Editorial: Manpower and the Crisis (1947)

Editorial from the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remedy the Labour Government Cannot Use

Capitalism breeds war, waste and want as a jungle swamp breeds pestilence. Practically every minister in the Labour Government has acknowledged the truth of this some time or other and has pointed the obvious moral that if you want to remove the pestilential effects you must remove the capitalist cause, and introduce Socialism in the place of Capitalism. They said this, but did any of them understand what they were saying? Probably not. If by chance some of them did then by taking office in the Labour Government they were acting a deliberate lie for they were promising something it was not in their power to do. There can be no Socialism until there are a majority of convinced Socialists in the electorate and even the most deluded of Labour leaders would surely not claim that the 12 million Labour voters were Socialists. A government cannot impose Socialism on an unwilling electorate. This should be obvious, but it took the recent crisis to jolt the “Daily Herald” into even a partial recognition of the facts. The “Herald’s” admission, a veritable masterpiece of understatement, was framed as a warning to Ministers not to entertain the “treacherous delusion” that would “regard the whole electorate as enthusiastic converts to Socialism” (February 8th, 1947). The same Editorial goes on to claim that “a peaceful revolution is being wrought in this land which will bring solid benefits within our lifetime, and will confer blessings untold on posterity.” We can leave posterity to speak for itself and content ourselves with foretelling a time when the electorate will count it an immediate blessing to be rid of the Labour Government.

The reader is of course entitled to ask us why we are sure that Labourism cannot succeed. The answer is to be found in the opening paragraph of this article. Capitalism we know; Socialism the workers can have when they are ready to grasp it; and there is no other choice. The root fallacy of Labourism is the belief that a Labour Government can administer capitalism in a non-capitalist way. With all the good intentions in the world it cannot be done” Labour Ministers may make election promises with perfect sincerity, but in office they learn day by day what it really means to keep this exploiting, profit-making system .going, in competition with the rest of the capitalist Powers. It means resisting wage claims so that the capitalists can go on making profit. It means perpetuating the vast gulf between rich and poor. It means maintaining the armed forces and struggling with rival Powers for trade, raw materials and colonies.

It is hardly necessary to say that it also involves swallowing past declarations of what ought to be done, such, for example, as Sir Stafford Cripps’ complete reversal of his views on trade rivalry. Now he is chief director of the export drive. Five years ago he declared, “If, after the coming of peace, we were to start once again the vicious circle of international trade competition, we should be lost, and in a few years would be confronting another war” (interview with a Brazilian newspaper—”Sunday Express” November 8th, 1942).

The recent crisis, forerunner of others, took on the appearance of a problem of fuel and manpower, brought to an acute phase by an “Act of God,” the British weather. It was, however, not a crisis of coal or of cold, but of capitalism. Let us examine this and see how capitalism, which caused the problem, prevents the Labour Government from solving it. The second World War (itself a product of capitalism) destroyed vast amounts of wealth and left a legacy of shortages of housing, food, fuel, clothing, transport, etc. Not that want was a new experience for the working class, but the war aggravated the problem by the immensity of the destruction it wrought all over-Europe and Asia. What would a sanely organised human society have done about this, assuming that such a form of society had to tackle the problem? It would have stopped all waste of labour and materials, halted the production of armaments, and of luxuries for the rich, and would have concentrated on producing the necessities of life in the quantities urgently needed by the population of the world. How did the Labour Government (and all the governments in all the countries) tackle it? They spoke the right words, but proceeded to apply fiddling half-measures. The British Labour Government said they needed man-power in production, but they found that British capitalism had a still more pressing need to keep 1,500,000 men in the armed forces and other hundreds of thousands supplying the needs of the forces and preparing for future wars. They said they needed more workers producing coal, food, houses, etc., for the millions who lacked bare necessities, but they left intact the class structure of capitalism, with its hundreds of thousands. of wealthy idlers consuming without producing, and its hundreds of thousands of workers engaged in banking, financial and other operations that only arise because of capitalism. There are over 700,000 non-industrial civil servants, about 350,000 of whom are Post Office workers. The great bulk of the remaining 350,000 are doing work rendered necessary only by capitalism, as is also much of the work of the Post Office. We are told that many civil servants are employed on insurance and similar work which the Labour Government regards as socially useful; but it is only the mind habituated to capitalism that cannot see what this work really is. Staffs handling unemployed and health. insurance are not there to see that the needy (needy because of capitalism) receive enough to satisfy their needs, but to protect capitalism against the needy receiving more than the niggardly amount allotted to keep them quiet.

The same contradiction between proclaimed aims and practical activities can be found in every sphere. The luxury needs of the wealthy have not been sacrificed to speed up the provision of necessities. On the contrary, the Government has encouraged the planning of luxury liners, luxury air travel, and luxury goods for export. These schemes are defended with the plea that luxury exports make it possible to import necessities unobtainable in other ways. The curious thing is that the governments of other war-damaged countries (France, for example) are doing the same and on the same plea, so that some luxury goods are being imported by all the countries which declare their inability to supply enough necessities for their populations. What it shows is that, despite Labour Party talk about a “new world,” the British and other Labour Governments are basing their plans for the future on the continuance of the same old capitalism, with its extremes of wealth and poverty. They are all catering for the needs of the wealthy.

Here then is the simple problem and the simple solution. On a conservative estimate the production of useful goods could easily be doubled in short time if the armed forces and propertied idlers and the workers doing work necessitated only by capitalism, were brought into production. Why doesn’t the Labour Government even attempt to do it? They don’t do it because even if they wanted to they dare not. They were put into power by an electorate that does not understand or want Socialism and which therefore gave the Labour Government nothing more than a man¬ date to go on administering capitalism.

The recent crisis arose because the capitalist state needs to have millions of people taken from production for the armed forces and other non-productive activities and therefore cannot take simple straightforward measures to make good the destruction of war. It led to great suffering and to the increase of unemployed to about 2,500,000 at the peak. In due course another and more usual type of capitalist crisis will blow up. Goods will be produced in excess of what can be sold at a profit, then unemployment will soar again. Then the Labour Government will be looking for other excuses than the cold weather to explain the failure of its plans. The “New Statesman,” which shared all of the foolish Labour Party beliefs in the possibility of applying so-called Socialist policies to capitalism, has in anticipation already coined the appropriate face-saving formula for the next crisis: “… the Government is confronted with the certainty, now that the illusions about a liberalisation of America’s trade policy have finally been dispelled, that a Socialist experiment confined only to this country is bound to fail” (February 8th, 1947). So the “New Statesman,” shedding one illusion, grasps at another equally absurd. It proposes that Britain cut adrift from trade and financial ties with U.S.A. and collaborate instead “with other countries which are experimenting with planned economies.” If it is a fallacy, as it certainly is, that a Labour Government can apply Socialist plans to capitalism, common sense should make it clear that you do not escape from the dilemma by linking up with other countries in which similar governments are trying to perform the same impossible feat. Capitalist crises know no frontiers, and Labour Governments here and elsewhere will no more escape the next crisis than they did the “economic blizzard” that blew down the British Labour Government in 1931 and simultaneously toppled over the Labour Government in Australia.

For the world’s workers there is no escape from the problems and crises caused by capitalism except by introducing Socialism.

How Labour changed (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

1. 1906. 29 trade unionist MPs elected with Liberal support constitute themselves as the parliamentary Labour Party.
2. 1918. The party adopts a new constitution, Clause Four of which reads: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.
3. 1929. An amendment added ‘distribution and exchange’, spelling out that nationalisation (state capitalism), not socialism, was what was envisaged. (Link)
4. 1935. ‘A Labour government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’ (Clement Attlee, Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42).
5. 1945. General election manifesto: ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’
6. 1956. Labour intellectual Anthony Crosland published The Future of Socialism in which he argued that the aim of a more equal distribution of wealth did not require the nationalisation of industry.
7. 1959. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell proposes to abandon Clause Four but this is turned down by the Labour Party conference.
8. 1974. February general election manifesto: ‘It is indeed our intention to (a) bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.
9. 1995. New Clause Four adopted: ‘A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.
10. 2024. ‘Labour is the party of business’ (Starmer). ‘Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.’ (Link )

Labour has failed: give socialism a chance (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing the Chartists understood was the importance, to bring about social change, of first winning control of political power as the power to make and enforce laws. They campaigned for universal suffrage (at least for men) as they rightly saw the vote as the way to political control. Once the workers had the vote, they reasoned, they could use it to send delegates to parliament who would pass laws to improve their social and economic situation.

They weren’t wrong about the need to win political control to bring about social change or about the vote as the way to win such control, but the vote has its limitations. It can’t change the way the capitalist economic system works, based as it is on minority class ownership of the resources society needs to survive and on production for profit.

For over 150 years now, a majority of the electorate in Britain has been made up of workers: those who, excluded from ownership of the means to produce wealth, are forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer for a wage or salary in order to live. From time to time voters have elected Labour governments but, when in office, these have accepted capitalism, only trying to reform it to make things better for workers.

The theory was that a series of successive Labour governments would gradually transform capitalism into a more equal society by extending nationalisation and the welfare state to be paid for by redistributing wealth away from the rich. But what happened was that, instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, capitalism gradually changed Labour, the final result being what we see today under Starmer: a party that proclaims itself the ‘party of business’ and which openly seeks to govern as such by putting profits (and military spending) before people’s needs and welfare.

As Starmer has put it: ‘Our job is to work with businesses to create the best environment that allows them to thrive’ (The Times, 29 January). Businesses ‘thrive’ of course on making profits. All Labour governments have been forced to do this but this is the first one to have openly proclaimed this from the start and to have acted on it so quickly.

Understandably, many who have supported Labour up to now no longer have any faith in it. There are calls to set up a new leftwing party, with Jeremy Corbyn as figurehead. That the Labour Party is a pro-capitalist party is now plain for everyone to see, but it is important to understand why the original Labour project of gradually replacing capitalism with a more equal society prioritising people’s needs failed — and was bound to fail. Otherwise, the same mistake will be made again.

The Green Party is already making this mistake of imagining that capitalism can be gradually transformed by a series of reform measures into something else, in their case into a more environment-friendly society. If they ever get the chance to form the government, they too would fail just as all Labour governments have. So would any new leftwing party if it adopts, as have previous breakaways from Labour, the same gradualist and reformist approach that the Labour Party once did. The plain fact is that capitalism just cannot be made to work in any other way than it does, ie, it puts profits first.

The Labour project didn’t fail because of the betrayal or incompetence or lack of determination of its leaders. It failed because it set itself the impossible task of making the capitalist leopard change its spots. Capitalism is an economic system which functions according to its own economic laws that impose themselves on those who run governments as well as on those who run businesses. Capitalism is driven by the quest for profits. It is a profit-making system that can only run in the interests of the profit-takers and never in the interests of workers whose labour is the source of profits. No government can overcome these laws and all governments have to apply them on pain of provoking an economic downturn.

What is needed is an understanding that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of majority. That understood, it follows that what is needed is a political party based on a different strategy from that pursued by Labour in the past, a party committed not to tinkering with capitalism’s effects but exclusively to abolishing it altogether and replacing it, in one go, by a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of resources with production directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit. In a word, socialism.

Once a majority want this they can use the vote to win political control with a view to carrying out this revolution in the basis of society. Given this, and that currently most people seem to see no alternative to capitalism, the urgent task of socialists is to convince more people that socialism is the way out.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Marx, Methodism and the Labour Party (1950)

Editorial from the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Labour Party has caused a stir by the way he has restated the outlook of his Party. In a speech to a gathering of European Labour Parties at Copenhagen he elaborated the proposition that the philosophy and method of the British organisation is “Methodist rather than Marxist.” Here are some of his statements.

“British socialism owes little to Karl Marx, either in theory or practice, or in its methods of organising the working classes. Marx’s economics as well as his politics were challenged and finally renounced by the founders and teachers of the British Labour Party.” 

“Marx’s conception of the political organisation required for waging the class war was not accepted by the British Labour movement.”

". . . Marxism as a philosophy of materialism, as an economic theory, and as a form of political organisation with revolutionary intention and aim, is historically an aberrant tendency in the development of British Socialism.”

“British Socialists do not consider it at all a reproach or a source of weakness in their intellectual and political positions that their movement has been profoundly influenced by religious thought. The very organisation of our British working-class movement embodies methods we have taken over from religious institutions.” (Manchester Guardian, 3/6/50).

Among the religious influences he mentioned particularly is Methodism. There is nothing new in this. It was said by many of the early leaders of the Labour Party and was a commonplace criticism of them in S.P.G.B. propaganda forty years ago.

In 1922 the late Phillip Snowden wrote of his Party:—“The British Labour Party is certainly not Socialist in the sense in which socialism is understood upon the Continent. It is not based upon the recognition of the class struggle; it does not accept the teachings of Marx.” (Manchester Guardian Reconstruction Supplement, October 26, 1922).

But though it is not new it has a significance now that it did not have years ago. When the British Labour Party was younger, before it had had experience as a government, and before the Communists seized power in Russia, the lead among the Labour Parties of Europe was taken by the German Party. It was the German Social Democratic Party that was largest and seemed to be most successful and nearest to becoming the government. The future of Labourism throughout Europe was thought to be bound up with the fate of the German party. Like all of the continental parties the German S.D.P. was traditionally hostile towards religion and the church and paid lip service to Marxism.

Now several new factors have brought the British Labour Party into greater prominence and influence. The German S.D.P. was greatly weakened by the war and by the rise of the Communists; Marxism has been brought into popular disrepute by the distortion of it associated with the Russian dictatorship; the new balance of world capitalism has produced the line-up of America, Britain and Western Europe on the one side against Russia and her satellites on the other; and lastly the British Labour Party is now almost alone among the Labour parties of Europe in holding governmental power. In these circumstances the lead among the Labour Parties has been taken by the British Party, and the prospect is that the traditional lip service paid to Marxism by the Continental parties will be allowed to fall into the background.

This development represents a certain change; but no progress towards a greater understanding of socialism. It exposes the fundamental lack of socialist principle that characterises all the Labour parties, and shows the extent to which their policies are in fact bound up with the requirements of capitalism in the various countries. It needs to be studied in relation to another pronouncement made by Morgan Phillips at the same conference. Because the West European Trade Unions and Labour parties are now backing Marshall Aid and the tie-up with U.S.A., and the American trade unions play an increasingly influential role in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in its fight with the Communist World Federation of Trade Unions, it becomes expedient to whitewash American capitalism, hence the following from Mr. Phillips: —

“Socialist prejudice against the United States must be exposed as out of date. For more than two decades the United States has been the most progressive country in the world outside Britain and Scandinavia. . . . At present most European Governments are less progressive than the Truman administration. I hope you will forgive me if I say that we must not be too smug about European traditions. It must not be forgotten that in the period between the two world wars America reacted to the world crisis by producing Roosevelt and the New Deal while Europe produced Hitler and Mussolini. Totalitarianism is in fact a European product.”

(Manchester Guardian 5/6/50).

There is nothing at all illogical in the British Labour Party, which stands for the reform of capitalism, looking with a sympathetic eye on Roosevelt’s and Truman’s reforms of American capitalism. It does not surprise Socialists though it may be a bitter pill for those Labourites to swallow who have liked to cherish the delusion that the Labour Party stands for something distinctive. Like Morgan Phillips they will seek comfort in the notion that at least they have been consistent in abhorring totalitarianism. But even here they are doomed to disappointment. Just now Mr. Phillips is asking them to admire the progressiveness of democratic American capitalism under Truman but not so long ago—before the opening of the “cold war”—Mr. Phillips was equally admiring of totalitarian capitalism in Russia., He visited Russia in 1946 and wrote up his observations in the Daily Herald (20 August, 1946). This is one of his remarks: —

“In Britain we are only just beginning our Socialist planning; in Russia it has been going on for 28 years. In some ways British social standards are well ahead of the Russian, and in others the Russians can teach us a lot.”

Before leaving Mr. Phillips and his views on Socialism we may usefully quote what he has to say of the aim the British.Labour Party sets before itself:—“It promises . . .  the attainment of a planned economy in which proletarian exploitation is not tolerated, and where the fundamental freedoms of the individual citizens, worker and wage-earner are safeguarded ” Marx showed conclusively that the exploitation of the working class cannot be ended while the workers continue to be a wage-earning class, hence his insistence that the unions should see the need to aim at the abolition of the wages system. Morgan Phillips, lacking Marx’s understanding of capitalism and socialism, cannot even perceive that the continued existence of the wages system in Russia and Britain makes nonsense of the claim in both countries to have ended exploitation and introduced socialism. He glories in the fact that the Labour Party rejected Marxism but cannot see that in so doing it was rejecting Socialism.

Alice in Labourland (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year, curious about how many Labour MPs agreed with the wording they carried around on their membership cards, and what they actually understood their Clause Four to mean (what for example, is common ownership of the “means of exchange” all about?), our Media Dept sent each of them a copy of our Object, written incidentally before the Labour Party was even formed:

“The establishment of a system of society based upon the
 common ownership and democratic control of the means 
and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by
and in the interest of the whole community.”

We asked them three questions:

1. Do you regard the above object as being a desirable political goal?
2. Do you regard “common ownership ” as a socialist objective?
3. On what basis do you see your political position as differing from the above Object?

We also challenged each of them to debate the issue of common ownership and democratic control. Not surprisingly, perhaps, not a single one was prepared to take us on. Common ownership has never been on Labour's agenda after all, in spite of Clause Four. In fact we began to wonder how many of them, before the current “modernisation” of the Labour Party, even knew they had a Clause Four, never mind what it meant. 

As for how they now thought Clause Four stood up against our Object, we didn't really expect too many replies demonstrating a clear understanding of socialist ideas from a party which is gearing itself up to run British capitalism, and if we expected muddy thinking and evasive answers, we were not disappointed. Few of the replies received dealt directly with the questions asked, and from those that did, it is clear that “common ownership” in the Labour Party is a wonderfully flexible and adaptable term.

It can mean literally common ownership (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice); or it can mean state ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a democratic system where goods are produced to satisfy human need (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice) or; it can mean—State ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a noble ideal which Labour has steadfastly and unflinchingly advocated (but it doesn’t), or it can mean, er, state ownership and control by a small elite.

As Lewis Carroll put it: “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

A few of our would-be political leaders demonstrated a similar talent for childlike fantasy. As John Marek MP so eloquently put it: "common ownership to me can mean many different things”. John Gunnell agreed: "common ownership can take different forms and it is not practicable for all the means and instruments of production to be in common ownership.”

Keith Hill thought that “democratic control, but not exclusively common ownership, is a desirable political goal". And Max Madden's response was a two-page speech, the climax of which was “we need imagination and innovation to devise new ways of administering public control. . .”.

Austin Mitchell considered that "Democratic control is desirable, common ownership is another matter”, he felt the need however to add- “I wouldn’t have wanted to change Clause Four and regard the whole business as a waste of time, but if the Leader decides to throw himself off a cliff, the Party has no alternative but to catch him”. Catch him? Most of them in their eagerness to get their hands on the spoils of governmental control are lining up like obedient, well-trained lemmings just waiting for the order to jump.

Chris Mullin suffered from a different delusion. Just like your average Daily Mail reader, he was under the impression that common ownership has already been tried somewhere: “I agree that a society based upon common ownership is a wonderful ideal. The only difficulty is that it has proved catastrophic in all the countries where an attempt has been made to introduce such a system”. Where on earth could he be thinking of? Surely not the corrupt state dictatorships of Russia, China, etc?

Mike Gapes found our letter “rather irritating” and wouldn’t answer the questions. John Cummings also seemed rather irritated. He preferred not to tell us what he thought because: “I feel that the Labour Party’s constitution is a matter for Labour Party members alone to decide”. Now there’s a novel idea, ordinary Labour members being given a say on decisions regarding their Party’s constitution! Whatever next?

Bryan Davies was honest enough to admit that “the establishment of a system of society based on common ownership is not a realistic objective for a Party seeking to obtain power” (and presumably not once they’ve got “power” over us either), but isn’t this precisely what Labour have been telling us they stood for all these years? Bob Ainsworth certainly knew what he wanted if he got into power: “a strong market economy helped, encouraged and regulated to operate in the public interest”. (Isn't that what they promised last time?)

Poor old Tony Benn, daft as ever, missed the whole point of the three questions. His response was: “'Thanks for your letter. I don’t want to see Clause 4 changed either.” Perhaps in a moment of wild optimism he thought our object was Clause Four.

Labour supporters intending to put their trust in this lot. should consider another piece of Lewis Carroll advice: '“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat’.”

Labour, by the admissions of their own MPs don't even understand what "common ownership” means, never mind stand for it, and have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, promises and a meaningless replacement for the meaningless Clause Four. The rules at both the Mad Hatter Tea Party and the Labour Party are the same: “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today”, or to spell it out even more clearly: "Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.' I don’t see any wine,' she remarked. 'There isn't any,’ said the March Hare.”

Is it just a coincidence that Labour’s policy and promises come straight from Alice in Wonderland. Finally, before we leave the subject of Alice, this is how Alice Mahon MP replied to the above questions:

1. Yes, it's an admirable goal and one 1 share.
2. Yes, common ownership is an obvious socialist objective and one I hold very dear.
3. None.

So, what on earth is she doing in the Labour Party? We would strongly advise this particular Alice, and anyone else holding up the Labour bottle marked "drink me” to check out the contents a bit more carefully.

Nick White

Letters: And do slam the door . . . (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a number of letters along the same lines. Extracts from some are published below.

“I am a non-affiliated socialist, who has been a traditional "Labour” voter since eligibility, but find that my views and beliefs on socialism are deemed as anachronistic and extreme by the modern Labour Party.

I am not prepared to modify or adapt my beliefs to political concepts which are, in my opinion, the antithesis of true socialism.

I was born and bred in Ebbw Vale, in the South Wales valleys, which, whilst a bedrock of "Labour-voting socialism”, also reflects the true face of 1990s’ Britain; poverty, high unemployment. social and material deprivation, and hopelessness.

And all the modern Labour Party offers is diluted conservatism! Surely "Clause Four" is what defined the socialist policies within the Labour Party’s own philosophy?

I have longed dreamed of a "Utopian” society where housing. education, welfare and health care are readily available to all; one classless society.

Please forward information and membership details of the Socialist Party, so that I can. at long last, physically contribute to the cause."

J.R., 

South Wales.

“I am at the moment a member of the Labour Party. Whilst I agree the Labour Party is bureaucratic. it is at least better than the Conservative Party. If Blair gets his way over Clause IV, then I believe Labour will never be able to win power again. Therefore I must help to ensure that Clause IV stays. However the Socialist Party is most in line with my own view of Socialism, therefore I will be interested in joining sometime soon."

J.T., 

Portsmouth.

“I was in the Labour Party for only one year but I have seen enough to make me believe that Labour are not capable of tackling Britain's major social and economic problems. And since they have elected Tony Blair as leader this only confirms my belief about the party. If you could send information on your party to me then I could get in contact with you about joining."

B.M., 

London.

“I received a copy of Socialist Standard some time ago and have just acted upon it. I would be keen to take up membership. Can you point me to a local contact or branch. My history is ex-Labour Party. CND (still active anti-Sizewell B and C), Cruise-watch but disgruntled over Labour Party. Its view of 'Socialism' and what it means does not equate with my thoughts. I thought the argument 'Compromise' was just to get the Tories out. I went along with it but this new episode finally pushed me into a decision. Many fellow comrades share my view." 

K.W., 

Suffolk.

"After 20 years’ membership I've quit the Labour Party. The Special Conference, both its decision and the way it was conducted. was the blessed limit. I’m not going on my neighbours’ doorsteps to advocate the joys of the 'Rigour of competition' and the ‘enterprise of the market’.” •

T.L., 

London.

Galloway’s Workers Party: A sheep in wolf’s clothing (2024)

From the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following their leader George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale by-election, the Workers Party of Britain (WPB) is making a bid to be the standard-bearer in the coming general election of the anti-Labour left. But what do their stand for?

They claim to be a socialist party but nowhere do they clearly define what they mean by socialism.

They are ‘committed to the redistribution of wealth and power in favour of working people’ (which is what the Labour Party committed itself to in its manifesto for the February 1974 general election; in more emphatic terms in fact, as ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families’). This ‘redistributive economics’, however, assumes the continued existence of a wealthy class some of whose wealth is to be transferred to working people. So, they are talking here about a change within the capitalist system. Its reform not its abolition. Socialists, by contrast, stand not for a less unequal ownership of wealth but for the common ownership and democratic control of the places where what society needs to survive is produced.

The WPB ‘believes in an economy that works for the working class people, the vast majority’. All parties say that, and not just the Labour Party either. The question is what is being proposed to try to make ‘the economy’ work in this way. Perhaps surprisingly, the WPB does not envisage the widespread nationalisation of productive industry that the Labour Party’s old Clause Four did. Not that nationalisation — the state take-over of some industry or business — is socialism. It is state capitalism under which workers still work for wages and are treated in the same way as by private employers, as many workers have learnt from experience.

Their position on this is that ‘we are not afraid of selective nationalisation especially of dysfunctional utilities and for strategic assets’:

‘Our nationalisation policy is based on a simple proposition that anything that is a monopoly or essential to the functioning of the country, especially those businesses strategically required in times of crisis, should be considered for re-nationalisation or nationalisation’.

These are precisely the reasons the Labour Party used to give to justify nationalisation when it supported this.

They go on:

‘We say ‘considered’ because full nationalisation may not be necessary in every case, such as national logistics, if the industry concerned is prepared to operate constructively in line with national planning guidelines and places the nation before investors. If we have to legislate to give the national interest priority over the market, we will not hesitate to do so.’

Since there aren’t any monopolies outside the railways and the utilities and since the Bank of England is already nationalised, the most that is envisaged would be a return to the pre-Thatcher situation in the 1970s which would still leave most productive industry in the hands of profit-seeking private enterprises.

They want ‘the state to guide the economic life of the country.’ Given their position on nationalisations, this means the state directing and trying to plan an economy in which large sections of productive activity remain in the hands of profit-seeking private enterprises. Reformist parties have tried this many times and have always failed since such a mixed economy means the government is at the mercy of the private sector which will refuse to invest unless there is enough profit in it for them and no ‘direction’ or ‘legislation’ can compel them to do so. This is why all previous Labour governments have ended up accepting that profits have to be made and themselves applying this capitalist imperative. A Galloway government would be no different.

Like Old Labour, the WPB sees its goal as being achieved gradually: ‘It may take many years to transform Britain into a secure democratic socialist state.’ In the meantime, there are ‘some things we can do immediately.’ There is a ‘Ten-Point Programme’ of immediate demands full of vote-catching reforms (but which doesn’t include any nationalisation measures) such as:

• ‘Useful, secure jobs for all in decent conditions, with living wages, paid holidays, sick leave, maternity leave, etc.
• Decent, cheap, secure housing for all.
• Free and comprehensive healthcare with no waiting lists.
• High-quality, free provision of all necessary support services for the
• disabled, as well as the elderly.
• Universal access to a cheap or free fully- integrated public transport system and all essential amenities: water, sanitation, heating, electricity, post, telephone, internet’.

Apparently, they believe that capitalism could be made to provide all that, but these free or subsidised services would have to be paid for out of taxes which ultimately fall on profits. In fact, profits would have to be taxed so much that it would undermine capitalist enterprises’ incentive to produce, provoking a slump in economic activity.

To be fair, they do get a couple of things right.

They define the working class as:

“It is the 99%. The workers are anyone who has to sell their labour power for wages. What does that mean? It means that if you have to earn wages, do jobs for money, you are a member of the working class.’

And they have seen through the Labour Party (as we did right from its start in 1906):

‘Labour are Labour in name only. Labour do not represent the workers, they serve the elite, the class that does not work: the ruling class. But Labour likes to pretend it is on the side of the workers. It has stolen the name “Labour”. Labour is the wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

On the other hand, they commit themselves to defending the state-capitalist regime in the old USSR.

“We defend the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba, etc.”

“We shall defend the positive historical legacy of the Soviet Union”.

The Communist Party of Britain and the Scargill Labour Party (SLP) take the same position. It hasn’t done them any good. Quite the reverse. It is more likely to put people off as there is already a widespread understanding that the USSR wasn’t socialist but, as in the West, a class-divided society ruled by a privileged elite.

In short, the WPB is not the ‘socialist alternative to the corrupt Labour Party’ that it claims to be. It is just a return to failed, Old Labourism.

Adam Buick

The Impending Collapse of Labourism. (1906)

From the January 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the near approach of a general election the signs and portents that tell of the futility of what is at present known as the “Independent Labour Representation” movement increase and multiply. With one desire paramount in their minds—the desire to secure election—many of the candidates for whom the Labour Representation Committee is responsible, are quite ready to subordinate their independence to their election in the belief, quite honestly held doubtless in some cases, that some special virtue attaches to the right to append the letters M.P. after a name. Nor is this surprising. When men set out with the all-pervading notion that the imperative necessity of the hour is the formation of a “Labour Group” inside the House of Commons, without a very clear notion as to why there should be such a group, without being at infinite pains to understand the reasons underlying the supposed necessity, without being intimately acquainted with the only conditions upon which a Labour Group can be of utility and effect, it is not surprising if they think to proceed to their “independence” within the Commons, by very dependent methods without. It is not surprising that Mr. Richards, the L.R.C. candidate for Wolverhampton, for example, prefers not to take the chances of defeat in opposition to the Liberals when the chances of election in alliance with them are so bright. And this it would seem, on the authority of Mr. Tom Jones, representing the “Labour” side of the Liberal-Labour Conference held to make arrangements, is the position of the responsible officers of the Labour Representation Committee.

“They were satisfied that, anxious as they were to get a Labour Representative returned, it was impossible to do so on Labour lines exclusively. . . . The one object . . . which the Labour Party had was to try and replace one of the worst governments of modern times, . . . they regretted that some annoyance had been caused by individual men objecting to Liberals having anything to do with them,” and so on.

And these are the leaders of the movement that, once formed, was to march straight into the real working-class—the Socialist—camp, because forsooth, it could follow no other road. This was the assumption upon which the only argument of the I.L.P. (L.R.C. patron and sycophant) rested. And yet of the four men already in Parliament, and drawing their stipend from the L.R.C., three are quite frankly adjuncts of, and in no way distinguishable from, the capitalist Liberal party, while at the first approach of the general encounter with what are supposed to be (from the L.R.C. point of view) the forces of re-action, the political training of a life-time is too strong for their candidates, whose independence grows smaller by degrees and beautifully less. Of course. They want to get into Parliament. Many of them don’t clearly know why, and those who do have no intelligent force behind them to insist that they shall keep to the line of independence.

The I.L.P. having done all in its power to foster L.R.C’ism —mainly, it is true, for the purpose of securing monetary support for its own men naturally grows apprehensive at these indications of collapse, and protests against the Wolverhampton violation of the L.R.C. Constitution. But in the first place the L.R.C. has no constitution, and in the second the I.L.P. tactics are in the main the L.R.C. tactics, as defined by Mr. Tom Jones. At Halifax, Mr. Parker, I.L.P. candidate and member of the I.L.P. Executive, is in precisely the same position that Mr. Richards occupies, i.e., he has sold out independence and all to the Liberal Party. The I.L.P. will find difficulty enough, it seems, in keeping its own particular candidates in order, Without worrying about anything else.

The fact is, of course, that both the I.L.P. and the L.R.C. (not to mention the S.D.F.) have omitted to ponder the fact (or have deliberately blinked it) that to change a label is not to change an idea, and if from their youth up the working-class have been trained to give allegiance to Liberalism or Toryism, the return of Labour men—commonly so-called—to Parliament will not have the effect of changing their views ; while without that, change of view the Labour men returned, having no mandate and no strength at their back, are practically useless except to themselves, even when, as in the case of Crooks, Shackleton, and Henderson, they are not themselves, in everything but name, thick and thin supporters of one of the orthodox capitalist factions. Only by education, by an exacting and painstaking course of instruction in the true inwardness of the economic phenomena that affects them always to their detriment, can the working-class ideas be changed. The S.D.F., have frankly tired of this educational work, the I.L.P. were probably never able to perform it, and the L.R.C., without principles or object, and with only the most loosely defined policy, has always been nothing more than the happy hunting-ground (or perhaps we should say Tom Tiddler’s ground) for the man on the make, the political quack and charlatan. It remains, therefore, the more imperative that the S.P.G.B. should persist in its work with the determination and consistency which have characterised its efforts hitherto. To educate and organise the working-class of Great Britain into an army of irreconcilables at perpetual war with the forces of capitalism upon both the economic and the political fields, this is the purpose of the Socialist Party. And this purpose cannot be effected by compromise with capitalism, by arrangement, real or implied, by methods of confusion, by obscurantism of whatever consistency. It cannot be effected by indulging the particularly absurd hope of the Labour Leader “to unite working men of all shades of political opinion into one great Labour Party,” because a Labour Party cannot exist on any such basis, and would be useless if it could. It can only be effected by keeping essentials clear. And the first essentials are the absolute incompatibility of working-class interest with capitalist interest, and the necessity therefore, of translating the class struggle which is for ever manifesting itself on the economic field to the political field, to be waged with unceasing effort. This method may seem long and thankless, but it is the method that is sure in its results. Moreover, it is the only method.

A. James

Editorial: Neither Starmer nor Old Labour (2023)

Editorial from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Keir Starmer had said in an interview with the BBC on 16 July that he didn’t object to being called a ‘fiscal conservative’ (presumably with a small ‘c’), Mick Lynch of the RMT commented on Sky News that ‘at the minute many people can’t spot the difference’ between Labour and the Conservatives’, but spoilt it by adding ‘and that’s a shame for somebody who’s probably as talented as Keir Starmer is’ and calling on him to ‘show that he’s on the side of working people.’ That would be difficult because he’s not on our side.

Lynch went on:

‘He should be saying something about workers’ rights. He should say stuff about the NHS, looking after people who are struggling in the housing market, council houses for the masses, controlling rents, addressing all sorts of stuff about what’s going to happen in the imbalance in our society. He’s not saying any of that. He won’t dare mention the word socialism’ (tinyurl.com/463ranbn).

Who does he think Starmer is? Jeremy Corbyn, the man Starmer stabbed in the back? Lynch is nostalgic for the Labour Party of yore – workers’ rights, council houses, rent control – but it’s a couple of generations since Labour advocated that sort of thing. That workers should want better conditions is normal but this was never going to come through the Labour Party; a little through trade unions perhaps but dependent on labour market conditions. The ‘imbalance’ between those who own and those who work is built into ‘our society’ and nothing can be done to reduce it. The whole basis of society needs to be changed from class to common ownership before production can be geared to meeting people’s needs properly.

The present ‘labour unrest’ is a reaction to rapidly rising prices putting pressure on workers’ living standards and so is essentially defensive, running fast to try to stand still. If it leads to a revival of a bit of class consciousness in some workers that can’t be bad, but defensive, trade union consciousness is not enough. What is required is the socialist consciousness that there is no solution under capitalism but only through socialism.

Lynch chides Starmer for not daring to mention the word socialism. It’s a good thing he doesn’t. We don’t want Labour leaders claiming to be socialist. The Labour Party doesn’t stand for socialism — everyone can see that now — but never did. It’s just another capitalist party and always has been, even in the pre-Blair days when it had a paper commitment to full-scale state capitalism (nationalisation). Which is probably Lynch’s idea of what socialism is.

The alternative to Starmer is not to go back to Old Labour and its reforms that didn’t work but forward to socialism where productive resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled so that they can be used to turn out what people want and need, instead of as now (and under Labour governments) to make profits for the few.

Has the Labour Party lost its way? (2003)

From the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

With trade unions and left wingers now talking about the re-formation of a Labour party, socialists ask why bother? The history of the Labour Party has been one long disaster for the working class. The short answer to the question of whether the Labour Party has lost its way is, no. Because what is currently the direction of its leaders has been part of its thinking throughout its existence. In power, as now, Labour has been a radical liberal party. This has not been a betrayal of its core principles or “values” but reflects its origins.

New Labour’s obsession with neo-liberal economics might seem like something of a new departure but the early Labour Party was tied to liberalism in a similar way. This argument should not be taken too far, as at least the collectivist currents in the early Labour Party made it feel like it was part of a movement to create a better society and many thought they were working towards a vaguely defined socialism. A collection of anecdotes of life in the Labour Party, Generating Socialism (Sutton, 1997; edited by Daniel Weinbren, foreword by Tony Benn, who else?) shows that many Labour members, however mistakenly, thought that socialism could be reached through Labourism. The optimism which could hold with Labour’s “rise” up to the mid-twentieth century, has turned into a marked pessimism associated with the supposed decline of the working class.

Nonetheless, the Labour Party was established not for socialist aims but to achieve political representation for working men. It was related to class struggle in that despite the trade unions’ reluctance to break away from the Liberal Party, industrial militancy and the Taff Vale decision which put their funds in danger meant that a strong feeling developed on the need for independent “Labour” representation in parliament. However, its socialist credentials were weak, as the Social Democratic Federation acknowledged when it withdrew from the Labour Representation Committee (which became the Labour Party in 1906) in 1901. Its social outlook was informed not by class-consciousness but, on its left-wing, by ethical protest at poverty and inequality as “wrong” and, on its right-wing, by an awareness that social dislocation caused by unregulated capitalism effected economic (capitalist) efficiency.

The Labour Party struggled to gain wide electoral support during its first ten years, gaining around fifty MPs by 1914. Its big break came with the first world war, which split the Liberal Party. Labour was active in the national government, supporting the war, but not tainted being tainted with its results. By the early 1920s, the Labour Party had emerged as the “progressive” party in British politics. While attracting such ex-Liberals at this time as Clement Attlee, it refused the affiliation of the Communist Party.

So why has the Labour Party been associated with the name of socialism? Largely because of its history of supporting nationalisation, often misleadingly called “public” or “social” ownership. This was the major problem for socialism in the twentieth-century—the standard dictionary definition being that nationalisation is socialism. The Labour Party’s commitment to nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange dates from 1905 but was adopted most famously in Clause IV of its 1918 constitution. Its acknowledgment that exchange would continue after nationalisation demonstrated that the wages system, and thus capitalism, would continue after nationalisation, albeit state-run. In effect Clause IV was translated as state ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy. Quite what was hoped to be achieved by bringing industry into state instead of private ownership was not very clear apart from as a vague and fuzzy means to “greater equality”.

With central planning nationalisation was supposed to transform capitalism into something that could be controlled by the state. This did not happen of course. On transferring coal, steel, iron, fuel, power and transport to state ownership after 1945, the performance of British industry in the world market still continued to decline and the state sector remained an arena of industrial struggle. The remarkable blind faith of the Labour Party in nationalisation was reduced from the Attlee government onwards. Sadly, this decline in the faith of nationalisation has been represented as the death of socialism.

There are still some in the Labour Party and in the various left-wing organisations who claim that vast swathes of British industry should be re-nationalised. This is why many see “New” Labour as a dramatic break with “Old” Labour. Jim Mortimer (an ex-Labour Party general secretary) describes New Labour, in a recent pamphlet The Formation of the Labour Party – Lessons for Today (2000), as apologists for capitalism and the new Clause IV as “a symbolic change to mark the abandonment of Labour’s traditional advocacy of a widening area of social [state] ownership”. However, as socialists, we would prefer to see declining faith in nationalisation and the Labour Party as a positive development. The results of Labour governments are no longer clothed in the misleading garb of collectivism but show what they essentially are—managers of capitalism. Electoral imperatives, present from early in Labour’s existence, have triumphed over reforming rhetoric.

It is often argued that state welfare and social security provision are examples of Labour’s success in “doing something”, legislating against poverty and providing municipal housing and so on. Such measures have no socialist credentials but, on the contrary, were developed in their post-war form by the Liberal Beveridge. Moreover, regulating legislation has been a feature of all capitalist government since the Factory Acts of the 1840s. The simple case is that systems of social welfare do not change the exploitative character of capitalism or even touch the surface of its symptoms. Poverty has not been reformed away and poor housing, unemployment, job insecurity and related ill-health remain very real concerns for the working class. In fact, New Labour, rather than betraying Labour’s welfare extension tradition, has merely continued previous Labour retrenchment begun in the 1970s.

The democratic record of the Labour Party reads equally dubiously. It has always had a very limited acceptance of party democracy. The block vote, for example, allowed the trades unions to dominate the party conference, initially to the advantage of Liberal moderates but more recently to that of the left-wing, whereupon it was replaced. Also, Blair is not new in being a “strong” leader. Before 1922 the Labour party did not have a formal leader but a series of chairmen. After Ramsay MacDonald assumed chairmanship in 1922, however, the party adopted a leadership that exercised strong control over the party, especially as the Parliamentary Labour Party did not, and still does not, have to obey its conference. As has often been observed, the Labour Party has always had a strong cult of personality, of loyalties and bitter rivalries over who was best to lead a passive working class.

At its formation and in its early years the Labour Party had little connection with the growth of a socialist minority or even with the more militant sections of reformists. There were always some trying to build a “fairer” society but what emerged from years of effort was not a slowly evolving socialism but a Labourism which increasingly judged itself on its electoral success, which depended on its ability not to rock the capitalist boat it was trying to steer.

Those who want another century of reformist advance and retreat can go ahead and form a new Labour Party. Those who, learning from the failures of the past, desire the socialist alternative should join those who have rejected reformism and sought instead to make socialists and work for socialism-and-nothing-but.

Colin Skelly

Labourism—A New Statement of Expedients (1952)

Pamphlet Review from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A small number of Labour Party members who call themselves “Socialist Union" (formed in 1951), have recently written a booklet called “Socialism —A New Statement of Principles” (Lincolns-Prager, 3s.) It has been reviewed, both favourably and otherwise, in various newspapers and journals, all of which seem to accept the ideas it contains as being the last word in “socialist" thought. This illusion is fostered by the fact that distinction is made in the booklet between the “labour" and “socialist" movements, with the implication that its authors belong to the latter which is supposed to be part of the former. A duality of apparently wanting to run with the hare of discontent with Capitalism and hunt with the hounds of political office is central to the theme of a work which is calculated to please in some way everybody except socialists. We cannot deal here with all the fallacies and false ideas it puts forward, but we can pick out a few that may serve to illustrate our case against Labourism as a whole.

In the introduction the reader is told, in a rather confiding way, that “despite our successes—or perhaps because of them—we are conscious that the society we hoped to build still eludes us. The easy confidence of the past is gone and our way forward is beset with uncertainty." The question may reasonably be asked: if the society they hoped to build still eludes them, in what have their “successes” consisted? The Socialist Union, by way of trying to meet this point, refer to “an unjustified belittling of the genuine achievements of the Labour Government,” but also recognise that “the effect [of its experience of power since 1945] has not been disillusionment, but confusion and uncertainty of mind" This is the old line of complaint that the followers don't realise how much better off their leaders have made them, but what is most remarkable is the mention of disillusionment; this is a term not of outward attack but of inward reproach, and even the attempt to show that it is really something else indicates that its presence in the Labour ranks is tacitly acknowledged.

Nationalisation

The booklet’s admissions about the results of nationalisation can be construed as a belated confirmation of the S.P.G.B's. attitude towards it

"the mere act of nationalisation does not automatically change industrial and social relations in the direction we desire. It is a step—in certain industries a necessary step—but no more. Many of the benefits which were expected naturally to flow are not attained unless further action is taken."

We are accustomed to being told that nationalisation is only a step, but we still want to know what working class interests are involved that make it a necessary one in certain industries and, by implication, an unnecessary one in others. Although they do not say so, it is obvious that the S.U. believe that Labour nationalisation is “in the direction we desire ” but that Conservative nationalisation is not. It all depends on whom the “we" refers to. We are intrigued by the nature of the further action that must be taken before more benefits will flow. If the future benefits are to be of the same order as past ones then this is a very good argument against including nationalisation in further action.

There are numerous examples scattered throughout the booklet of the S.U. tail criticising the Labour Government dog. Thus “the formula of common ownership at least offered one clear line of policy. Abandon it in practice and, unless there is the clearest recognition of our deeper purposes, there may be no line at all, only a tinkering with the present social organisation.” One may wonder why the offer of such a clear line of policy was not taken up, especially since the use of the past tense suggests common ownership as a policy is for some reason no longer an offer. But the second sentence gives the due—”Abandon it in practice . . . tinkering with the present social organisation.” The intervening words are mere padding as far as socialists are concerned.

The S.U. is not averse to a little advertising, presumably for the benefit of capitalists, of the Labour Party’s handling of the workers. “Their wages, even when they are not successful in raising them much above subsistence level, are supplemented by the benefits of the welfare state. This further strengthens their position and their independence.'’ Such remarks add insult to injury when directed, for example, to the unemployed in textile and other industries. If Labourism “strengthens” the workers’ position like this then employers of labour have every cause to support it, and even to encourage more “strengthening"— it would be a cheap price to pay for the docility of the wage-slaves.

Equality

The chapter headed "Ethical Foundations” has a great deal to say about exploitation, human dignity and equality, but the conclusions arrived at are so innocuous and banal that Conservatives and Liberals would be pleased to endorse them. Indeed, George Murray, writing in the Daily Mail expected “ that at any moment I might see in this Socialist publication the Churchillian slogan: Set The People Free.” Strangely enough, the booklet also manages to include a number of sentiments that those who are really working for Socialism would not disagree with. The spirit of brotherhood and fellowship feature largely, but the effect is completely spoiled, and any real meaning abstracted from them, by remarks such as “few are so great as to feel a unity with mankind even beyond their nation's borders ” and “even socialists are unready to project the ideal of equality on to a world-wide scale.”

We in the S.P.G.B. have never claimed that there is anything particularly great in our feeling a unity with all mankind. If it were not for the propaganda of misleaders concerned with preserving Capitalism (welfare state notwithstanding), many more people would be better disposed towards their fellows abroad. The S.U. shows now false its claim to being socialist is by imagining that the people who are to build Socialism can do anything other than co-operate with those who hold similar views in all countries.

Results of Reformism

“Just because we have not always recognised that socialist programmes may vary in time and place, and even in name, the belief took root that there is somewhere, even if only in our imaginations, a ‘ socialist ’ system with its own unique set of institutions.”

“. . . there is no accepted institutional blueprint called socialism.”

Thus has the wheel of Labour reformism turned full circle. Starting out with the idea of gradually reforming Capitalism bit by bit until the change to common ownership would be accomplished, it compromised, collaborated, and cashed in on every grievance to attain political power. Anything was Socialism, and now. after six years of office has brought inevitable disillusionment to its followers, nothing is Socialism. What a bitter pill to swallow this must be for those in the Labour movement who tirelessly worked, as they thought, to abolish Capitalism. Now they are told that it was all an illusion, that the idea for which they made sacrifices was meaningless.

Some of them may remember telling the S.P.G.B. that they had to do “something now” and not just talk about Socialism. It would be easy to taunt, to describe, as some do, as “pathetic” their attempts to salvage what they can from the wreck of a false theory. However we do not believe that this would help them to understand just why Socialism has to be built by people whose actions are always in line with their object. We are not, of course, concerned with those who are in the Labour movement only for what they can personally get out of it—the New Statement of Principles is no doubt just “tactics” to them. But we believe there are many people who, if they read this booklet carefully and think over what it means, will be more inclined to join with the only Socialist Party for the only object that is really worthwhile.

We scarcely need add that the columns of the Socialist Standard are open to anyone who wishes to challenge our views, or to seek enlightenment on any of the other points that we have been unable to deal with here.

Stan Parker

The Labour Party and the Unemployed. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why are there Unemployed?

Unemployment is the workers’ constant scourge. It is the haunting fear of this that makes the toiler cringe before the tyranny of the master or brutal foreman; that compels him to accept low wages and degrading conditions of toil; that forces him to blackleg those on strike and become a tool to break the spirit of his fellows. Any attempt, therefore, to seriously grapple with this question must command our closest attention, for it is above all necessary for wage workers to have clear ideas upon this subject.

But what lies back of the unemployed question? Is it that the labour of the worker cannot provide his necessaries of life? No, it is because he is denied the opportunity to apply his labour. It is because the means of life—land, mines, factories and railways—are the monopoly of a distinct class who will only feed the wage-slave when the conditions of the market enable a profit to be realised on his labour. In his profit hunger the capitalist continually cuts down his labour bill, and the worker is squeezed out of the factory by new machines and other labour saving devices. The enormous increase in the productivity of labour is accompanied by a slackening demand for products. The growing army of unemployed and paupers, the continued crushing of middlemen by company and trust, all tend to seriously restrict purchasing power in the home market; while other nations inevitably take a larger share in the markets of the world, and so slacken demand there also. Supply permanently outstrips demand. Workers must starve because they have produced too much!

The great social means of production which have now developed, and which are worked by the compulsory co-operation of thousands of workers in factory, mine and railway, are in violent conflict with the anarchy of capitalist distribution, and cry out for the adjustment of Society to the social nature of the new economic conditions.

What must be done?

But to correct this contradiction what must be done? Is it “practical politics” to deny the class antagonism, as does the Labour Party, and to beg the capitalist to get off the worker’s back ? Is it to be expected the masters will themselves abolish the unemployed, the keystone of their social arch ?

The only hope for the workers, employed and unemployed, is in their organisation as a class against the class that is organised against them. They must realise that they will only get what they are able to take; that it is utterly stupid to expect their enemies to legislate or administer against their own interests. The profits of the capitalist class, their income, and even their continued existence as a class depend upon the existence or creation of a reserve labour army.

If there were no unemployed there would be no blacklegs, the “sack” would lose its terrors, wages would rise and profits vanish. Voltaire said if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent one. The modern capitalist can say with more truth that if the unemployed did not exist it would be necessary to create them. How stupid it is then to expect any but the workers themselves to deal seriously with that vital question.

Those who live upon the workers may provide workhouses, or penal colonies as in Belgium and elsewhere, but this means simply that the lash of hunger is partly replaced by the lash of conditions so bad that the victim is glad to accept the worst paid and most wretched toil in the competitive world outside rather than stay.

This is the principle of the workhouse stoneyard—it is also the principle of the Labour Party’s Bill.

The Bankruptcy of Labourism

Never was the bankruptcy of Labourism more evident than in its attempt at legislation on unemployment. 

Having by its flabbiness lost much of the confidence of of its supporters, and having before it the prospect of meeting its Waterloo at the next election, the Labour Party was at last to make a stand and to do something to regain the lost confidence and prepare for the battle to come. That something is the Unemployed Workmen Bill!

The Labour Party is indeed fortunate in its defeat. Had not the Liberal Party thought it profitable, in view of the great Tory campaign, to make a show of opposition to the falsely so-called “Socialist” Labour Party, and had it adopted the Bill, emphasising its penal clause; the game of the Labour group would have been up; the rottenness of the Bill could not have escaped exposure, and the hopelessness of peddling Labourism would have been driven home to the multitude.

For what does the Bill amount to ?

One of the great claims for the Bill was that it was a training Bill. J. R. MacDonald in seconding the second reading said it was not relief works that were wanted, but to impose a course of training on the unemployed man ; and that it was a mistake to assume “that the purpose of the promoters was to put the unemployed to their own work.” What does this mean ?

It means, since there are unemployed in every calling, that an unemployed navvy, for example, is to be trained for carpentering or bricklaying, while the bricklayer or carpenter is to be trained for navvying! To attempt to alleviate general unemployment by such means is on a par with the suggestion that men could earn their living by taking in one another’s washing.

A Snare and a Delusion

But the crux of the Bill, according to the Labour Party, is clause 3, and we agree. At first glance the clause and appears to provide employment at conditions not lower than those standard in the locality, as demanded by trade unionists; but a second glance reveals that this is a snare and a delusion. It is so worded as to give a false impression to the trade union worker, while in reality it places no limit, to the badness of conditions which the unemployed man must accept under pain of punishment.

In the House of Commons Mr MacDonald confessed that the clause “may be badly worded,” but that it only meant that the trade unionist was not to be victimised because he may formerly have declined work for an outside capitalist at less than current rates. “It did not mean that the local employment authority must provide work at trade union rate of wages.”

No, indeed, the only conditions are such as capitalists may consider “reasonable,” and we know what that means. Under the Bill a man might be offered the wretchedest conditions of both work and pay, and what would be the result if he refused ? The local authority is then empowered under clause 7 to obtain an order “to enforce control over the person named in the order for a period not exceeding six mouths, which period must he passed in the performance of reasonable work under the control of the local employment authority.”

That is to say, if you will not accept the most degrading conditions that may be offered, they may inflict penal servitude upon you for a period not exceeding six months. Thus is the “Right to Work"!

And what is there to prevent the local authorities, as of yore, putting men to work at exceedingly low rates (under pretence of unemployed relief) at work which must otherwise have been done at full rates by men now transformed into “unemployed” ?

So long as there is a capitalist Parliament the LocaI Government Board will be its tool, while there is no more bitter enemy of the workers than its president. Yet the Labour Party in their Bill place enormous powers of control and in the framing of rules for carrying out the Act, in the hands of the L.G.B. Even were the Bill otherwise of any use, this would suffice to damn it.

The Only Hope.

Unemployment is the big stick that the master class use to break strikes, to beat down wages, and to make the employed “get a hustle” on them. The ruling class is not going to burn that stick. For the abolition of unemployment there is only one way, and that is not to follow the Will-o’-the-wisp of Labourism, but for the workers to organise as a class for Socialism. The workers must therefore organise to themselves capture political power in order that they may cease to be the despised beasts of burden of the propertied class, and become freely associated producers in a cooperative commonwealth.

Socialism is your only hope.

Labour's mock battle (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are about to witness yet another Battle for the Soul of the Labour Party, which might be an awe-inspiring spectacle were it not for the fact that the amount of inspiration will be in inverse proportion to the degree of understanding.

Cynics will take hot-blooded part in this Battle, rather like troops who have just swallowed their rum ration before going over the top. They are convinced that it is a significant event which will affect the history of the British working class. Realists will know that it has all happened many times before. The prize in the Battle is less the Soul of the Labour Party (whatever, and wherever, that may be) than its seat, which it wants to restore to the benches of power as quickly as possible. And that, really, is what all the excitement is about; the Battle is being fought only because Labour was defeated at the last election.

The battle lines, as usual, are drawn up left and right, and each side has begun bombarding the other with missiles stuffed like shrapnel with nonsense. From the left comes a pamphlet called Labour Activist, which splutters:

The last Labour government ignored the advice of the trade unions and the party at large, and let the Tories in . . . The only question is whether the unions and the party will be mugs enough to fall for this a second time around.

Obviously there is something wrong with the left’s arithmetic if they think that this is only the first time a Labour government has disappointed its own supporters. However, they show a proper concern, for a party of capitalism, for winning and holding power, and this is shared by their opponents on the right. Sailing over from them, in a pamphlet called Labour Victory, is this:

The Left’s preoccupation is in controlling the Labour Party, it is not in achieving government.

Leaders

Clearly, since the left and the right have been lobbing grenades like those at each other for a very longtime, there has been small progress in the techniques of manufacturing political ammunition. There is little better to hope for from the ambitious ones, whose main contribution to the Battle will be their bid for the Labour leadership. People like Healey, Benn, Shore, Silkin and Hattersley will be trying to convince their party that they each offer the best hope of misleading enough workers into voting for another dose of Labour government. They have little more to sustain them than unsavoury memories; apart from that, they are a drab lot. Indeed, one of them — Sam Silkin — thinks that becoming unexciting was the big problem with the last government, that it ran out of steam — which makes it sound as if the working class can most easily be induced to vote for capitalism in a state of sweaty hysteria.

There is as much to be said for that point of view as for another which is more popular — the idea that the working class are a stolid, reliable lot who want a new society and are only waiting for the Labour Party to be true to itself before they vote it into power for evermore. Part of that theory is that Labour was once on the right track but has somehow lost its way. Labour Activist, for example, complains about Labour MPs who supported “. . . incomes policies, public spending cuts, or any other policies which fly in the face of the Labour Movement.” Roy Hattersley (The Guardian, 30 July 1979) puts a different slant on this idea when he worries that Labour’s defeat came because “We appealed to the public simply as good managers who could run the economy more efficiently than our opponents.” Hattersley does not complain that there was anything wrong in that appeal, nor that it exposed Labour as an anti-socialist party; only that as tilings turned out, and capitalism’s crises overtook them, they were seen as bad managers of the economy.

Profits

Far from having lost their way, the Labour Party have remained steadily on course. For example, soon after they won power in 1964 there was a flurry of anxiety on their part that nobody should take seriously anything they might ever have said about abolishing capitalism. Perhaps, in some unguarded moment at a miners’ gala, one of them had made an unwise statement. The capitalist class needed to be reassured:

Profits, provided they are earned by efficiency and technical progress, and not by restrictive practices or abuse of monopoly, are the sign of a healthy economy. (Douglas Jay, at the International Chamber of Commerce, 20 October 1964.)

Business men have more hope of making progress and money under a Labour government than they had before. (George Brown, interview in The Director, April 1965.)

That government, which was intending at one time to solve all our problems, grappled for a few years with the crises of British capitalism, and then, discredited and in disarray, was turned out by the working class. That defeat was followed by — yes — an inquest and a Battle for the Soul of the Labour Party. At that time the leading opponent of Harold Wilson was Roy Jenkins, whose reputation was for an elegant, witty, ‘liberalism’. Jenkins was obviously pretty desperate to become leader because he went to the lengths of almost speaking the truth about the Labour Party, which is akin to a boxer hitting his opponent below the belt after the bell has gone to end the round. To begin with, he debunked the promise on which the Wilson government had won a lot of support in 1964, that the ‘technological revolution’ would bring greater prosperity for us all:

. . . there is some reason to believe that the social and technical changes which accompany and make possible a faster rate of economic growth may even intensify inequality, unless strong countervailing measures are introduced.

And he summed up the achievements of that government:

The poor are still poor. Property speculators — and some others — are as relatively rich, as were those with an accepted position at the top of the social structure. The result, quite inevitably, is increasing social strain. (The Observer, 12 March 1972.)

Inequality

After that it would have been difficult for Jenkins to ignore the part he had played, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in keeping the poor and the property speculators in their respective poverty and riches. “Not enough”, he said, “was done to change society. I take my fair share of the responsibility.”

Well, Labour ministers seem to have learned a little since then; so far there are no signs of any member of the Callaghan government taking any blame for their record. No minister has yet put their head on the block to atone for the fact that the rich actually got richer during the first two years of the last Labour government. According to a report published in July by the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Wealth and Income, between 1974 and 1976 the richest one per cent of the population increased their share of wealth from 22.5 per cent to 24.9 per cent. During the same period, the richest ten per cent had their share increased from 57.5 per cent to 60.6 per cent. And this after their share had declined under the Heath government.

So after all the risky fulminations from people like Jenkins, and the implication that it would be different next time, the property and share speculators continued to prosper under Labour. One example is Tory MP Edward du Cann, who in March, while Labour was still in power, made £1.4 million from a deal involving Cannon Assurance, in which he was a major shareholder.“The country”, he commented, “needs people who are prepared to be adventurous.” (Financial Times, 9 March 1979). The day after that, the Daily Mail reported what had happened to someone less adventurous, from the non-property speculating, non-share owning class: a foreman at a GEC factory, who committed suicide when he and eight workmates were made redundant.

Lie

There is no prospect of this situation being changed as a result — whatever it is — of the great Battle for the Soul of the Labour Party. Indeed, one of the most prominent participants in that Battle, Tony Benn, seems to think that Labour has been steadily advancing backwards for over forty years. In his recent book, Argument for Socialism, Benn says:

I have copies of Labour’s election literature which 1 distributed in the 1935 election . . . That manifesto was far more left wing — with its demand for the nationalisation of the Joint Stock Banks — than the Labour manifesto of 1979.

In spite of this, Benn’s loyalty is unshaken: “. . . I was born into the Labour Movement, like millions of others, and I intend to be in it when I die.”

Those millions are fighting a mock battle over the details of organising the capitalist system in which property speculators grow rich off the workers who suffer — and often crack — under the strain of it all. The great lie of the Labour Party, which its members are required to swallow and to regurgitate at times like elections, is that basically they stand for a different society. Sometimes, says the lie, one or two things go wrong which delay Labour’s plans to bring in the new world. But always they are working towards it.

It is fair to ask how much more profit the du Canns need to make, and how much more suffering the working class must absorb, before the lie loses its attractions. The failures and the frustrations of the Labour Party have been with us for a very long time now, and promise to be with us for a very long time to come. So, too, have their great purges and their historic Battles for their Soul.

In the excitement and the chaos of the fighting, one fact will be obscured. When the gunsmoke clears it will be the ruling class, people like du Cann. who will survive to drink a toast to victory — their victory. And it will be members of the working class who will populate the casualty lists.

Ivan