Open and shut (1973)

SLL paper

From the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is an open, democratic organisation. All our meetings are open to non-members and at our lectures and propaganda meetings they are invited to put their points of view in opposition to us, provided only that they respect the rules of democratic debate.

In contrast to this many so-called “socialist” groups, often professing to be democratic, deliberately exclude Socialists from their meetings — possibly because they fear that we will expose their false claims for what they are. We have received a letter from a comrade in Dundee which will illustrate this point well:

On July 3rd I was invited by a Socialist Labour League member to attend their meeting in a hall here in Dundee which was to take place on July 5th.

I accordingly arrived with another comrade and a friend, to listen to the lecture and ask questions in the ensuing discussions.

We were the first three in the room but soon afterwards another twelve or so members of the public entered and we all sat patiently awaiting the arrival of the lecturer. He entered, but instead of continuing with the meeting he asked me if I would “mind stepping outside for a minute”. Why? He told me it was a meeting to discuss SLL policy and that we weren’t welcome to sit in on it. “This is a private meeting for SLL members only”, he said.

I returned to the meeting and informed those present of the SLL decision, asking them for their opinions on it. Alas everyone seemed suddenly struck dumb and the lecturer’s democratic (?) decision was final.

He then became rather nasty and argumentative, and said if we didn’t leave of our own accord they would “have to remove” us. We pointed out that our companion had no party allegiance so how did he stand? “He can stay if he likes, but we don’t want you at our meetings” said the lecturer, who was by now becoming rather aggressive.

Not wishing to cause any trouble we left, but not before informing those present that the SLL censorship was no different from that of Mary Whitehouse or the Capitalist mass media.

The SLL ironically enough demand “The right of freedom of speech”, but it seems this is only if one agrees with what they say. They demand “The right to defend rights”, but if one should try to exercise any of those “rights” at their meetings, then they’ll throw you out. If someday the SLL should gain control of the capitalist system, will we Socialists have “The right of freedom of speech”? Or will this privilege be reserved only for those who toe the party line and support the state-capitalist dictatorship they seek to impose?

Incidentally as the meeting was for SLL members only why was a CP member member allowed to stay? Why were those people with no party allegiance allowed to stay?

Yours fraternally.

J McFarlane, 

Dundee.

Capitalists, Tremble! More Nonsense From the “Workers’ Press” (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Labour League, in a May-Day Manifesto, has issued an “urgent call to action” to “all Socialists and class-conscious workers”. They must set up “Councils of Action”, they say, and these Councils of Action “will unite all political tendencies of the working class”, Labour Party, Communist Party, Socialist Labour League, International Socialists, and International Marxist Group to “fight against the Tory Government”.

The funny thing is that on the same page of Workers’ Press (April 30th) we are told that the Communist Party “is incapable of waging an independent fight against the Government”, which is the result of its “reformist peaceful road to Socialism which was drafted by Stalin”. And the S.L.L. “wages a relentless campaign against Stalinism”, although they “will fight to defend the USSR, China and Eastern Europe against imperialist aggressors.”

Seeing that “Comrade” Brezhnev went to Washington last week to conclude an Imperialist agreement, it looks as if the S.L.L. will be out of business on that one.

As for the trade union leaders, they are “a bureaucracy which essentially represent the opportunist degeneration of the workers’ movement”, but they “could not function without the connivance of the Communist Party”.

The S.L.L. “knows that the present leaders of the Labour movement have no intention of implementing Socialist policies”. What the S.L.L. and Workers’ Press call “Socialist policies” will be listed later. For the moment let it be said that they are anything (and almost everything) but Socialism.

Anyway, this motley crew of “bureaucrats” (L.P.), “class collaborationists” (C.P.), “middle class centrists of I.S. and I.M.G.” — Workers’ Press, April 23rd — with the unemployed (who can’t strike anyhow) and tenants, have to “organize a General Strike”, to “force the Government to resign” (Workers’ Press, April 29th). When they have done this, a "Labour Government must be elected . . . pledged by the mass action of the working class to implement Socialist policies”.

Why a Government has to be elected, when a mass movement of Action has already forced one to resign, is not explained. In any case, the programme (for the newly elected Labour Government) is to “force the Labour leaders to carry out Socialist policies”. Now comes the moment of truth: the S.L.L. knows that the Labour leaders will not do this. So: “if the working class is strong enough to force the Tories out, it is strong enough to deal with the traitors in its own midst”.

Poor old Socialist Labour League Trotskyists, this is not even as “r-revolutionary” as the good old 1920 C.P. which at least didn’t monkey about with election nonsense but would replace the Government with Soviets. (What has become of the Soviets?) Anyway, after the treacherous Labour leaders have jibbed at “Socialist policies”, more mass action by the workers will “deal with the traitors” until Gerry Healy is Prime Minister. This is a bit like the French Revolution, which relentlessly destroyed one faction after the other until Napoleon seized power. But they started from the Left, whereas the S.L.L. starts from the Right.

So it looks as if we are in for quite a bit of “mass action”, and the S.L.L. wants £100,000 to build a r-r-r-revolutionary party to do it. It is not quite explicitly stated what the hundred thousand quid is for. If all those workers in the Labour Party, C.P., S.L.L., I.M.G., I.S., tenants, Uncle Tom Cobley and all were really intent on a political general strike, presumably they could do it without £100,000. Even the 1926 lot didn’t wait to collect £100,000 first!

But the cream of the joke is the “Socialist policies” which the “mass-actioned” Labour Government is “to be forced to implement” against its will. Capitalists, tremble! Bankers, beware! Let the bosses face this lot: 

First, repeal the Industrial Relations Act.

Second, “The Right to Work”. (Oh, Christ!)

Third, “The Right to Strike”.

Fourth, "The Right to Defend Rights”.

Fifth: “The Right to a higher standard of living” (Nationalization).

Sixth, “The Right to Health Benefit”.

Seventh, “The Right to Decent Housing”.

(Workers’ Press, April 29th)

They’d have a job to get Enoch Powell to disagree with those. And for these we are to urgently “unite for mass action” like "occupying the factories”. And where is Socialism? Nowhere.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always held a very clear and straightforward idea about political and industrial action. Political action is that which concerns the whole working class, industrial action that of industries or trades. There is no way of getting control of the political machine of Government except by voting. Even if a government resigns as a result of a strike, it is still not known how many want something else, and what they positively want.

Incidentally, nothing could be more absurd than the S.L.L. claims that the capitalists want to “smash the unions”. This is the last thing the capitalists want. They love the trade unions, because they can’t do without them. It is true that Karl Marx urged the trade unions to inscribe on their trade-union banners “Abolition of the Wages System”, which is political; but obviously, having in mind the creation of a revolutionary political party to do it. “Abolition of the Wages System” is political; increases in wages are industrial, and leave capitalism intact.

Political strikes are fatuous nonsense which will only lead the workers into futile disaster. Trade unions resist the encroachments of capital. A political party, pledged to every one of its understanding members, is necessary for Socialism. Neither is it true that because Socialists deplore the stupid folly of marching and rioting for the “Right to Work”, that the work of the S.P.G.B. is dull or tedious. There is no greater task than to dispel Ignorance “which never helped anybody”

Horatio.

Blogger's Note:

See the correction in the July 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard.

The Passing Show: Political Litter (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Litter

Whether it was the warm, sleepy atmosphere of that sizzling first Sunday in May or just plain lack of real interest, it is difficult to say, but the circuses we normally expect in Hyde Park were notably straggling and lacking in verve. The Labour and Co-op procession doddered on to the green in bits and pieces throughout the afternoon, as did those of the Young Socialists, Socialist Labour League, etc., trying hard to look enthusiastic after the nervous strain of inching through London’s West End traffic. Even the Young Tories seemed to do better. Their platform sported a rather flabby, overfed young man, whose worldly knowledge seemed to be in indirect proportion to the size of his girth. But at least he was amusing.

Wandering across the Park from one meeting to another, you scuff your feet on the abundance of litter on the grass, and occasionally bend down to look at some of the more interesting pieces. In this way, I acquired copies of The Newsletter (Socialist Labour League), Challenge (Young Communists) and The Rebel Worker (Industrial Workers of the World)—a sad and scrappy piece of duplicated literature this last one.

Judging by the comments in their papers both the Socialist Labour League and the Young Communists are obsessed with the war in Vietnam. Both want the Vietcong to win—“Victory to the heroic Vietcong Fighters” screams The Newsletter, ignoring the obvious point that if heroism is the criterion, then both sides have that in plenty. Despite fierce opposition to the Labour Government, both Y.C.L. and S.L.L. urge workers to use it to get “revolutionary demands.” These include: ending the eleven-plus, votes at 18, more council houses at low rents, making the bosses pay for the crisis—not the workers (whatever that may mean), smashing the Smith regime and arming the African workers. And after that lot and plenty more besides, Y.C.L. National Organiser Peter Carter has the cool nerve to claim “We fight to end capitalism.”

But oh, The Rebel Worker. What thrills will it have in store for us in the future? This is apparently the first English edition, describing itself also as “a revolutionary journal” and having this sort of gem in its editorial: —

  We have joined the I.W.W. because of its beautiful traditions of direct action, rank-and-file control, sabotage, humour, spontaneity and unmitigated class struggle.

Well you can take your choice from that range of so-called qualities, but how anyone can think of the class struggle as beautiful is beyond me. It is necessary, yes. Something none of us can escape, certainly. But beautiful, absolutely not. Nobody who has any real appreciation of capitalism can surely think that its relationships are other than downright ugly in every sense of the word.

And Other Litter

Do you remember the productivity and exports drive of the 1945 Labour Government? And its slogans and bulletins? “More from each means more for all” was one of the lies they told us while slapping on a wage freeze. They talked glowingly of “redistributing the nation's wealth,” “cutting the national cake” and so on, (but when they went out of office in 1951 that 10 per cent of the population still seemed to have a pretty strong hold on their 90 per cent of the accumulated wealth.

And today? Yes, the 10 per cent are still there and the present Labour Government are, of course, telling the same sort of whoppers that their predecessors did. Have you had a copy of Upswing yet? It’s their latest effort to get you working harder, and is a broadsheet prepared by the Department of Economic Affairs. Issue number one talks, of course, about the National Plan and asks the question: “Will I be better off?” Before you can get the chance to contradict it back comes the answers: “Yes. Year by year . . . There will be more to spend all round. If the Prices and Incomes Policy is maintained you will not only be earning more—the increases will go further because prices will not jump as well.” All on three per cent wage increase a year?

Upswing is noteworthy also for the impertinence of its advice to working people: “Don’t accept high prices,” it bleats. “Shop around. Give your custom to the shop where prices are lowest.” No doubt you are very grateful for that entirely novel hint. Shows just how useful Upswing is going to be. Bet you can hardly wait for the next issue.

Let's Be Friends

About 12 years ago there was a quite prominent and active organisation known as “World Friends.” I haven't heard of it for some time, but it may still be in existence. Its officers were pleasant, well- meaning and hard-working men and women. Its object was to foster peace and friendship by means of exchanged holidays between people of various countries. Probably a great many personal friendships were made as a result, but as for peace—there have been Berlin, Lebanon, Suez, Indonesia, Vietnam, lndo-Pakistan and, of course, the terrifying Cuban Crisis, all since then.

This is not to sneer at “World Friends”; at least you could say that what they were doing was better than dropping bombs. But what they never grasped was that “peace” is not just an absence of actual hostilities and the backslapping cordialities of a fortnight’s holiday abroad. It implies an absence of competition and the establishment of co-operation at all times between people everywhere. That is why peace can never be a reality while capitalism is with us.

But people are slow to learn, as you might have thought if you saw a report in The Guardian of April 18th. This tells us that there is now an organisation called “Art for World Friendship” which arranges an exchange of paintings by children from all parts of the globe. There are between 15,000 and 20,000 contributors to the scheme, and the parent body—Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom—stipulate that no pictures shall have violence or war for their theme. Laudable, you may say, as far as it goes. And there’s the rub. After all, children just like everyone else are not characteristically warlike, but modern society certainly is, and it is this which will impinge on their minds increasingly as they grow up.

The Women's League is really trying a form of escapism in getting the children to ignore the fact that war and violence do exist in great measure, and there is not one scrap of evidence that such efforts will have any lasting effect in securing peace for these kids. On the contrary, there could well be a dangerous disillusionment later on when their failure becomes evident. Let us suggest to the Women’s League and others that they could do a far greater service to children and everyone else if they put their own house in order first and learned just what peace is, and the Socialist way to get it.

Gaspers

“Part of the pressure for more expenditure on education has a basically commercial mainspring.” (Lena Jeger. M.P. Guardian, 15.4.66)

“Next to banishing two-wheelers, universal wearing of safety belts would make a bigger dent in road casualties than anything else. It would probably bring a 15 per cent reduction, with a cash value to the community of some £25 millions a year." (John Davy, Observer, 17.4.66.)

"Our movement is symbolised by the bomb-thrower, the deserter, the delinquent, the hitch-hiker, the mad lover, the school drop-out, the wildcat striker, the rioter and thee saboteur . . ." (The Rebel Worker, May Day, 1966)

"Sleep less, eat less, work more—is the formula of Premier Forbes Burnham for Guyana independent from May 26th." (Financial Times, 10.5.66)

Eddie Critchfield

Opt For Socialism (1969)

Editorial from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day this year saw what the press claimed was "Britain’s largest and most sporadic political strike since 1926". The Communist Party congratulated "the hundreds of thousands of workers" who were downing tools and Socialist Worker (IS) was so confident that "this May Day’s political strike confirms a willingness to struggle" that they wanted it to "mark the start of the fight for workers’ power”. But the Revolutionary Socialist Students’ Federation didn’t think it was as simple as that; first we had to decide whether we were witnessing merely "a massive rise of Trade Union consciousness" or was there instead "some glimmer of systematic revolutionary politics emerging from the militancy”?

Reading this sort of comment you could have been forgiven for not noticing that, at a time when trade unions and the right to strike are being openly threatened by the Labour government, less than one per cent of the labour force was prepared to stop work for a single day. Even in those areas where a relatively high proportion of workers turned out (Sheffield, for example, with 10,000 or 4 per cent of the work force on strike) the marches and demonstrations were poorly attended. In Sheffield 500 men and women gathered at the City Hall to listen to Labour MP Norman Atkinson calling for different policies from the government; in Manchester perhaps a similar number marched to the Labour Party’s headquarters; in Hull (with 3,000 dockers out) about 20 made the effort to demonstrate.

The facts, then, argue quite plainly that—such is the lack of even trade union consciousness among the vast majority of workers—they will accept some form of Industrial Relations BiU. In fact, Labour and Tories both recognise anti-strike legislation as a vote winner with the working class and vie with each other in portraying strikers as bloody-minded wreckers intent on sabotaging industrial output.

No delusions

Faced with this situation socialists do not take refuge in the sort of romantic delusion which the Left comforts itself with (“. . . the working class begins to move decisively onto the political scene .. .’’ writes the May Day edition of the Newsletter (SLL)). Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the industries involved were, of course, on strike on May Day. This is because, as workers ourselves, we support efforts by groups of working men and women to defend their wages and working conditions. We also support actions such as that taken by the employees at the Broadheath industrial estate near Manchester who passed a resolution at their May Day meeting calling on the AEF executive to conduct a ballot on the withdrawal of financial support from the Labour Party. Socialists have always refused to pay the political levy and have consistently advised other workers to do the same. And at our union branch meetings socialists put forward the sort of arguments which expose the government’s lies. So when Barbara Castle’s white paper In Place of Strife suggests that the class struggle can be eliminated from capitalism we show that the measures she proposes are futile. In America, for example, where the president can impose much longer ’cooling- off periods’ than Castle's 28 days, the average worker loses over four times as many days through strikes as in Britain; while in Australia, where strikes are virtually illegal, there are still many more stoppages per worker than in Britain.

But what distinguishes the Socialist Party from all other organisations is that our members constantly pose the socialist alternative to capitalism at their workplaces, at their trade union meetings, in bus queues—in fact, whenever and wherever we come in contact with other workers. We point out that far more than trade union activity or political reforms are needed to achieve a decent world; one without money or a wages system where the means of production will be owned by society and can therefore be used to satisfy people’s needs instead of being cramped by the dictates of the market.

Majority needed

Now the new call is for a work stoppage when the TUC meets on June 5. Groups like the Socialist Labour League are calling on the TUC at that meeting to organise a general strike in order to "halt Wilson". They write:

  But our cowardly critics will ask — ‘would a general strike be successful?’
  This is not the question (!). The task of revolutionary leadership is to provide the type of political leadership which is necessary in order to prepare the working class for what lies ahead. Since only a general strike would halt Wilson the task of all trade unionists and Marxists is to fight for it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that what is needed is not merely to "halt Wilson" but to "halt capitalism". This will not be achieved by any amount of loud-mouthed adventurism or super-revolutionary leadership. What is needed for such a social revolution is a majority of working men and women understanding what Socialism entails and determined to establish such a system. This understanding will grow (is growing) out of the collective experience of workers under capitalism —a process which socialists attempt to encourage by their propaganda activities. So even while socialists are engaged in the struggle over wages and working conditions, they never cease putting forward Socialism as an immediate demand. Far from standing back from the day-to-day struggles of the working class, socialists are involved in these efforts —and complement them with a socialist perspective. On the other hand, it is the Left which opts out of the basic task confronting the working class —by failing ever to put forward socialist ideas. We opt for Socialism.

Capitalism Since the War (1968)

Book Reviews from the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Western Capitalism Since the War by Michael Kidron – Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 36s.

Theories of Imperialism by Tom Kemp – Dobson, 42s.

Both these writers are left-wing lecturers at Hull University. Michael Kidron is a prominent member of the ‘International Socialism’ group, while Tom Kemp is editor of Fourth International—the ‘Socialist’ Labour League’s theoretical journal. Kidron’s little book (which he rightly calls an essay) concerns itself with the economic trends which he can see, or thinks he can see, developing in Western Europe and North America. Kemp, on the other hand, has produced a commentary on the theories of imperialism elaborated by a number of writers—Lenin, Luxemburg, Hobson, Schumpeter; but the reader catches glimpses of what the SLL thinks is happening to capitalism today.

Slumps and crises are a permanent feature of the capitalist system. So, for relatively long periods, it often displays a marked tendency to stability. When this happened in the 1890’s one of its effects was to lend weight to the arguments of the revisionists, led by Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein claimed that capitalism was becoming more adaptable and was able to stabilize itself by means of the credit system, employers’ organisations and other devices. In the same way, since the Second World War, other theories have been put forward to explain the fact that no generalised slump has developed and one of the most .fashionable has been the so-called permanent arms economy.

The theory of the permanent arms economy, patented by the I.S. group, is a variety of Keynesism rather than Marxism. Keynes argued that government spending generally could iron out the ups and downs of capitalism. Kidron suggests that a particular type of government spending has achieved this:

  The impact of arms expenditure on stability and investment is no less direct. It is heavily concentrated on the capital goods industries which are responsible for the big swings in the traditional business cycle. It provides a floor to the downswings and has, in the US, been deliberately used in this way.

But the recent build-up in unemployment (which has now remained above the half a million mark in Britain for more than eighteen months) has obviously given quite a knock to the I. S. leaders. Kidron says in his preface that he completed his manuscript in March 1967. At that time he could still write that any “elements of instability are just a smudge on the horizon. So far, the weight of the arms economy has been on the side of stability, charging and recharging the more immediate causes of high employment and well-being.” A year later it is a different story; John Palmer, another of their prominent spokesmen, told a meeting in Hampstead on 13 May last that the permanent arms economy was coming to an end:

  The arms economy is no longer the provider of the capitalist system. Capitalists are now economising on arms spending. The boom years in Europe and America are a thing of the past.

The coming period, he said, would be one of crisis and instability.

The point is that capitalism docs not need a great deal of stabilising anyway— since it is not as unstable as I.S. claims. They subscribe to the underconsumption myth, that left to itself capitalism would collapse as it would not be able to sell what it produced. But, if you hold this view, you must explain why capitalism has not collapsed long ago. The answer Michael Kidron came up with was that capitalism would have collapsed had it not been for arms spending. It is true that consistency is not one of the I.S. group’s strongest points but their statement that the so-called permanent arms economy is coming to an end ought to mean that they think capitalism is about to collapse. For some reason, John Palmer did not give a date.

In fact, what is collapsing is not capitalism but the myth of the permanent arms economy. It has been discredited along with Keynes generally. It is a measure of I.S.’s theoretical bankruptcy that, faced with this, they fall back on the “crisis of capitalism” to create the conditions for social revolution, rather than the growing understanding and organisation of the working class.

The ‘Socialist’ Labour League, of course, never tires of telling us that the capitalist system is in a state of “crisis”. According to them, capitalism has been in this condition for years but recently it did look as though the unbearable tension (and the semi-hysteria it gives rise to in the League) might get some relief when the SLL central committee solemnly announced that the socialist revolution had started, (see Newsletter 25/5/1968). Tom Kemp, however, is relatively restrained in his book and, since he is a Trotskyist, the most interesting sections are those concentrating on Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin came up with the idea that it was imperialism which had given rise to the opportunist trends in the social-democratic movement.

 The receipt of high monopoly profits by the capitalists in one of the numerous branches of industry, in one of the numerous countries, etc., makes it economically possible for them to bribe certain sections of the workers, and for a time a fairly considerable minority of them, and win them to the side of the bourgeoisie of a given industry or given nation against all the others.

Kemp writes that although “there seems no need to accept in a literal way what Lenin wrote about the relationship of the aristocracy of labour to the working class as a whole as valid for the present day”, nonetheless “Marxists have generally followed Lenin in accepting that the ‘aristocracy of labour’ in the metropolitan countries owed its privileged position to the existence of imperialism.”

As with Kidron’s theory, the Socialist Party is in fundamental disagreement with this view. In fact, we reject the Leninist concept of “bribery” as being as crudely mistaken as is the supposedly stabilising influence of the permanent arms economy. For a start, the capitalists have nothing to bribe the socialist movement with. But objections such as this are incidental in any case. The most important error Lenin and his followers made was to imagine that there was any need to bribe the working class into supporting the war effort in their various countries. The workers then, as now, were committed to capitalism. Come war or peace, crisis or slump, their support of the capitalist system has never wavered.

By refusing to face up to this, Lenin contributed to the mystical belief in the revolutionary aspirations of the workers which remains a characteristic of all shades of neo-bolshevism. It is this which accounts for the obsession with leadership which is displayed by groups like I.S. and the SLL. The revolutionary potential of the working class is being diverted by right-wing labour leaders, they argue. Hence the need for alternative “revolutionary leadership”.

The Socialist Party rejects this idea as well. What is needed is not leadership (the labour movement is rotten with “revolutionary leaders” as it is) but a working class equipped with an understanding of Socialism. The left wing are a valuable asset to the capitalist system, thanks to the confusion and disillusionment they produce. As a force for maintaining capitalism they are far more potent than any “bribery” or economic strategy which the ruling class, could resort to.

B. C.

"Young Socialists" in Conference (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the trotskyist “Young Socialists" gather in Morecambe for their annual conference this month they will be voting on a proposal from their national committee that they should put forward their own parliamentary candidates in future elections. This would be a clear break from their previous stand of critical support for the Labour party and it is worth taking a look at these new contenders for the workers’ votes.

The "Young Socialists" were originally organised by the Labour party as its youth section in 1960, to replace the defunct Labour League of Youth. As always, tension rapidly built up between the idealist young people who formed its rank and file and the Labour party bureaucracy which wanted to keep them firmly in hand. The spineless policies of the Labour leaders grated on the “Young Socialists” and they were also incensed by the arbitrary control of their organisation by Transport House. This, then, was a classical situation for the trotskyists to move in on and the “Socialist" Labour League played the same role as the “Communist” party had done in the previous takeover in the thirties. The break from the Labour party came in 1964 when a wave of expulsions ended in a complete split in the movement. Those who left retained the name “Young Socialists” and formed a nominally independent organisation, while the rump which remained in the Labour party now operates under the clumsy title of “Labour Party Young Socialists".

If the plans of the national committee ever get off the ground and the “Young Socialists” do run candidates for political office, they will present themselves to the working class on a platform of transitional demands. These can be anything from “Victory to the Vietcong" to the call for “Nationalisation of the basic industries, banks and insurance”. They are intended as a minimum programme (socialism being relegated to some indefinite, doomsday status) but are supposed to have a long-term effect as well. As the original Transitional Programme of the Fourth International put it: 

the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime.

Obviously this process of progressively phased revolution has not advanced very far since the Transitional Programme was first adopted in 1938, as the demands at present being touted clearly show. Just what benefits the victory of the Vietnamese ruling class over the American capitalists would bring for workers anywhere remains obscure, to say the least, while nationalisation of industry — even if total, as in Russia — merely enables the ruling class to tighten its grip on the means of production. If all the supposedly revolutionary, transitional demands of the “Young Socialists” were enforced, the working class would remain in exactly the same position as it started out — propertyless and exploited. The slogans of the “Young Socialists” are a far cry from Marx’s — and the Socialists Party’s — revolutionary demand of abolition of the wages system.

The need for the so-called transitional demands arises in the theoretical framework of the “Young Socialists" parent body (the “Socialist” Labour League) because they take it as axiomatic that the working class cannot possibly grasp the case for socialism if it is presented to them in simple, uncompromising terms — without some form of bait. In fact, the pivot of all their arguments is the conviction that the workers can never arrive at an understanding of socialism by their own efforts and that they must therefore be controlled from above by a leadership. The only useful purpose the working class serves is that it provides the mass basis which the trotskyists hope to make use of in their attempt to gain political power.

This line of thinking is in direct conflict with Marxism. While Marxists have always argued that the socialist revolution must be the result of a united effort by the workers of the world, the followers of Lenin and Trotsky maintain that action by a determined minority, with passive or blindly following masses at the back of them, is all that is necessary. In the case of the Russian Bolsheviks there was perhaps some justification for this attitude, operating as they were in a backward, peasant country. But, however sincere their intentions to build socialism might have been, the historical obstacles were insurmountable and they found themselves leading a bourgeois revolution which conformed in all essentials to the characteristics which, as Engels pointed out, typify the rise to power of capital. They were the “small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses” who lead every revolution which merely replaces one ruling class by another.

A socialist revolution is something entirely different, however.

If the conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

(Engels' introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France)

It is this “long persistent work” which socialists take on in their efforts to convince other workers like themselves of the urgent need for establishing a socialist society based on the principle of “to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability”. Trotskyists, on the other hand, shirk this job. Falling back on idealism or, to use their own language, “petty bourgeois impressionism”, they try to sidestep the task of spreading socialist ideas among the working class as a whole and retain the archaic notion that only a conscious minority is needed. Thus, in the “Socialist” Labour League’s pamphlet — The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the 4th International:

The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership (our emphasis).

This is nothing but the view which Engels was attacking as already outdated in 1895. It belongs to a different era; to the era of capitalist revolutions.

We might add that there are, of course, no prizes for guessing who the “revolutionary leaders” will be. With customary modesty, Gerry Healy et al. announce themselves as God’s latest gift to the working class.

Apart from the leadership issue, once the slogans and pamphlets of the “Socialist” Labour League are stripped of their mock-revolutionary verbiage, what remains is a thoroughly reactionary programme. Socialists maintain that a class-conscious working class has the ability right now to build a society of abundance, based on free access to wealth—what Marx called the “higher phase of communist society" in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Any need for possible preliminary stages is a thing of the past. What Marx saw as necessary in 1875 — an initial period during which the productive forces would be rapidly increased — is obviously an outdated concept, when we consider the gigantic strides that have been made in all branches of industry in the last hundred years. Like other socialists, Marx’s suggestions were based on an over-optimistic prediction of the imminent overthrow of capitalism in the closing years of the nineteenth century. The “Socialist” Labour League, however, is still committed to maintaining the wages system in the second half of the twentieth century and its members talk in terms of “generations” before it could possibly be done away with. Supporters of the trotskyists in the trade unions should bear this in mind when they back organisations like the SLL — and it wouldn’t do them any harm either to remember just what happened to the unions in Russia when the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, gained power. It would be interesting to learn how many of the trade unionists and “young socialists” who look to the SLL. for political guidance would be prepared to submit to Lenin's maxim “of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during the work.”

Another completely reactionary role which the “Socialist" Labour League has taken on itself is that of calling on the workers to vote Labour in past elections. Their national secretary, Healy, advances a sophisticated argument to justify this;

  During the general elections of October 1964 and March 1966 we urged trade unionists to vote Labour and at the same time fight within the labour movement for a socialist policy to be adopted by the government.
  The Socialist Labour League advocated this policy knowing that the vast majority would vote labour as part of their experiences.
   It was our responsibility to go through this experience with the working class. Likewise it is our responsibility today to outline ways and means to fight Wilson within the labour movement, not to desert this fight through abstention at the polls.
   Hence we call on the 'left' MPs to fight him in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the forthcoming conference at Scarborough in order to take the working class through the experience of political struggle in relation to the Labour Party.
  Our job is to expose these 'left’ MPs, just as Wilson is being exposed, and at the same time demonstrate to the working class the need for alternative revolutionary leadership within the labour movement.

The weak points in this would be obvious to any thoughtful worker. If, as Healy admits, the workers were going to vote Labour anyway what was the point of the SLL adding to the confusion! Wouldn’t it have been far better to have taken a stand on socialist principles, as the Socialist Party did, and to have called on the working class to oppose capitalism and all the capitalist parties (including the Labour and “Communist” parties)? Despite Healy’s grandiose plans to “take the workers through the experience of political struggle in relation to the Labour party”, objectively all he has achieved is to help to keep the workers on the Labour-Tory pendulum. Many of those who voted in a Labour government at the last general election will, on present evidence, be voting in a Conservative administration at the next. One sign of hope, to be sure, is the sizeable proportion who seem to have abstained in recent by-elections and, if their present mood of disillusionment and apathy could be replaced by socialist understanding, this indeed would be a breakthrough. But, if for a moment we go along with Healy’s rather paranoiac dreams and assume that they were ready to support the “Socialist” Labour League, where would it get them? Healy’s message is simple:

We say that the labour movement has had enough from such traitors, on the left and the right — a new, alternative leadership has to be built.

Far better for the working class to realise that all leaders, whatever their pretensions, are the political enemies of the workers. There is no substitute for socialist working men and women. What is needed above all are self-reliant workers equipped with a thorough understanding of Socialism, not abject followers cringing and praying that this time they will not be betrayed and compromised.

In any case, the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain does not subscribe to the narrow interpretation of “experience" which is common to all varieties of trotskyist theory. We do not think that the only way to learn is by burning one’s fingers. Applying this to the young workers in the “Young Socialists", we say — why wait until bitter experience forces you to see through “Socialist" Labour League? Why not examine its programme from the standpoint of Marxian Socialism now? Why not come over to the side of the revolution?

John Crump

Crisis and Revolution (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Be reasonable: if we hadn’t said we wouldn’t bring you here, you wouldn’t have come.” — Left-wing leaders to workers, passim. 

The Left is saying the crisis is coming; and from that crisis the workers will rise to overthrow, cast off the yoke, destroy the juggernaut of capital, et cetera. There comes to mind, irresistibly, the futile drama of all the times before. The Communist speaker of the ’thirties, proclaiming that civilisation now stood at the brink, imparting to his hearers that the capitalist system was tottering and all that was needed was a good push. Syndicalist doomster in the post-war years, impressively pointing to the approaching crisis as one of capitalism itself: the phrase conveying certainty that the machine would now grind to a halt, its cogs gummed-up with (probably) an excess of the seeds of its own decay.

This continual resurrection of old beliefs is one of the many chronic diseases of the Left. Each generation rediscovers the theories which proved sterile for its predecessors. The failure is never attributed to the error of the theory itself. Those who followed it were “betrayed”, or the time was unforeseeably not ripe; but now it will be written on banners to make the revolution. Yet this theory of the climacteric crisis—“the death agony of capitalism”—and its revolutionary consequence is perhaps the most hopeless of all. What is involved is dual misunderstanding: of the nature of economic crises and the nature of the socialist revolution.

Mortal Struggle

The form of the argument today is as follows. Capitalism is now acutely pressed between a falling rate of profit and workers’ wage demands. Glyn and Sutcliffe put it thus in British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze:

Our argument in this book is that British capitalism has suffered such a dramatic decline in profitability that it is now literally fighting for survival. This crisis has developed because mounting demands from the working class for a faster growth in living standards has coincided with growing competition between capitalist countries.

In such a crisis the capitalist class responds, largely through the government, by seeking to force down working-class living standards. Its aim is to draw the teeth of organised labour and reduce wages, and to create unemployment. In the preface to The Transitional Programme of the Fourth International, reprinted in November 1972 by the Socialist Labour League, C. Slaughter asserts:

Yet capitalism must seek precisely to restore those conditions and much worse, this time at a level determined by the even more violent rebellion of the productive forces, stifled by monopoly capitalism.

However, the fact that wage demands and strikes have gone on increasing shows that the workers will have none of this downward pressure on them. The claimed inevitability, therefore, is that as the crisis heightens it must become an open struggle between the crippled giant capitalism and the insistent working class. “Perspectives for the Transformation of the SLL into a Revolutionary Party”, taking up six pages of the Workers’ Press on 3rd February, says:

The British capitalist class, gripped by insoluble world economic crisis, and mortally afraid of the organised strength of the undefeated working class of today, has resolved to destroy these rights . . . The international crisis forces the classes to confront each other in direct conflict.

Crucial Cause?

The belief that the falling rate of profit must produce an ultimate crisis “of capitalism itself” is by no means new Drawn from the section headed “The Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit” in Volume III of Marx’s Capital, it was put forward in the 'thirties in John Strachey’s The Nature of Capitalist Crises—a book which was strongly influential on the Left of the time. Then as now the contention was that the downward movement continually approached points where accumulation, the driving force of capitalism, failed; and that these crises would become more and more severe, presaging the eventual downfall of the system.

But this was not Marx’s view. In that section of Capital he listed “counteracting influences at work, which thwart and annul the effects of this general law, leaving to it merely the character of a tendency”. They include a higher intensity of exploitation; cheapening of the elements of constant capital (i.e. machinery, tools, etc.), largely by foreign trade; the existence of a pool of cheap labour-power (“relative overpopulation”) which is used to set up new industries with a higher rate of profit. All these counter-tendencies have been in operation in recent years, leaving the situation as Marx described:

. . . that the same causes, which bring about a tendency of the rate of profit to fall, also check the realisation of this tendency.

We are left, then, with an inherent inclination instead of an uncheckable headlong descent to disaster. And in practice, within the framework of that inclination, the rate of profit has its ups and downs like everything else.

Unsuccessful Forecasts

The prediction of crises is an unsuccessful business. Left-wing militants often cite Marx’s writing in the Communist Manifesto of “the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly”. However, during fifty years both Marx’s and Engels’s views on crises altered in the face of events. From a belief that they became more frequent, Marx changed to an approximate ten-year recurrence. Engels in the eighteen-eighties was saying that the cycles had ended and “permanent and chronic depression” arrived, only to return to the ten-year view.

Modern attempts to predict crises or discover a pattern have done no better. Indeed, one of the reasons for the decline of the Left for several years between the end of the last war and the early ’sixties was simply its reliance that a depression would turn up and restore the traditional field for agitation. It can be remarked that events have not turned out as prophesied even in the short time since the publication of British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze. The authors lean heavily on the effects of growing unemployment :

But as these forms of income grow, side by side with redundancies and unemployment for more and more workers, they come to demonstrate more conclusively the essentially parasitic nature of the capitalist class.

Yet since that was written the number of unemployed has fallen. If that is the yardstick, a quarter of a million workers no longer have the parasitism shown to them.

Wages and Profits

The belief that wage increases can cripple capitalism is also untrue. Obviously there is a sense in which capitalists would like workers to work for nothing, and in industries like agriculture low wages are a result of workers’ inability to organise effectively to resist the downward pressure. But obtaining substantial increases does not necessarily mean proportional inroads on employers’ profits. F. W. Paish in Studies in an Inflationary Economy (1966 edition) writes:

In fact we find that, between 1953 and 1955, income from wages rose by 17 per cent and gross trading profits of companies by over 24 per cent. There is no evidence here that wage increases were at the expense of profits. It is rather that wages went up, not so much because trade unions asked for higher wages as because employers could afford to pay them.

Paish is here refuting the view that wage demands are the cause of inflation. It can be argued, of course, that the profits would have been higher had the wage increases been less. But—and this is part of the fallacy of seeing catastrophe in a falling rate of profit—capitalism has no optimum profit figure which must be sustained. From where does a rise ascend or a fall descend? Expectations are no doubt created by precedent, but in practice the satisfactory figure is the best one obtainable in the current circumstances.

The position is that in times of expanding production and full order-books, employers will grant increases with little argument rather than risk hold-ups in production. In the opposite situation they will resist demands—thereby creating an illusion that it is the workers who are starting to fight. At the present time British capitalism is undoubtedly going through such a phase, principally through the effects of foreign competition. But that is the normal cycle of capitalism, not a revolutionary situation.

Militancy

Prophecies are sometimes borne out by coincidence. If a severe depression were to happen and unemployment grow to mass proportions in Britain in the near future, is the working class ready for what the SLL’s writer (preface to The Transitional Programme) calls “the impending revolutionary battles”?

The chief source of the optimism of militant organisations is the growth of industrial action over wages and conditions. They point to the fact that the number of working days lost through strikes has risen steadily from 6 million in 1969 to 13,600,000 in 1971 and will almost certainly have exceeded 20 million in 1972. However, a glance at the figures for pre-war years would lessen this euphoria. In the decade 1921-30—described by Glyn and Sutcliffe as “a period of crisis in some ways similar to the present”— an average of 31 million days a year were lost from strikes and lock-outs. Relatively the excess over the present was greater, because there are now many more trade unionists and a higher incidence of unofficial strikes.

If the similarity to the present can be noted as significant, it must be worth noting also what ensued from the unrest of the ’twenties. They were characterised by depressed trade, high unemployment and terrible poverty among the working class. For the reason already given that in such times the employers strongly resist wage demands, all the strikes produced less than nothing: wages as a whole fell by about 20 per cent. Nevertheless, the political militants of the period were urging workers into "revolutionary battles” with the cry that the capitalist system was gripped by a crisis from which it would never recover.

The excitement generated by this conviction is shown in quotations given in our 1932 pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse. Palme Dutt, the Communist Party theoretician, wrote in Labour Monthly in such terms as “the fight is here”, “the whole system is faced with collapse”, “the hour of desperate crisis begins”. James Maxton, the ILP MP, was reported in a newspaper: “ 'They may postpone the collapse for a month, two months, three months, six months,’ he cried, forefinger pointing at his audience, and body crouched, ‘but collapse is sure and certain.’ ” And what happened? After each wave of discontent the hollowness of the theory was admitted by all those who had held it. A writer about the unemployed in the Communists’ Workers’ Weekly put it:

They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be "solid”. They have marched to London, enduring terrible hardships . . .  All this has led nowhere.

Poverty and Consciousness

What is appalling—less objectionable only than the glorification of war—is to find the prospect of a crisis hailed enthusiastically by Left groups. In paranoid hopes of some kind of victory for themselves, they speak eagerly of a situation which would mean destitution for huge numbers of working people. While it is true that the Social Security system has taken the sharpest edge off unemployment in recent years, it should be remembered that in the pre-war depression unemployment pay was reduced and the Means Test applied rigorously. There is nothing attractive or exciting about a slump.

The easy assumption is that extreme poverty will make workers rebel against capitalism and flock to “revolutionary” leaders. All the evidence is against it. If it were true the Gorbals, Liverpool, Falls Road and the tied farm cottages of England would be full of revolutionaries. In the hungry era between the two world wars, the majority of the working class elected Conservative (or “National”) governments except for two short spells of Labour rule. Unpalatable as it may be, what the unemployed worker seeks is work and relief from his acute immediate problem, not to be assaulted further in an ideological battle. Dr. E. W. Bakke, in his 1932 Greenwich study The Unemployed Man, wrote:

But when the invitation was issued by the agitators in Greenwich for men to take part in what was termed the largest demonstration of the year, there were only ten men from that community at the appointed meeting-place. Ten men are not conspicuous among the more than 3,000 unemployed in Greenwich.

That does not mean conditions are irrelevant. Socialist consciousness starts from indignation at the consequences of capitalism; but until feeling has given way to understanding, consciousness does not exist. The aim of the crisis-struck Left is to foster blind revolt, from which not Socialism but only defeat and disillusionment can result. The real need is for working men and women to comprehend that, in or out of crisis, the capitalist system must always frustrate hopes of a satisfactory life. As William Morris prescribed it:

Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel . . . and then, I say, the thing will be done.

Robert Barltrop

The Passing Show: Fighting Mad . . . (1967)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

FIGHTING MAD . . . (1)

There is a delightfully vague phrase beloved of the left, meaning all things to all left wingers. They talk glowingly, emotionally, of "the fight for Socialism." The words roll from their tongues and dribble from their lips and probably there is barely a handful among them who have the slightest notion of just what the words mean.

This is equally true of the young left-wingers as of the old. Year after year, we hear them protesting about this act, denouncing that man, telling governments to do the other thing, and generally making a nuisance of themselves to the authorities. Such actions are all described as "fighting for Socialism", but if you listen to those concerned or read their literature, quite clearly Socialism is the last thing they would dream of fighting for. Yes, of course, the term is thrown about like so much confetti at a wedding, but never are its implications discussed as you will appreciate if you take a look at The Newsletter, the weekly organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League.

I got a copy dated March 25th; it was full of glowing reports on the discussion at the Young Socialist conference at Morecambe the previous week. "The delegates who assembled at Morecambe are much more politically mature than when they were expelled from the LabourParty in 1964" enthused the front page reporter. Well, let us see. In one resolution, Vietnam was described as the "cockpit of the world struggle of the working class against capitalism". In another on Rhodesia (which was passed unanimously) the demand was "arm the Africans; scrap the 1961 constitution". What maturity! Just how the cause of Socialism is to be advanced by such notions escapes us.

The paper is full of demands, recriminations, accusations and wild claims on the effect of the Y.S.; for instance: "They are rapidly being transformed into a hard core of revolutionary socialist leaders inside the Labour movement."

But perhaps their astounding capacity for self-deception is best illustrated by their assertion that " . . . Everyone can see that the reason why Wilson expelled the Young Socialists was because they were the first section of the labour movement to expose his treachery . . ." And what were they doing before they "exposed his treachery" (whatever that may mean)? Why, helping him into power of course! Political maturity? It's pathetic!

FIGHTING MAD . . . (2)

But of course the Young Socialists are not the only ones who are wholly headed. Labour M.P.'s seem to think you can have capitalism without its evils, and wax indignant when the system proves them wrong.

Take, for instance, the Hon. Member for Eton & Slough, Miss Joan Lestor. On March 13th, she voiced concern at the appearance of Navy recruitment adverts in children's comics and accused the Services of "seducing" young people. Yet what the devil does she expect? The armed forces have to compete with the rest of capitalist industry for manpower and of course will want to create a favourable image at as early an age as possible. They are not going to tell a youngster of the filth and mire he is likely to encounter during a forces career or of the blood and gore he may have to spill in various parts of the world. And in this they are doing no more or less than many other adverts aimed at catching 'em while they are young.

We agree, it is pretty horrible that killer adverts are aimed at kids, or anyone else, but if Miss Lestor objects, then the way to deal with it is to end all armed forces by doing away with capitalism; not  by urging some piffling reform like extending the option period for boy recruits from three months to six. Ah, but we forget, Miss Lestor is not in favour of abolishing capitalism—she is too busy helping to run it—and she certainly does not want to get rid of the armed forces. Rather does she want their image to be less objectionable; hence the grave concern that:

Including such advertisements in children's comics is bringing nothing but discredit on the armed forces.

(Guardian, 14.3.67).

E.T.C.