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

Sting in the Tail: The Numbers Game (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Numbers Game

Listen, John, I've just been reading the November / December issue of Labour Party News. It's full of Neil Kinnock and his pals on about the wonderful future they offer "our country" if they get in.

And they've got their own Premier Savings Account at "competitive rates of interest", a competition with a £10,000 tax-free prize, a Visa card, a lottery, and organic wines! Couldn't find a mention of socialism, but you can't have everything, can you?

They’ve got a lot of new members too; 140 here, 35 there, but the official "Recruiter of the Year" is a Nottingham youngster who roped in 200! It's easy, John, there's a membership form inside if you want to join: no conditions, no questions asked.

All this recruitment looks good — what's that you say? Labour's membership has dropped from 350,000 in 1980 to 288,000 now! Christ, that Nottingham youngster had better get his finger out, hadn't he?

Open Secrets

For fifty years groups of Leninists have been boring-from-within the Labour Party.

Because their own ideas have very little electoral support, they hope to gain influence in the Labour Party which they see as "the mass organisation of the working class".

There have been many such hopefuls down through the years of which "Militant" is only the best known. As would-be Bolsheviks they exist as "secret" groups but always there are the inevitable defectors to reveal all.

The latest group to be shopped is "Socialist Organiser" which, according to an ex-member, is:

. . . completely committed to remaining within the Labour Party, and will jump through each and every hoop the (Labour) NEC places before them to save themselves.

The Guardian (24 December)

These groups are an obstacle to Labour's chances of running British capitalism and are being rooted-out, but doubtless there will in the future be others willing to jump through endless hoops in pursuit of Lenin's useless and discredited ideas.

Princely Piffle

Prince Charles, authority on ecology and architecture, has been airing his views on

politics and economics.

Speaking on French TV he

. . . called for a balance between the ideals of capitalism and communism.

The Guardian (24 December)

What he meant by "communism" is, of course, what existed in Eastern Europe and which he described only last year as "one vast prison". What "ideals"of this system does he admire?

The Prince continued:

We need capitalism, but perhaps with a more human face. We need a system in which big capital becomes more and more Interested in local communities. . . and the developing countries.

As if capitalism will do this as an act of altruism and without taking profits into account!

This ignorance of capitalism's priorities is further revealed by his call for banks to lend to "gifted" young people to start their own businesses. Alas, the banks

. . . weren't in the slightest bit interested because young people had nothing to offer as guarantees.

We doubt if bank depositors would share the Prince's desire to see their savings lent without collateral.

Let's hope that HRH knows more about ecology and architecture than he does about politics and economics.

Keen as Mustard

During World War II over one thousand Australian servicemen were used as human guinea-pigs in experiments with mustard gas. Many of them had up to 95% of their skins burned and a top-secret film recorded the horrific details in glorious technicolor.

Were these men prisoners of the Japanese and the victims of a bestial atrocity? No, it was the Australian and British governments who conducted the experiments on them.

All this emerged in a BBC2 Horizon programme on January 14. The experiments were supposed to provide information for "defensive" purposes should Japan use mustard gas, but Horizon revealed that the Allies intended to use the gas on the Japanese: they decided on the atom bomb instead.

Probably the most shocking revelation for many who saw the programme was that the human guinea-pigs were all volunteers. One of the scientists involved in the experiments said that the men "knew what they were in for". This was only partly true because the call for volunteers made no mention of mustard gas, and the men certainly didn’t know there would be such long-term after-effects as leukemia and damage to internal organs.

There is nothing new in workers volunteering to perform capitalism's dangerous tasks. They are forever risking their health and lives in the service of their masters, and it is nothing new for them to be rewarded in cruel and inhuman fashion.

Gulf Reality

While TV commentators move toy tanks over sandy table tops and gush on about "pincer movements" like demented schoolboys: the realities of war are much more soberly summed up by one of the participants of the real war.

Here, for example, are the unexpurgated thoughts of Captain Ronald Thomas, from Stoke-on-Trent and A Squadron of the 16th /5th, as he watched his soldiers load their missiles for what might be the last hours of peace. "Yes, I'm frightened of dying. Everyone's thinking about it now." (A pause here.) "But you know, I'll be really pissed off if I didn't see my family again. I've got four kids. I’d be fucking angry if I was killed."

The Independent (15 January)

Anger is, of course, understandable but it is only anger based on knowledge of how capitalism leads to armed hostility that is of any use in combating the threat of war.

Reality Gulf

Now that hostilities have broken out in the Gulf, it is reassuring to learn that those with a hot line to the deity are showing a touching compassion.

Although Dr Robert Runcie and Cardinal Basil Hume acknowledge that It was sometimes necessary to resort to war, they said in a joint statement that they had emphasised to John Major "our concern that only the minimum force necessary to secure the UN objectives should be used, without inflicting indiscriminate damage on Iraq and its citizens."

They also urged the Prime Minister to safeguard sacred Muslim sites from attack in Iraq.

The Independent 15 January

When the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Roman Catholic Cardinal unite on joint statements, you can be sure you will get a dose of arrant nonsense. "Indiscriminate damage" is the nature of war. There are no rockets or bombs that select the guilty and spare the innocent.

However it is touching to that they are concerned about fellow divines in Iraq — no hiding out in the sacred sites!

Answers to Correspondents (1937)

Letters to the Editors from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. Cohen (E.3).—We note that, after reading the article “Big or Little Unions,” you considered it ”a clear case for organisation by industry,” and you say that, as our speakers have stated that we ”are not believers in that, would it be possible for the Party to be consistent?” As neither the Transport & General Workers' Union nor the suggested separate Union for London busmen is an organisation by industry, we fail to see why the article is regarded as an argument for it. Perhaps you will explain.

As Socialists, we stress the need for the workers to organise on a class basis, whereas organisation on a craft basis or on an industry basis is compatible with the holding of quite reactionary views.

Ed. Comm.

J. Cohen (E.3).—You ask what would be the position of members of the Socialist Party who may also be members of the South Wales Miners’ Federation; and thus be affected by the agreement signed by the Communist, Mr. Horner (see July issue—"A Communist Leader and the Right to Strike”). You ask: ”Are they to see that the agreement is kept or are they expected as Socialists to take no action in agitating to break the agreement, run the risk of expulsion or quietly acquiesce in its operation or help in its operation?”

It should surely be plain that, if a majority of members of a Union approve or acquiesce in a bad move by their Union officials, a minority of Socialists can only try to get the majority to recognise the facts of the situation. Until that has been done the situation obviously cannot be remedied. When the majority are won over they, the majority in the light of the circumstances prevailing in the particular industry, will have to decide what are the best steps to take to get a better agreement.

Ed. Comm.

S. Rodgers.—A reply to your letter criticising the article, ”A Communist Leader and the Right to Strike,” has been crowded out of this issue.

Ed. Comm.

R. D. Lovett (Brentwood). —Thanks for comments on and criticisms of the ”Left News.” We do not think the writer you particularly mention is worth space for a reply in the Socialist Standard. There seems to be nothing original in the case he makes.

Ed. Comm.

James Jefferson (Elgin).—As you are not acquainted with the position taken up by the S.P.G.B., we suggest that you read the Socialist Standard and our pamphlets.

We notice that you agree with us that the Labour Party is not a Socialist party, but you think if Socialists got inside they could convert it. You quote Marx, who, like the S.P.G.B., saw that poverty can only be abolished by dispossessing the capitalist class of their ownership in the means of production and distribution. The Labour Party, while professing to want to abolish poverty, rejects that necessary means of doing so. You want to convert the Labour Party to Socialism, but yourself suggest that it adopt a non-Socialist programme of higher old-age pensions, unemployment pay, etc.

Ed. Comm.

J. McClellan (Leeds).—In reply to your question about the Socialist attitude towards religion, we would recommend your questioner to our pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” for a full statement. Briefly, however, the Socialist view is that the essential feature common to all religions is a belief in the supernatural, a belief which is ruled out when we apply to it the methods of science through the use of which human knowledge has been built up and progress has been made.

Gods of all kinds are expressions of man’s ignorance, fostered nowadays mainly in the interests of the ruling class.

Ed. Comm.

Answers to Correspondents: Socialists and Parliament. (1938)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. G. E. J. Hill (Cheddar) asks the following questions:—

(1) Do you intend to send your own candidates, if possible, to Parliament ?

Answer.

Yes. A start is being made in East Ham North, where our candidate is in the field. The increase in the number of candidates and the return of Socialist candidates to Parliament depends, of course, on the growth in the number of Socialists among the electorate.

(2) Is there any present Parliamentary party you support?

Answer.

No. There are no Members of Parliament who were returned as Socialists, simply on the programme of instituting Socialism. The. Labour M.P.s and the handful of Communist and I.L.P. M.P.s were all returned on a reformist programme, by electors who still believe in the policy of trying to reform capitalism instead of abolishing it.

(3) Could not the S.P.G.B. enter the Labour Party and endeavour to lead it towards a genuine Socialist policy? .

Answer.

The S.P.G.B. is endeavouring to persuade the members of the Labour Party and also the much larger number of workers who are outside that party to adopt the Socialist policy instead of the reformist one. It is a difficult task. Many thousands of workers who know what the S.P.G.B. stands for reject it and choose Labour Party reformism instead. Some day they will learn better and choose Socialism, but already the choice is clear to them. If the S.P.G.B. entered the Labour Party (assuming, which is most unlikely, that the Labour Party would let us) the clear choice would disappear. The S.P.G.B., instead of standing plainly for Socialism, would be associated with reformism and would have to devote the greater part of its energies to explaining that it was in the Labour Party under false pretences and that it did not really accept the Labour programme and policy, although in order to receive affiliation it had to pretend that it did.

This would not keep the Socialist issue clear nor would it speed up the progress of Socialism.

Ed. Comm.

Professor Laski’s Secret (1946)

Pamphlet Review from the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of the trade union element in the Labour Party dislike Professor Laski’s ideas. To them he is a troublesome interloper, a sort of cuckoo in the nest trying to make them responsible for intellectual progeny that may some day grow up and push them out. Without delving further into the habits of real cuckoos, we do learn from Professor Laski’s Secret Battalion (Labour Party, 2d.) just what happens in the political world when cuckoo number one finds a second cuckoo trying to lay eggs in the same nest; cuckoo number one becomes very indignant and says that cuckoo number two is not playing the game.

In 30 pages of argument Professor Laski tries to convince members of the Labour Party that it would be fatal to their cause to let the Communists become affiliated. With a rich array of facts he shows, that the Communists, while swearing their acceptance of Labour Party methods, are hiding their true aim, which is to capture the Labour Party as a first step towards setting up a one-party dictatorship in this country.

As propaganda to help the Labour Party repel the latest attack of the Communist political paratroopers it may serve its purpose, but as a contribution to Socialist thought it is largely stale and unprofitable. It echoes the 25-year-old controversy between Kautsky on the one side and Lenin and Trotsky on the other, adding nothing of value and enlarging an element of confusion that was already present. The protagonists then, like Laski and Pollitt to-day, were debating whether the working class should soberly use democratic Parliamentary methods or go in for a hectic bout of forcible seizure of power and minority dictatorship. The S.P.G.B., while endorsing Kautsky’s principal arguments – they were those put forward by the S.P.G.B. at its formation nearly 20 years earlier – pointed out that Kautsky the Labour politician was at variance with Kautsky the theoretician, for the politician Kautsky cherished the illusion that Socialism could be achieved by Labour Governments elected on the votes of workers who want reforms of capitalism but do not understand and want Socialism. Our answer to both Kautsky and Lenin was that Socialism cannot be brought about either by Labour Governments or by a Communist Party dictatorship, since its achievement requires that there should first be a majority of convinced and understanding Socialists.

Professor Laski’s pamphlet is liberally sprinkled with Marxist phrases and references to Marx’s views, calculated to give the impression to those who do not know the facts, that the Labour Party is Marxist. He claims (p.16) that the Labour Party “does not deny either the reality of the class-war or the imperative need to change fundamentally the capitalist foundation of society.” This seemingly clear declaration is ambiguous. The Labour Party would certainly subscribe to it, meaning that they do not deny the hostility of workers towards employers and that they favour replacing private capitalism by State capitalism. To Marxists, however, recognition of the class struggle means recognising that the interest of the working class is incompatible with the interest of the class that owns the means of production and distribution and that, the class struggle can be abolished only by dispossessing the capitalist class and introducing a social system based on common ownership and democratic control, involving, of course, the abolition of the system of wage-labour and of the production of goods for sale.

Laski, who makes so much use of Marxist phrases, must know that the Labour Party does not accept the Marxist view. Like Kautsky he is a theoretician who in words propounds one theory, but belongs to a Party that works on a quite different one. If he believed his case to be sound he had a magnificent opportunity to floor the Communists by pointing out that Socialism has not been, and is not being, achieved in Russia after nearly 30 years of dictatorship; and then try to show how Labour government (here or in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere) had introduced or is introducing Socialism. He does neither. On Russian State capitalism masquerading as Socialism he says nothing —how could he without inviting the retort that Labour Government State capitalism is not Socialism either? Instead he gives away his case by trying to justify the Labour Government for its reforms and for its policy of State capitalism. He writes: “Socialism in Britain has …. already secured for the working class of this country great reforms, both in the economic and in the social realm. It has made it possible to place in power a Socialist Government which, also by constitutional methods, moves steadily forward to national ownership and control of the vital instruments of production” (p.17). He must know that Socialism as understood by Marx and other Socialists does, not mean a State capitalist programme of “national ownership and control.” For all their Marxist phraseology, he and the Communists are actually debating whether the workers should seek State capitalism by the Parliamentary road, or seek it by dictatorship. Rejecting both disputants, the S.P.G.B. holds that the working class should certainly use the Parliamentary road – but for Socialism.

One small point of interest. Professor Laski has exposed the secret battalions of Communists. Will he now yield up the secret of why he claims to be a Socialist but does not repudiate the reformism and State capitalist aim of his Party?

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Another Fake Goes West (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exit the Revolutionary Communist Party

In July of this year the English Trotzkyists, the Revolutionary Communist Party, brought out a Special Number of their paper, the Socialist Appeal, consisting of a small four-page leaflet. If there were ever any doubts about the reformist character of the R.C.P., this four-page leaflet disposes of them for ever!

The front page of the leaflet contains nothing but the following, in large type:-

“DECLARATION

“On the Dissolution of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the entry of its members into the Labour Party.”

The second page informs us that after several months of discussion a Special National Conference was held in London, June 4th, 5th and 6th. and that the only items on the Agenda for this Conference were:-

“The current political situation in Britain: what forms the class struggle would take in the next period, and how best the energies and activities of its members could be utilised to further the cause of Socialism.”

We are told that:-

“After a two-days debate, this fully representative Conference decided, by a substantial majority, to dissolve the organisation and call upon the members of the Party to enter the Labour Party—to which the majority already pay the Trade Union political levy—as individual members. Within the Labour Party they would carry on the fight for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for a Socialist Britain.”

The last sentence is an exposure of mental bankruptcy; after originating as a challenge to the nationalism of the Stalinites the R.C.P. falls for the “Socialism in One Country” idea.

(From an article by “Gilmac”, Socialist Standard, September 1949)

“How Solidarity (in the Struggle for Reforms) Can Change the World” (1998)

Book Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Solidarity Can Change the World. Workers Liberty. £3.95.

Believe it or not, but there are still some Trotskyists in the Labour Party. One such group has published this pamphlet, which is a collection of contradictory articles by Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky introduced by their leader, Sean Matgamma.

The leader’s view—as expressed in the title, to be understood as “How Solidarity (in the Struggle for Reforms) Can Change the World”—is that “the struggle for reforms and transitional demands is now the indicated way the British working class—but not only the British—and the labour movement can revive”. This is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding manifesto for the “Fourth International” in 1938 (included here), that socialist consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism: when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the “cadres” of the Fourth International for leadership.

Quite apart from the fact that this has (fortunately) never happened, this argument has always been more of a rationalisation of their reformist practice by shamefaced reformists who want to imagine that they are revolutionaries. Since it is reforms they want there is some logic in being in a party that has a chance of exercising political power. So perhaps after all it is not really surprising that there are Trotskyists in the Labour Party, licking envelopes and knocking on doors for Blair and his crew.

Adam Buick

The Passing Show: Young—in a hurry—going nowhere (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Young—in a hurry—going nowhere

Old age is no criterion of wisdom. Neither is youth. This point at least is worth noting from the fourth national conference of The Young Socialists—a misnomer to start with—the Labour Party's second offspring, and somewhat more bad tempered and difficult to bring up than the old League of Youth ever was.

Held appropriately enough at the Corn Exchange, Brighton, over the Easter weekend, the conference had before it an agenda of no less than one hundred and sixty-six resolutions and forty-five amendments. The subjects ranged far and wide, from a plea to change the parent party's name to “The Social Democratic Party'’ to attract middle class support (Resn. 9), to a demand that May Day be legislated a public holiday by the next Labour government (Resn. 166).

If we are to judge by the press reports it was a stormy conference indeed, with Mrs. Braddock at one stage pitting her mighty lungs against jeers from the floor. The results of the voting on all the resolutions is neither here nor there; the agenda itself is fitting evidence of the hotchpotch of confusion which the Labour Party has sired in its young. “Let us nationalize the arms industry," is the plea from a number of branches—cold comfort to the poor devil whose life is ended by a government-made bullet instead of one made in a private arms factory (under government contract). And of course, we are treated to the usual stuff about support for U.N.O. and world government, both of them conspicuous non-starters from the word “go!"

Nationalize banks, building societies, land, basic industries; don’t go to Spain for your holidays (your tourist revenue helps bolster the Franco oppression, they say); review the penal system; abolish capital punishment, blood sports, the Monarchy, House of Lords, and smoking in public places. The list is formidable as these boys and girls lay about them with misguided ferocity. Just about everything comes under the hammer—everything except the Capitalist system, the thing which really matters. According to press reports, the Trotskyist element was prominent at the conference, and the only result of their efforts at “boring from within’’ has been the addition of their own ignorance and confusion to that already existing.

Futility of the Welfare State

Socialists were never impressed by the extravagant claims made for the ideas of the Welfare State by the various parties in 1945. By then, we had already issued a couple of pamphlets analysing the Beveridge plan and the proposals for family allowances, and we said that they would make no essential difference to the workers' position as the exploited section of the population. Because of this, we felt sure that the worry and insecurity that is life for most of us, would continue. Social security was in fact a gigantic misnomer.

Nineteen years and almost five elections later, we still see no need to alter our claim. The Labour Government’s measures were pushed quickly through parliament and have been the basic structure on which later governments have worked. Yet here was deputy Labour leader George Brown telling us, in a radio broadcast on April 7th, of the insufficiency of hospitals and other vital things (he blamed the Tories of course), The plight of the old age pensioners has been a scandal for years, and the housing problem weighs as oppressively as ever on workers. The welfare state has not—could not—change the basic poverty position of the working class, although this would perhaps, be contested by the superficial observer.

He would point proudly to the four million new houses, forgetting that old ones are decaying faster than they can be replaced. He mentions the millions of car users, disregarding the enormity of the traffic problem and the fact that for many workers cars are more of a necessity than a luxury. He might agree with Conservative assurances of how well-off we all are, but then he could not surely have read the Gallup Poll results (Sunday Telegraph 5/4/64), which estimated that nearly |our million workers do spare time jobs and another five millions would like the chance.

The antics of the modern teenager hurt and bewilder him; he is disturbed by the Clacton punch-ups, but cannot see that violence is a commonplace of capitalism, and that other countries have the same problem. And that anyway teenage fights are symptomatic of the dreary unfulfilling life which the welfare state has not altered. Drug taking is another aspect and that has increased alarmingly among youngsters to recent years.

Multiply, then, our superficial observer by many millions and you have the reason for the continuation of the swindle of the welfare state, in fact the whole of capitalism.

Eddie Critchfield

Blogger's Note:

See also 'Labour's young lions' (May 1964, Socialist Standard.)

Sting in the Tail: The Daily Grind (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Daily Grind

A survey carried out by an insurance company has shown that more than half of male office workers spend much of their time at work making personal telephone calls, reading newspapers and magazines, and slipping away to attend to their personal business. More than a third dream of changing their job while 40 per cent long for love affairs with younger colleagues.

Bloody typical, isn't it? No wonder this country can't compete with the Japanese . . but wait a bit, the insurance company IS Japanese and the male workers work in Tokyo !

But aren't Japanese supposed to be much more loyal to their employers and dedicated to their work than us ?

These findings only confirm that wage slavery has much the same effect on workers the world over and never provides the satisfaction and fulfilment that work could and should be.

House Hunting

Towards the end of last year an item in a newspaper mentioned that Donald Trump, a New York property magnate, has an apartment in Manhattan which cost 17 million dollars.

Astonishing as it may seem this is not the top end of the market for the really rich. Two years ago a Fifth Avenue apartment worth 30 million dollars owned by Adnan Khashoggi, the Iranian arms dealer, had been seized by the New York court as security in a law suit brought against him by Lonrho.

This "apartment" was created out of sixteen smaller ones and takes up two entire floors in one of New York's most fashionable areas. Anybody who is worried that Khashoggi will not have a roof over his head will be relieved to know that he has other homes in Marbella, Paris, Cannes, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Rome, Beirut, Riyadh, Jedda and Monte Carlo.

Rumours that he is looking for a home in either Brixton, Handsworth or Toxteth have not been confirmed.

Militant Tactics

How often have we come across examples of left-wing organisations recruiting people on the basis of some single issue or other. The Socialist Workers Party do it all the time. They get people to join over such issues as "Troops Out", "The Right To Work", etc., etc., but never on the issue of the abolition of the wages system.

The latest example is Militant's drive to recruit opponents of the Poll Tax into the Labour Party in Glasgow. Militant organisers have been telling the local press that they have recently signed up many new members for the Labour Party ("30 after one meeting") who joined purely on the grounds of their opposition to the Poll Tax.

Militant's aim is to use these recruits as voting fodder to help de-select sitting Labour councillors and, ever hopeful, replace them with Militant supporters.

Recent history makes it extremely unlikely that they will succeed in even this trivial objective but their action highlights once again the unprincipled and non-socialist outlook of the would-be "Vanguard".

An Apology for Thatcher?

Sir Douglas Hague, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council from 1983 to 1987, was recently reported as saying:

. . . most of Britain’s social scientists seem to me not completely in touch with the real world.

He said Britain's economists should apologise to Margaret Thatcher for their misguided policies. Now there's an idea!

During the farce of Mao's Cultural Revolution in China one of the strange spectacles was university professors parading through Peking with placards proclaiming "I am a complete dumpling. I was a capitalist deviationist. Long live the Glorious Cultural Revolution."

Something similar seems to be demanded by Sir Douglas of the 364 economists in April 1981 who had the effrontery to criticise the Government's economic policy.According to Sir Douglas

Never in history can a profession have been so manifestly proved to be so wrong in its predictions, yet no collective apology has come.

London Tourist Board could exploit Sir Douglas's apology idea. Lines of discredited economists parading past 10 Downing Street in Dunce's caps and carrying placards proclaiming " I was a Keynesian dupe. Privatisation for pavements."

This could provide Mrs. Thatcher with her "photo opportunity" as contrite academics kneel to kiss her arse.

What troubles Sir Douglas of course is that the Government funds these ungrateful buggers and they are not coming up with what the Government wants to hear. According to Sir Douglas:

. . . too much attention was being devoted to the study of the problems of the deprived and disadvantaged.

Apparently his idea of "being in touch with the real world" is to ignore the unemployed, the homeless and the exploited.

What a Shower

When one of the speakers at the recent Young Conservative conference angrily denounced the "headbangers" who was he referring to?

The IRA or the Loony Left? No, this was just one of the "wets" referring to those of his fellow YC's known as the "libertarians". And no wonder.

Here's what one of them had to say during one of the debates "Socialism is a filthy, disgusting perversion. We are the pure." The "pure" what he didn't say, but there are several things we can think of.

The hang 'em flog 'em bunch spend a lot of their time trying to outdo one another in being "right wing". Indeed their main objective seems to consist of being as reactionary (they call it "revolutionary") and obnoxious as they possibly can be.

They support every authoritarian regime as long as it is "right wing", they flaunt "Hang Nelson Mandela" T-shirts, and when striking miners and their families were suffering then they had callous, jeering songs to sing.

Perhaps no one can accuse these "libertarians" of being "wet" but as sympathetic, considerate human beings they are a complete wash-out.

Editorial: Why the Labour Party is useless (2021)

Editorial from the August 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

As part of his ‘frank conversations’ with the British people, Keir Starmer recently faced a group of former Labour voters in Blackpool, where he eagerly spelt out his ‘strong ideas’ on how he would reform British capitalism to make it work for the working class, with measures such as support for children and the under-25s, and policies to buy, make and sell in Britain. Unfortunately for him, his audience couldn’t share his enthusiasm. One remarked ‘actions speak louder than words’ and another asked ‘where is the money coming from?’ With the crumbling of the Northern red wall at the last general election, the Labour defeat in the recent Hartlepool by-election, only just retaining the Batley and Spen constituency, and receiving a measly 622 votes in the recent Chesham and Amersham by-election, Starmer is facing an uphill struggle to persuade workers to elect a Labour government.

No soon as he was elected Labour leader, Starmer got to work to not just distance himself from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, but to purge any influence that he and his allies may have had. He sacked Corbyn ally Rebecca Long Bailey from her post of shadow Education Secretary for retweeting an interview with the actress Maxine Peake, where the latter made comments that were deemed to be anti-semitic. He then moved against Corbyn himself by suspending him from the Labour Party for remarks he made in response to the findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-semitism within the Labour Party (although he has since been reinstated). Four left-wing groups – Resist, Socialist Appeal, Labour in Exile Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt – have been expelled from the Labour Party.

However, marginalising the Corbynistas and the left-wing is deemed not enough to convince voters that the Labour Party can be trusted. Starmer has been advised to promote patriotism and the use of the Union flag in the hope that this will help to bring the ‘traditional working class’ back into the fold. Beating the patriotic drum is nothing new for the Labour Party. All previous Labour governments invoked nationalism when it suited them. Remember New Labour’s bulldog arising from its slumbers in 1997.

In left-wing mythology, Starmer will no doubt join the pantheon of traitors who betrayed the ideals and principles of the Labour Party from Ramsay MacDonald to Tony Blair. In truth, there are no ideals or principles to betray, as the Labour Party is not a principled socialist party, but a capitalist one. It doesn’t attempt to raise working-class consciousness, but competes for votes in the capitalist political marketplace, which requires it to opportunistically play on workers anxieties and fears. The Labour Party was founded with the aim of promoting parliamentary legislation on behalf of the trade unions. It sought to run capitalism in the interest of the working class. However, this cannot be achieved as capitalism can only be run in one way, that is to generate profits for the capitalist class. Through hard experience, Labour governments have ended up managing capitalism in a similar fashion as Tory governments.

American Reformists in Difficulties (1934)

From the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Socialist Party of America, among many similar organisations, has on numerous occasions acted in the capacity of a “case history” for the scientific Socialist. It has provided an abundance of evidence to support the Socialist contention that a membership which is ignorant of the basic principles of Socialism can never hope to build up an organisation which has as its object the capture of political power, and its use to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism. Such a membership can at best be used for the capture of political power in order to introduce certain reforms, which, in due course prove themselves futile to solve the basic problems which perpetually confront our class. Such an organisation, whilst it can be most active, cannot, because of its membership's political ignorance, go any further in its objectives than the object of its members without undermining the loyalty of such members.

The above contentions are illustrated by an item which appeared in The New Leader, organ of the Socialist Party of America, of December 16th, 1933, under the caption “ Party Standing Imperilled in California," with also a sub-caption, "Desertion by Sinclair, and Communist Manoeuvres cause Confusion in Party." The writer of this news item, a New Leader correspondent, opens his article as follows:—

   “With the election of Hyman Sheanin as State Secretary of the Socialist Party to succeed Harold Ashe, removed by the State Executive Committee because of recently acquired Communist views, and the desertion of the Party by Upton Sinclair to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor, the Socialist Party in this State faces a new situation. Because of 'united front’ manoeuvres by Communists and their sympathisers within the party, quite a number of party branches have been more or less divided, some verging on disruption.”

This situation is by no means a “new" one in the Socialist Party of America. On several occasions the organisation has been split from top to bottom. Evidence for this can be found in plenty by the student of that party's history. One need only read the work of a Socialist Party member, Nathan Fine, entitled “The Labour and Farmer Parties in the United States, 1828-1928," for such evidence.

The interesting part of the aforementioned article is the attempt to explain the cause of this new division in the ranks of the Socialist Party of America. From the sub-caption it would seem that only two factors, the desertion of Upton Sinclair and the Communist manoeuvres, were responsible. The writer even stresses the latter cause, the "Communist manoeuvres":—

   “ . . . This appears to be the result of plotting by Communists, and it has had its effect upon some members who joined the Party in the last several years. These unschooled members have fallen victims to certain fears which include apprehension that a complete collapse of capitalism is just around the corner, that the Fascists are going to get us soon, and that our only salvation is unity of action with the handful of Communists who are active in California. The psychology is for all the world like those party members who in 1919 flocked to the party faction that was coming under the control of Moscow and which was soon talking of 'Johnny get your gun'. (Italics mine.)

These “unschooled members’’ are not altogether to be blamed for their muddled condition. For, in examining the files of the party organ, The New Leader, we find that influential members whom we are to assume are “schooled“ have subscribed to these self-same views. If "the “unschooled” and newer members were guilty of believing that capitalism is collapsing, so too, were much older members who have had plenty of “schooling.” An example of this belief by one of the older members is the following:

  “Four years of industrial chaos, bottomless misery and general despair under Republican administration have amply demonstrated the pitiable incapacity of the ruling classes to prevent a catastrophic collapse of their much-boasted economic order." (Italics mine.) Morris Hillquit, in the “New Deal,” November, 1933.

In the same paper, Norman Thomas, standard-bearer of the party for the office of President of the United States, says the following on the menace of Fascism in this country:—

  “Moreover, a vote for Socialism this year is a vote against the danger of turning the opportunities which exist under the N.R.A. into a drift toward a Fascist society . . .” (Italics mine.)

Only a week or so back, this organisation called a mass meeting in New York’s famous Madison Square Garden, to demonstrate against Fascism in Austria, which ended in both the Socialist Party of America and the Communists demonstrating against each other, with the Secretary of the Communist Party having a chair broken over his head.

Is it to be wondered at, then, that members of this party, with their views on leadership and their hero worship for the two above-mentioned leaders, should take these leaders’ views seriously? To these misinformed workers the great stir and stew of the Communists over these questions passes as action, intelligent and revolutionary action, and attracts them.

Once again, too, is the theory of leadership, so dear to Socialist Party of America members, tried and found wanting. Once again after many years of activity in this party, during which time he has enjoyed the admiration and adulation of the membership, Upton Sinclair, the leader, deserts his admirers to join an avowedly capitalist party. His name is added to the already long list of “leaders" who have deserted the Socialist Party of America for more profitable fields of endeavour. Sinclair, in California, joins Paul Blanshard in New York. Both will do their best to put over Roosevelt's “New Deal." Once again, too, does the party cover its shame by a posthumous discovery that what they have lost is no loss at all. We are informed by the correspondent already quoted: —

  “The treachery of Sinclair is quite as damaging, as he also has had an effect upon some unschooled members. Sinclair had formerly posed as a left winger, especially in matters relating to Stalin and his fellow commissars. His seeking of the Democratic nomination for Governor has revealed how shallow his political and economic thinking has always been." (Italics mine.)

We are almost tempted to say “sour grapes" ! Not alone is it bad enough that this “comrade," who was torn between Stalin, Norman Thomas and Roosevelt, should finally turn to the last-named leader, but what is much worse, he takes with him others of the Socialist Party, who are, in turn, tom between their devotion to that party and Upton Sinclair. For we are informed:—

  “The result is that we lose some uninformed members who follow Sinclair, while others come under Communist influence.”

After the correspondent has stated what he thinks are the factors responsible for this split in the party's ranks, he then gives the real due to understanding this condition:—

  “Old time comrades who have watched this development have come to the conclusion that the Party has been too careless in admitting people to membership who know little or nothing of Socialist principles. The well-informed younger comrades agree with this point of view. The Party has also been too tolerant and has not exercised that discipline that is necessary to build a growing working-class party.”

Here, then, is the kernel and cause of this and past splits in all such organisations. The scientific Socialist and his party have not paid mere lip service to this view but have seen to it that all who apply for membership in their ranks shall understand and accept at least the Declaration of Principles of Socialism. As is so well stated in the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s little pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion ” : —

  “Hence the test of admission to the Socialist Patty must be neither more nor less than acceptance of the essential working principles and policy of Socialism as a class movement. To demand more is to degenerate into a sect; to require less is to invite anarchy and embark on the slippery incline of labourism and compromise. These essentials of Socialist principles and policy are outlined in the Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party (of Great Britain). They can be easily understood by the average worker, and they comprise the irreducible minima of the principles and policy of Socialism; narrow enough to exclude all who are not Socialists, yet broad enough to embrace everyone who is. They form, in consequence, a reasonable and sufficient test. . .”

Because the Socialist Party of America, like its kindred parties the whole world over, ignored the above essentials for membership, its history is full of crises when ignorance and confusion have led—as is inevitable—to schism.

It is most doubtful if they have even learned from their recent experiences. For the correspondent whom we have quoted ends his article with the following:—

  “The betrayal of the Party by Sinclair may prove a terrific blow. The Socialist Party vote may be such that it will lose its official standing. In that case the enormous number of signatures required to get on the ballot will make it almost impossible for the Party to nominate candidates. The peril the Party faces as a result of Sinclair’s action is recognised by every real Socialist, and the utmost will be done to avert it.”

Here is the usual plea of the vote-catcher for still more vote-catching when he sees that the votes are turning elsewhere.

Those who place an intelligent membership before a large but politically inexperienced one see in this further proof that the Socialist Party of America is not a Socialist party. For the workers who support it the future can hold nothing but disappointment, and often despair.

To those workers in the United States who seek the only solution to their problems, Socialism, we of the Workers' Socialist Party open our ranks. We have the one thing worth having, an organisation devoted to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

Sid Felperin.

Workers' Socialist Party

Sheridan no socialist (2011)

From the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “Sheridan told he faces years in prison for lies about sex and socialism”, so ran one newspaper headline the day after a jury found the former MSP guilty of perjury (Times, 24 December).

We don’t know, or care, if he told lies about his sex life to get at a scandal rag that was trying to entrap him. It’s only the political aspect of the case that interests us, and it’s true that, as a reformist politician, he had certainly told lies about socialism. But this is the first time we have heard of this being a crime punishable by imprisonment. If it was, the prisons would be full of journalists, politicians and academics. Of course the Times – like the News of the World, owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch – was merely trying to discredit socialism.

Sheridan was a Trotskyist, originally of the Militant Tendency variety, and although he could not doubt explain why the USSR had been a “degenerate workers state” or why some common or garden reform was a “transitional demand” and so a stepping stone to “socialism”, he was not that kind of Trotskyist.

Trotskyists, being Leninists, hold that workers are incapable of evolving beyond a “trade union consciousness” (defined by Lenin as “the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.”). So, according to them, putting the straight socialist case for common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit to workers is to cast pearls before swine.

Instead, according to Trotskyists, what must be put before workers are demands that the government introduce this or that reform within capitalism. Getting workers to support such “transitional demands” is the only way they calculate they can get the mass support which, when the government fails to respond, can be used to catapult their vanguard party to power. But this requires people on the ground who are capable of winning a personal following. Normally, the Trotskyist gurus who direct their organisation from the shadows, are not up to this. They require front men. As it happens, Militant has been rather successful in this, with Derek Hatton in Liverpool, Joe Higgins at the moment in Dublin, and Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow.

Sheridan first came to prominence in the anti-Poll Tax campaign of the 1980s when he, along with the rest of the Militant Tendency, was still boring from within the Labour Party. Sheridan earned a reputation for being an indefatigable fighter, defending non-payers before the courts and himself getting a six-month sentence for contempt of court.

The trouble, from the point of view of the Trotskyist gurus in the background, is that such front men have, because of their following, a degree of independence and can prove difficult to control. Which is what happened in Sheridan’s case. When Kinnock clamped down on Militant – Sheridan himself was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 – the group’s leaders didn’t want to change their tactics. They wanted to continue boring from within the Labour Party, in accordance with the argument they had used for years, that when the workers began to move against capitalism this would begin as a swing to the left by the Labour Party, so that’s where the vanguard cadres should be. Sheridan and most others disagreed. They wanted to form an independent party, opposed to Labour. They won out and a new party called “Militant Labour” was formed (the minority are still somewhere in the Labour Party, so deeply buried as to be invisible). In Scotland this became, in 1998, the “Socialist Socialist Party” with Sheridan as leader. It departed from traditional Trotskyism by embracing the idea of Scottish independence which of course is quite irrelevant from a working class and socialist perspective.

In 1999 Sheridan was elected a member of the Scottish Parliament. He was re-elected in 2003 with 5 other SSP members. This was the heyday of “Scottish socialism” (more properly, Tartan leftwing reformism). Under other circumstances they might have held the balance of power and given parliamentary support in exchange for some reforms to an SNP government. But it was not to be. In 2004 the News of the World published allegations about Sheridan’s sex life. He (apparently) told the SSP executive that there was some truth in them but that he was going to deny them. A majority disagreed and he eventually resigned as leader and, after winning a libel case against the Murdoch scandal-rag, left the SSP to form a new party, “Solidarity Scotland’s Socialist Movement”. In the 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament both parties were wiped out,

Neither of them stood for socialism, only for reforms of capitalism and an independent Scotland (i.e. an independent capitalist republic like southern Ireland). Solidarity’s founding statement, for instance, declared that it was “a socialist movement that fights for the redistribution of wealth from big business and the millionaires to working class people and their families.” It does do this, but this has nothing to do with socialism, which is not about the redistribution of wealth within capitalism but about the common ownership of the means of wealth production.

Following the end of his career as an MSP Sheridan has only been involved in minor-league reformist politics, standing for Bob Crow’s petty nationalist “No2 Europe” list in the 2009 European elections and for the Militant/SWP TUSC in last year’s general election (the Militant and SWP Trotskyists, despite reservations about his views on Scottish independence, had followed him out of the SSP into Solidarity). On both occasions he stood on a reformist platform, a series of demands that the government must do this or not to do that which would have left capitalism, and its problems, intact.

Adam Buick

Letter: Sectarianism (1960)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

While I appreciate your aims and your consistency in the struggle for Socialism, I must tell you that your party makes one fatal mistake. Since your formation when you broke away from the Communist wing just before the formation of the Communist Party you have failed to distinguish between a reformist Workers’ Party and a bourgeois party. Albeit that the leaders of the British Labour Party have as much in common with Socialism as chalk has with cheese, the Labour Party is the mass party of the workers. Every true Socialist who is working for Socialism in Britain should be an active member of the British Labour Party and fighting from within to turn that party to the way of Socialism. A Socialist organisation must be an integral part of the workers' movement. I accuse the

S.P.G.B. with the deadly sin of sectarianism.

R. Lennark.

London, N.16.

Reply

First let us correct our correspondent’s statement regarding the origin of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our Party was formed in 1904 by a group of Socialists who had left the Social Democratic Federation after its acceptance of a policy of reformism. The British Communist Party was founded in 1920 and at no time has the S.P.G.B. been connected with it.

Our predecessors saw the complete futility of the position our correspondent propounds. Further, our record shows quite clearly the distinction we make between the bourgeois and workers' reformist parties. At the same time we point out that attempts by the working class to realise their true interests through such parties must fail.

Such organisations, in being wholly concerned with and committed to capitalism. inevitably must abandon or reject any Socialist aims and principles. Being a reformist party it must accept the values of Capitalism. The Labour Party in fact sees no alternative to the State, private property, or the profit motive in society. In office it must seek to further the interests of British Capitalism, regardless of whether such action is detrimental to workers in this and other lands.

The ludicrous position of a Socialist inside such an organisation can only result in his loss of identity as a Socialist and his being carried further away from his objective. If a majority of non-Socialist workers choose to support the Labour Party, or any other party, it is no justification for Socialists to do the same.

It must be obvious that there is only one party for the true Socialist and it is this party alone that is worthy of his support. For, as far as we are concerned with ’’deadly sins,” we consider deadliest of all that which betrays the cause of Socialism by supporting non Socialist organisations, and by doing so, supports Capitalism.

Editorial Committee.

Letters: William Morris (1990)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris

Dear Editors,

The two articles on William Morris in your October 1990 issue are most welcome. Although it is the hundredth anniversary of the publication of News From Nowhere, the left has been almost silent about Morris. This, despite the fact that Radio Four made it a “Book At Bedtime". Sadly others, particularly Greens and modern-day Utopians have not been so slow to pick up on claiming Morris for their own philosophies.

Against this your two articles do a good job in situating Morris firmly within a socialist and Marxist tradition. C. Skelton gives a fair summary of Morris's political ideas, although I think I prefer Morris's original views to Skelton’s gloss on why they didn't work. Central to this, of course, is Morris's connection with extra-parliamentary anarchism. Now that Stalinism has collapsed perhaps it will be possible to examine this afresh. Certainly while I would agree that parliamentary activity cannot be ignored, one can understand how Morris, faced with Hyndman's SDF, came to take the stand that he did.

I am not so sure about DAP's review of the book William Morris and News From Nowhere: A Vision of Our Time. There is no doubt that, as DAP notes, it is an "interesting and important" book. It explores some of the themes in News From Nowhere and tries to show their relevance for the 1990s. So far so good. But the ultimate aim of the book is, of course, not to reinforce our understanding of Morris's position as perhaps the outstanding early British Marxist. Rather it is to suggest that Morris's heritage is confused and that he could be claimed equally by Greens or by radical liberals. Indeed, the Communist Party of Great Britain, which is just about to rename itself as the "radical party" is using Morris in just this way. DAP's review of the book is fine as far as it goes.

But if Morris is not to be taken from the Marxist tradition we will need to be much more critical of those who would isolate certain elements of this thought while denying his socialism and Marxism.

Keith Martin

London N17

Reply:

We agree that an attempt is being made to claim Morris as some sort of harmless Green reformist, whereas in actual fact to his death he called himself a "revolutionary, international socialist".

Editors

Poll Tax

Dear Editors,

Instead of campaigning to abolish the poll tax. the working class should organise politically to end the capitalist system itself. Without the capitalist system there would be no poll tax, no rent, gas bills, house repossessions, wage slavery, no money or private ownership of the means of producing wealth.

Why object to paying poll tax when one has to pay to eat. to drink, to keep warm, in fact to exist!

Anti-Capitalist 

Seaham, Co. Durham

Labour Party and Entryism

Dear Editors,

Please can you say what is the SPGB's attitude re Labour Party members? Recently I have met some London Labour members in Bradford—they were here to help the local Labour Party MP's. councillors etc.

I had a chat with them on the precinct as they were "signing up" passers-by at a bench. I asked these people what they thought about the SPGB. One or two did know of the existence of the SPGB, but did not know much about what it stands for—they had not been conversant with the Socialist Standard. After a discussion about all manner of aspects of current affairs but noticeably nothing re Socialism itself (I thought that very strange) they seemed to disregard the possibility of the SPGB growing into a mass party of the proletariat and they said that the Labour Party was the only one today to challenge modern Toryism, Thatcherism and present-day State Capitalism in the UK.

Please could you assess these postures of the Labour Party? I would appreciate if you are able to forward the SPGB's view of the Labour Party's claim. Basically it is this: The Labour Party sees the contemporary state capitalism as the full development of previous capitalism reaching an advanced (albeit decadent) level even with all the terrible exploitation which is caused by it.

My impression of Labour Party members is one of a strange lack of clarity and lucidity re Socialism. Your evaluation of the eastern states, USSR and others in the past has been proved perfectly correct, as recent changes have shown. Having assiduously studied the proofs and tenets of the SPGB, my findings are that the SPGB is totally validated re Socialism.

M.Henson 

Leeds

Reply:

You have obviously come across a group of Trotskyist infiltrators into the Labour Party. Which would not be surprising since the MP for Bradford whose death provoked the recent by-election was associated with the so-called “Militant Tendency". Talk of capitalism involving exploitation and being decadent would make Neil Kinnock livid if he heard it, as what he and his fellow leaders of the Labour Party want is a chance to try and show that they can manage capitalism better than the Tories.

It is true that the Labour Party can win elections whereas we in the Socialist Party are without much influence. Since, however, Labour support is built up as support for managing capitalism, when in office they can do absolutely nothing to further the cause of socialism. Socialism will only become a real issue when more and more people want it and organise into a separate political party opposed to Labour. It is to this end that all our efforts are directed.

Editors

Christianity

Dear Editors,

Although I think the October issue of the Socialist Standard is the most forthright condemnation of capitalism you have published during the last ten years that I have been reading it, there is one topic which I would like to question. "Does Religion Matter"?

Would it not have been better if socialists had ignored religion until real socialism had been established? We know that religion has always been used as a weapon of oppression against the working class. However, if we had not publicly denied the existence of our mythical Jesus Christ, who, according to the equally mythical bible, preached a socialist way of life, we might have had a few million Christians fighting for socialism!

After a few decades of world socialism, the Christians who had helped to bring it about would have departed this life, taking their religion with them. Hypocritical views maybe, but better than the evils of capitalism.

Peter H. Reynolds 

Sevenoaks, Kent

Reply:

We don't think that our relative lack of progress is due to our opposition to religion. After all, if there were millions of Christians who would otherwise want socialism, why haven't they formed their own movement which would advocate the same as us except on religion? Nor can we see how it can be said that the mythical JC “preached a socialist way of life". The early Christians were a sect very similar to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of today who cared little about changing society as they expected their Messiah to return in the near future and inaugurate a theocracy in which God would rule over humans with an iron hand. Hardly socialism!

Editors

Profits before trees

Dear Editors,

What happened in our village today is a mini-example of how the Green Party and all other reformist poitical parties will be unable to save the world from environmental destruction. Four very healthy mature trees stood immediately outside our back fence. They were a home for the birds, played their part in cleaning up the polluted air we breathe and were a pleasure to look at. Unfortunately they stood in the way of our local land baron and his plans for the future development of his land for either houses, car parks, access or factory units. He was not concerned that the North Herts District Council had asked for all existing trees to be retained, his object is the acquisition of money and all must bow down before this aim. So the trees were cut down and he is no doubt thinking hard for a good excuse when the NHDC asks questions. Those trees were no threat to our house but were immediately behind it. The lesson for the Green Party and all other reformist political parties is that, in our capitalistic society where money is supreme most acts are performed if profitable, and exploiting the earth is profitable. Vote out capitalism for a better society.

John E. Windebank 

Little Wymondley, Herts

Militant Dishonesty (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the Labour Party, which for years was infiltrated by Trotskyists pretending to be bona fide members, we in the Socialist Party are the latest victims of Trotskyist dishonesty.

One of the Trotskyists groups, Militant, has decided to call itself “Socialist Party” and to put up candidates for elections under this name, despite the fact that we have been using this name for over 90 years.

This is the name we used on the ballot paper at the last general election (when Militant was campaigning for the laughable objective of “Labour to Power on a Socialist Programme!”), in the 1994 European elections, and in the Littleborough and Saddleworth parliamentary by-election in 1995 as well as in various local council elections and a council by-election in Lambeth last year. It is also the name under which we will be standing 5 candidates (in Glasgow, London, Jarrow, Easington and Livingston) in this year’s general election.

We contest Militant’s right to use this name, on two grounds. First, it is the name we use and one political group cannot simply come along and take the name used by another, long-standing and well-established, political party. This is an elementary democratic principle. To work properly, political democracy depends on people being able to make an informed choice, one condition of which is that different political organisations should be distinguished by separate names. Nobody is likely to confuse our policies and those of a Trotskyist organisation, but when a Trotskyist organisation uses the same name as us there is bound to be some confusion, so undermining the democratic process (not that Trotskyists, as Leninists, will be concerned about that).

Secondly of course, Trotskyists aren’t socialists anyway. But who are Militant and where did they come from?

Who are Militant?
In the 1940s three Trotskyists arrived in Britain: Tony Cliff (from Palestine), Ted Grant (from South Africa) and Gerry Healy (from Ireland). Each was destined to become the guru of one of the three main Trotskyist sects that were to emerge in Britain.

For a while all three worked together as members of the same organisation, the Revolutionary Communist Party, which existed for a few years after the War as an independent Trotskyist party. Then they went their separate ways, except in so far as all three of them joined the Labour Party.

Cliff, who had come to accept the view that Russia was state capitalist, started a paper that later become International Socialism, and a group that is now the SWP. Healy and Grant stuck with the Trotskyist dogma that Russia, even under Stalin, was a “Workers’ State” albeit a “degenerate” one, but they fell out over some obscure question of “tactics”. Healy started a group which eventually became the Socialist Labour League and then the Workers Revolutionary Party. Grant ran a paper called Socialist Fight which was forever praising the supposed achievements of Russia’s “planned economy” but still managed to attract a following amongst young Labourites on Mersey-side. It later changed its name to Militant.

Until 1968 all three groups pursued the Trotskyist tactic of boring from within the Labour Party known as “entryism”. By far the most successful was Healy who managed to capture the Labour Party’s youth section, the Young Socialists, and their paper Keep Left.

After 1968, and the students’ revolt and general strike in France which convinced them that they no longer needed the Labour Party as an intermediary to “make contact with the working class”, both Healy and Cliff withdrew their followers from the Labour Party and eventually set up their own parties and put up candidates against Labour (Cliff only briefly, Healy with money from Colonel Gaddafi).

Grant, however, decided to hang on inside the Labour Party where he now had a virtual monopoly of the Trotskyist franchise. In one sense this was a shrewd move and in the ’80s he was to be even more successful in infiltrating Labour than Healy had been in the ’60s.

Grant’s group, ostensibly just another pro-Labour paper like Tribune but in reality an undercover vanguard party named the Revolutionary Socialist League organised on strict Bolshevik lines, virtually captured Liverpool Labour Party (Derek Hatton has been their best-known member) and managed to get two of their members, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist, elected as Labour MPs. From the mid-80s the Labour machine counter-attacked. Grant and his followers were booted out of the Labour Party and Fields and Nellist were de-selected.

Militant was now on its own, in what it had up till then regarded as the political wilderness. What to do? Was political life possible outside the Labour Party? Grant himself didn’t think so and was for carrying on with “entryism” and trying to get back into the Labour Party clandestinely. Most of the other leaders regarded this as pointless; they were outside the Labour Party and would have to make the best of a bad job by acting as an independent organisation even if still telling people to vote Labour.

Grant was eventually expelled at the beginning of 1992 and yet another Trotskyist sect was born. Militant changed its (public) name from Militant to Militant Labour. The tactic was adopted of putting up candidates against Labour at local council elections and by-elections, with some success in that one or two were elected councillors, in Glasgow and Liverpool.

When Scargill left the Labour Party last year and set up his “Socialist Labour Party”, to an outsider it might have seemed obvious that Militant Labour and the Scargill Labour Party should join together—after all, both of them had the same policy, militant Labourism—but this was to overlook the fact that Scargill was a Stalinist who was determined that his party should not be infiltrated and perhaps taken over by some Trotskyist group (not that this has prevented some of the lesser Trotskyist sects having a go).

Talks between Scargill and Militant did take place but broke down, so Militant decided to set up a rival Old Labour party of its own. But what name to call it? Apparently, there were three options, Militant Labour Party, Militant Socialist Party and Socialist Party.

The name “Socialist Party” of course wasn’t free as the leaders of Militant were well aware. Being part of it themselves, they are not ignorant of the minority political scene in Britain and have seen us selling the Socialist Standard (“journal of the Socialist Party”) at the same demonstrations and on the same street corners as they sell Militant. Their leaders have been aware of our existence since their foundation and we have engaged them in formal debate and long intervened at their meetings in opposition.

We have used the name 'Socialist Party' for over 90 years.

This, however, did not stop Militant’s leadership recommending “Socialist Party” as the preferred option to a special conference held at the end of last November. According to the report in Militant (6 December), there was some opposition. Although 71.4 percent of delegates voted for, 24.8 percent voted for “Militant Socialist Party” and 3 percent for “Militant Labour”.

So, an element of confusion has been introduced onto the British political scene: there are now two organisations calling themselves Socialist Party and two organisations putting up candidates at elections under this name. This is entirely the fault of a dishonest and cynical move by Militant to try to hijack the name used by an already-existing political organisation.

Naturally, we will oppose this move in every way we can but we are obliged to issue a warning to our sympathisers and others who know us: look twice before buying any pamphlet bearing the name “Socialist Party”; if you find it praising pre-Yeltsin Russia’s “planned economy” or advocating fantastic reforms of capitalism then (obviously) it is not published by us but will be the usual Trotskyist nonsense. If you go to a meeting advertised as by the “Socialist Party” and the speaker advocates a “£6 minimum wage” or “Nationalise the Top 200 Monopolies” or that “the TUC call a General Strike Now” you will know you have been misled; stand up and say that the speaker is a fraud for pretending to be speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party.

Labourism with knobs on
But quite apart from the dishonesty of trying to steal our name, Militant does not stand for socialism It stands for state capitalism as its long-term aim while campaigning in the present for mostly impracticable reforms of capitalism.

There is a twisted logic to their campaigning for impracticable reforms. As followers of Lenin, Trotskyists hold that workers are incapable of directly understanding socialist ideas; at most, they can only acquire a “trade union consciousness” which reflects itself on the political field as support for reformist Labour Party-type politics. In these circumstances to campaign directly for socialism (as we in the real Socialist Party do) would be to cast pearls before swine, mere “abstract propagandism”. Instead, what a “vanguard party” must do is to try to use this workers’ reformist discontent as a battering ram to overthrow the government and seize power for themselves as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done in Russia in November 1917.

Trotsky recommended that this be done by offering workers reforms (called “transitional demands”) which the vanguard party knows perfectly well can’t be obtained under capitalism, in the expectation that when these reforms are not granted the workers will turn against the government and support a Trotskyist coup d’état.

This of course is pure science-fiction politics that is only likely to come true on the planet Zanussi but (fortunately) not on planet Earth. Imagine what a Trotskyist dictatorship would be like; not too different from a Stalinist one, we would suppose.

In the context of the electoralist tactic that Militant has now adopted, “transitional demands” translate as extravagant election promises of reforms to be achieved under capitalism, bait offered to the mass of worker-electors who are still perceived of as not being able to move beyond a reformist, Labourist consciousness.

At election times, Militant Labour appears as a super-reformist party, promising the same sort of reforms as Labour only bigger and better ones. Thus, if Labour promises a minimum wage of £3 an hour, Militant Labour promises one of £6. If Labour promises to increase spending on education and the health service by 10 percent, Militant Labour promises to increase it by 50 percent. If Labour promises the highest achievable level of employment, Militant promises full employment, and so on. In other words, there is no attempt to combat reformist illusions within the working class (the illusion that capitalism can be reformed to work in their interest); just the opposite in fact, such illusions are encouraged and magnified.

Militant, by accommodating itself to this attitude instead of campaigning to change it, is encouraging workers to believe that their problems can be solved within capitalism if only those they elect as local councillors and MPs were more demanding and more determined.

It is in fact on this basis that Militant’s local councillors have been elected: as militant Labourists, as people who some traditional Labour voters feel will sincerely fight for the reforms that New Labour under Blair has abandoned. “Militant Labour”, the name under which they were elected, was an entirely accurate description as what those who elected them wanted was someone to fight in a more militant way for Labour’s traditional aims.

Militant’s Ideal World
Militant would deny this charge of encouraging reformism—of in fact being militant reformists—by pointing out that they do say that capitalism can never work in the workers’ interests. This is so, but by “capitalism” they only mean competitive, private enterprise capitalism, to which their alternative is planned, state-run capitalism not socialism.

Last year Militant (22 March) carried an article headed “Fighting for our ideal world” which ended:

“Militant Labour demands:

• An end to slave labour schemes;
• £6 per hour minimum wage;
• The right to join a recognised trade union”

Hardly an inspiring ideal (and this was in an article aimed at young people!). Normally, it is true, Militant’s “ideal” is not quite as crass as this but the principle is the same. In 1995, at the time the Labour Party was preparing to ditch Clause 4, Militant brought out a pamphlet called What is Socialism? in which they declared:

  “Militant Labour believes it is possible to achieve a minimum wage, full employment, good education and health services. Homelessness can be a thing of the past. We can end inequality and poverty. “
  “But we would also need an economy which produces more than it does today and produced different things: for example, fewer office blocks and more houses at affordable prices or rents, fewer-weapons and more public transport”.

This ideal world of higher wages and affordable prices is to be achieved by nationalising all “the major companies and financial institutions”.

Such wholesale nationalisation would not be socialism which is based on the common (as opposed to state) ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with goods and services being produced and distributed directly to satisfy people’s needs with the disappearance of wages, prices, pensions, banks, money and all the other products of a buying-and-selling society such as capitalism.

Militant’s “ideal society” turns out to be a state capitalism in which a government, supposedly ruling on behalf of the working class (but in reality controlled by and for the benefit of the leaders of the vanguard party), tries to plan the wages-profits-money system and make it work in the interest of all.

They give Cuba, and previously Russia, as an example of the sort of “planned”, “non-capitalist” economy they have in mind (“Can Cuba Survive!”, Militant, 22 March 1996), not as a perfect example but as a sufficiently successful example to back up their claim that a nationalised, planned economy of the kind they propose can work. But both Cuba and pre-Yeltsin Russia had state-capitalist, not non-capitalist, economies. Neither the Russian nor the Cuban revolution “overthrew capitalism”, as Militant claims. What they did was to change the personnel of the privileged class that was to preside over the accumulation of capital in these countries, from private capitalists and outside imperialists to a Party élite of state bureaucrats. That Militant see the economic system in Cuba and what used to exist in Russia as a model for what should replace capitalism confirms that they too stand for state capitalism.

But state capitalism is no more in the interest of the working class than is private capitalism. It still retains the wages system, under which people have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer to get the money to buy the things they need to live. But where the wages system exists so does economic exploitation, since workers are always paid as wages less than the value of the work they do; the rest (Marx called it surplus value) is creamed off by their employers, whether a private individual, a company or a state enterprise, and redistributed as the privileged income of shareholders and/or state bureaucrats.

The Trotskyist proposal to nationalise all major industries and financial institutions and turn us all into state employees does not end the wages system; it merely changes who employs us (where, that is, we are not already government employees of one sort or another) and changes those who live off our work from private shareholders to state bureaucrats.

So Trotskyists like Militant are not even on the same wavelength as Socialists. It is not a question of us and them having the same aim but a different method of getting there—us, democratic political action by a democratically-organised and consciously socialist majority; them, a minority-led insurrection without majority socialist understanding. Their aim is quite different from ours. We want socialism and the abolition of the wages system; they want state capitalism with all of us being paid by the state.

In other words, even if we had some other name such as a World Socialist Party they would still have no justification for calling themselves “Socialist Party”. If they had been honest (but that’s science-fiction politics again) they would have changed their name to SCP or State Capitalist Party or, if that was felt to be too explicit, simply to “Trotskyist Party”.

Adam Buick