Dear Arthur,
I read with interest the ‘profile’ article on you in The Observer supplement (17 June) and, in particular, your political views expressed therein.
You plainly believe that workers’ interests can best be served in the political field through the Labour Party, of which you are an active and committed member. I see also that you subscribe to the “Marxist interpretation of society” that there are “two classes in Britain, the ruling class which owns and controls the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the working class which provides the labour and is exploited by the ruling class.” Here you are dead right. You will also no doubt accept the view that the ruling class effects its rule through the state, which is the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’ and can only operate in the interests of that class.
But here we come up against a rather sticky problem. You say correctly that society today is a class society. What this means is that hitherto no ‘government’ (and this includes every single Labour government there has been, with or without majority support in Parliament) has done away with class ownership and control of the means of production, whether it has professed a desire to or not. The very fact that there still is a capitalist class — and a working class — is all the evidence we need for saying this. So every Labour government has lived with — and perpetuated — class ownership of the means of living.
But by perpetuating and not abolishing class ownership. Labour governments have therefore pursued the interests of the ruling class — the capitalists — for how else can a class-based society be run, except in the interests of its ruling class? Since the state is the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’, those who hold the reins of state power (governments), in order to perpetuate class ownership as every Labour government has done, must therefore be protecting, promoting and pursuing the interests of the ruling class.
However, since the interests of the workers and the capitalists, of wage labour and capital, are diametrically opposed — a fundamental Marxian proposition which I am sure your vast practical experience in the industrial field will bear out — how then can any Labour government, by acting in the interests of the capitalist ruling class, not be acting against the interests of the working class? In short, not to put too fine a point on it, how can you reconcile being a trade union activist as well as a member of what is in effect, despite all its appealing slogans, a capitalist anti-working class party?
This fundamental flaw in your thinking the belief that the Labour Party represents the interests of the workers is unfortunately shared by many trade unionists. The consequence of this is that the effectiveness of trade unionism itself is impaired. The so-called ‘understanding’ between the Labour Party and the unions has facilitated the task of Labour governments in imposing on workers anti-working class policies, some of which would even look bad coming from the Tories. It is therefore all the more important that trade unionists should extricate themselves from the spiders web of blind sentimental loyalty to the Labour Party which has kept them spellbound with promises of ‘jam tomorrow’ (always tomorrow!), and take a long hard look at what Labour governments, all Labour governments, have meant in practice (which in the end is what really counts).
Now you might agree with this criticism of Labour governments — it’s surprising the number of Labour Party supporters who would, yet still cannot draw the logical conclusion. Indeed, I see that according to The Observer you feel that the Parliamentary Labour Party has “betrayed its membership and the working class”. This is the usual excuse offered by the Labour left for the inevitable failure of Labour governments to run capitalism in the interests of the majority. The assumption behind this excuse is that the Labour Party is still worth supporting as a means to introduce socialism, if only a more ‘left wing’ leadership can be formed within the Labour Party. How the principle of ‘leadership’ can be reconciled with the opposing revolutionary Marxist principle that working class emancipation must be the conscious act of the working class itself, is something, of course, which the left does not care to explain.
But if past Labour governments have all been capitalist (there cannot be such a thing as a socialist ‘government’ anyway), are there any grounds for hoping that a Labour Party led by left-wingers will hasten the advent of socialism? Well, what is it that the Labour left are aiming for? No doubt that famous Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution which you call a “Marxist prescription for a new society” would be regarded by many of the left as an adequate description of their aim. This clause, as you know, calls for the ‘common ownership’ of the means of production, distribution and exchange, by which is meant ‘state ownership’, which the left would equate with a ‘classless socialist society’.
If the state is a product of class society, as Marxists believe, why would there be ‘state ownership’? Further, if goods and services are exchanged — bought and sold on a market — does this not suggest a private property set-up? If everyone owned all the means of production — that is to say, if there was common ownership — how could there be ‘exchange’ of what was produced? Exchange implies that sonic own and some do not.
In every exchange transaction there is a conflict of economic interests: it is in the interests of the seller to sell his commodity for as much as he can get, while the buyer’s interests would be to purchase this commodity for as little as possible. The commodity you as a trade union negotiator are especially concerned with is labour power, the skills of your members. Ironically, the buyer of this commodity is a state enterprise which, according to left wing theory, is the property of you, me and everyone else in the country. This, however, does not make any difference to the fact that workers in state industries have to struggle just as much as those in private industries for better wages and conditions, against employers who are determined whenever possible to intensify workers’ exploitation or, if insufficient profits are forthcoming, to make workers redundant. And despite the fact that ‘we’ are all supposed to own British Rail, for example, personally I don’t think I can afford to run the risk of taking this too literally by travelling on British Rail without a ‘ticket’, any more than I would be prepared to risk walking straight past the cash tills of ‘my’ local privately-owned supermarket with a bag-load of unpaid-for goodies. No cash means no goodies or railway trips.
In other words, there is basically no difference between private ownership and state ownership as far as the working class is concerned: the latter is just as much minority ownership and control of the means of living, except that this minority exercises its ownership collectively through the state rather than individually through private firms. State capitalism, as this is called, is still capitalism, with all the conflicts and contradictions that that implies.
There is an alternative to all forms of capitalism. Socialism entails that all wealth should be produced solely for use, not for sale or barter, and made freely available to all in abundance. Modern industry and technology is more than capable of producing this, but for capitalism and its restrictive rule: no profit, no production. Only in this sense of the word can we meaningfully talk about ‘common ownership’. Socialism, then, means quite literally ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’. Unfortunately our task is made doubly difficult by the unsound views advanced by the left.
Yours for socialism,
Robin Cox
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