than the cost of what they produce. Profit arises out of the difference between what workers produce and what we are paid. So, in supporting the market Labour is necessarily opposing the workers’ interests. We are prepared to accept that Blair and his co-leaders are quite ignorant of this point and really believe that you can run a socialist society on the basis of market competition. They are theoretically shallow people whose sole political experience has been gained in vote-trading and devising policies for capitalism. But surely many of their followers, some at least of whom will have joined Labour in revulsion against the market and profits, will see the absurdity of the position they are being asked to vote for.
Again dishonestly, the document explains that talk of “common ownership” only came about because "there was a genuine revulsion at the sheer anarchy and exploitation associated with the free market of Victorian capitalism”. The reference to “Victorian capitalism” is a clever piece of trickery, leading readers to assume that of course 1990s’ capitalism is free from economic anarchy, the exploitation of wage labour and the vandalism of “the free market”. Many Labour members and supporters will know just how much this applies to capitalism in 1995, especially when looked at as a global system.
We offer no advice to Labour's membership as to whether they vote for or against Clause Four. If it is retained the party’s leaders, including Blair, have already declared it to be meaningless and to have meant nothing to them for years. (So much for what is written on every' Labour Party membership card!) If it is scrapped the process of turning Labour into a more successful version of Owen’s SDP will be completed No self-respecting worker seeking the end of the market-capitalist economy will remain in the Labour Party.
Power at any cost
But there is one reason for supporting anything that Blair proposes, however dishonest, undemocratic, confused and at odds with what you actually believe it might be, and that is spelt out in the second paragraph of the document:
"There are those who will ask why it is necessary to have this debate. The answer is simple. We will not win an election unless we win the trust of the people. ”
But what precisely is winning “the trust of the people”? Is it really the case that millions of workers (who, oddly enough, have put Labour in a massive poll lead because they are so desperate to get rid of the Tories) are saying “Well, we would vote Labour, but not until they can convince us that they support a competitive market economy”? We think not. But you can be quite sure that the Murdoch Empire and the Stock Exchange are after a firm assurance. Remember, in the last election the crook’s own daily, the Financial Times, urged its readers to vote Labour. Blair’s job is to convince as many of these people as possible that his government can provide a low-taxed, low-waged, highly-policed competitive market economy in Britain. The increasingly obnoxious Daily Mirror on 30 January carried an editorial entitled “There's No Clause for Concern” in which readers are urged to "be cheered by (Blair’s) determination to create a just and equal society”. This is fraud, not that different from the tradition of the Mirror's unlamented old crook of a proprietor (himself an ex-Labour MP).
There will be those workers within the Labour Party who will reluctantly bow to their leaders and do simply anything to get a Labour government elected. Anything, they will tell themselves, must be better than the Tories. Must it? What about a party of Blair-led Labour-Tories, funded by union money and acting like recent Labour governments in Australia and New Zealand which, according to workers there, are worse, if anything, than their conservative rivals? Power at any cost is a very foolish course to adopt.
It is not as if there is no choice. There is a Socialist Party. Our Object is what any self-respecting and principled socialist would support. Tony Benn says that he will stick with the Labour Party until he dies: an act of dogmatic commitment worthy of religious zealotry. But what about workers who are young enough to want something more than loyalty to a dishonest capitalist party for their future? You owe it to yourselves to find out more about what genuine socialists are saying and doing.
Steve Coleman
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