Promising the moon (1997)

From the June 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Have you ever wondered what we mean when we use the word "reformist" in these columns?

The recent election provided a striking illustration of the difference between our approach and the reformist approach in the contrast between our programme and campaigning and that of the various other parties calling themselves socialist. We advocated a fundamental change in the basis of society. They merely offered reforms.

We stood for socialism and nothing else. We made no promises as to what “we” would do to make things better under capitalism. We simply said that capitalism can't be reformed to work in the interests of the majority and that the way-out was to get rid of the profit system and replace it by a system based on common ownership and democratic control and geared to meeting needs not making profits.

The SLP, Militant, the Scottish Socialist Alliance and the others took a different approach. In a bid to get as many votes as possible they promised the moon. In other words, they played the game of conventional electioneering politics to the full. However all their promises were pie-in-the-sky in the sense that capitalism could not afford them. This didn't stop these parties entering into great detail about what they would do if elected.

Wonderful wages

Pat Sikorski, SLP candidate for Hornsey and Wood Green, had worked out to the nearest penny what the minimum wage should be: “£6.22 per hour or £250 per week is everyone’s entitlement”. That works out as for a 40 hour week. But he hadn’t thought this through as in the previous paragraph he had promised “a 35-hour week for all. Speedily followed by a 32 hour-4 day week”. £6.22 per hour for a 35 hour week is £216.60. only 87 percent of "everyone’s entitlement”.

To be coherent he should have advocated a minimum wage of £7.14p per hour, but perhaps that would have seemed a bit too unreasonable. Not to another SLP candidate though. Councillor Ian Driver of Southwark, standing in Vauxhall (where he faced opposition from a real socialist), promised “we will introduce a minimum wage of £8 per hour”. Perhaps he was anticipating the coming of the 32-hour week.

Militant—using, to our great anger and embarrassment, our name of Socialist Party—was more modest. They promised “a minimum wage of £6 an hour for all workers” coupled with “the introduction of a maximum 35-hour week". That gives £210 a week as the minimum wage, but also the maximum wage for those concerned. This, they said, was “the European Decency Threshold. That’s the rate necessary to take the low paid out of the poverty trap”.

An example of the crude electioneering engaged in by these groups over this issue is the following report from Militants Hitchin branch: 

"The fight against low pay has been our main campaign. At a town centre stall a single mother was asked to sign our petition. “Would your party pay me more than £50 a week?’

‘Yes, we campaign for a minimum wage of £6 an hour, £210 a week.’

‘You’ve got my vote then!’”

Unfortunately for Militant, her vote wasn’t enough to stop their candidate in Hitchin being beaten by the Natural Law Party. It appears that more people in Hitchin believe in yogic flying than in the possibility of a £6 an hour minimum wage. After the election, with the vote-catching over, Militant revealed that it too considered £6 an hour impracticable when the front page of its paper said that “top of the workers’ demands from a Labour government will be a minimum wage of over £4 an hour” (The Socialist, 9 May). Not that there’s much chance of getting that either, at least not until inflation has reduced £4 to the value of £3 today.

But, in Militant’s utopia, some people are still going to get less than the “European Decency Threshold’’. They say that “pensions and benefits should be immediately increased by 50 percent”. But why only 50 percent? With the pension for a single person at £62.45 and the jobseekers Allowance at £49.15 that’s not enough, even with housing benefit, to bring many up to £210.

“We would introduce,” said Militant pompously as if they really had the chance of forming the government, ”a wealth tax—no one should earn more than £100,000. VAT should be abolished and there should be no tax on wages below £10,000 a year.” But if there’s a minimum wage of £210 a week, then there’s not supposed to be any full-time workers earning less than £ 10,000 a year.

These people are jokers, insulting people’s intelligence. They just pluck figures out of the air to make what they consider attractive promises—but which most people consider ridiculous—without even checking that their various promises are compatible with each other.

It is interesting, though, that Militant is prepared to have a 10:1 differential between the highest paid and the lowest paid. Who will be the £100K earners anyway—the new Trotskyist nomenklatura?

Another Trotskyist group calling itself the "Socialist Equality Party” had a more radical tax policy: ”all personal incomes over £80,000 should be taxed 100%, whilst those under £12,000 should be tax-free.” It also advocated a higher minimum wage—£8 an hour—and an even shorter working week, of 30 hours.This gives a maximum minimum wage of £240 a week, still below the level of what the SLP said was “everyone’s entitlement”.

It might have been thought that a party calling itself the "Socialist Equality Party" would have refused a 7:1 differential between the highest and lowest pay and advocated an equal income for all of, say, £80,000. Why not? If you are in the business of making unrealistic promises you might as well go the whole way.

Plentiful pensions

The fantastic promises—and the contradictions—continued over pensions."People should be able to retire at 55 on a full pension linked to earnings,” said Pat Sikorski (SLP). That wasn’t good enough for Ian Driver (SLP). He promised “voluntary retirement at 55 on full pay”. In a later leaflet, perhaps in an attempt to outbid Driver, Sikorski promised “an immediate doubling of pensions”. But to no avail. Retirement on full pay is still better for most people than retirement on a double State pension. You should have promised to triple the State pension or supported the SEP proposal "pensions must be increased to the level of the average wage”, Pat, but perhaps you ruled these options out as appearing too unreasonable.

Perhaps this explains why Driver got more votes (983) than Sikorski (586). Or perhaps not. People are not stupid and clearly do not take these promises seriously. At a meeting in Brixton on 24 April attended by the candidates (including ours) Driver’s list of fantastic promises—£8 minimum wage, 32 hour week with no loss of pay, retirement at 55 on full pay—were greeted with laughter. He might have got a better reception if he had advocated, as our candidate did. the abolition of the whole system of working for an employer with the wages you get determining your level of access to consumer goods and services. After all, didn’t Karl Marx once say to workers: "Instead of the conservative motto, 'A £6-£8 minimum wage’, they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wages system’ “(or something like that)?

As all these fantastic [proposals] would cost millions, no billions, to implement, the inevitable question arises: Where is the money to come from? Who is going to pay for them?

Julia Leonard, Militant candidate in Uxbridge had the answer:

“I say use the profits of big business and tax the super rich to provide well-paid jobs and a decent standard of living for all.” 

Simple. But this assumes that Big Business and the Super Rich are to continue so that they can be milked, i.e. that capitalism is to continue.

The SLP made the same assumption, their candidates declaring that “the policies outlined in this election address can only ameliorate the destructiveness of the present system”. This of course is to imply that their policies could be implemented under capitalism. (We don’t want to be too cruel, but they used the wrong word: they meant “mitigate” not "ameliorate". To ameliorate the destructiveness of capitalism would be to make it more destructive. On the other hand, perhaps it was the right word since any attempt to put their fanciful promises into practice under capitalism would make it more destructive by provoking a massive economic crisis.)

To suggest that capitalism could afford all these things—and many more, a free health service, "the immediate injection of £5 billion into our schools” (Militant), "build a million new homes every year for five years" (SLP), "a multi-billion pound programme of public works” (SEP)—is just ridiculous, not to say dishonest.

Do they take us for fools? The answer is, yes, they do. As Leninists they believe that ordinary workers are only capable of acquiring what they call a "trade union consciousness" by which they mean wanting more under capitalism. So that’s what they offer to provide for workers, knowing full well that capitalism will be unable to deliver, in the hope that they can get the workers with themselves as the leaders to overthrow capitalism because it won’t pay them a full-pay pension at 55. Only the Workers’ Revolutionary Party however had the honesty to come out and say that it was standing in the election "to build the revolutionary leadership”.

It’s an insulting theory and has never worked. It didn’t even get them many votes, not even much more than us. In fact one of our candidates, making no promises and saying that capitalism couldn’t make these reforms, got more votes than 15 of the 19 Militant candidates and 23 of the 64 SLP candidates, as well as all nine WRP and all four SEP candidates.

People are quite capable of understanding the idea of socialism. What could be easier to understand than a society where productive resources belong to no-one but are democratically controlled and used to produce goods and services directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit? People certainly understand very well when someone is just dangling bait before them.

Adam Buick