A couple of months back, speaking at a meeting of North Staffs Trades Council, called to discuss, and organise against, privatisation, I said that it was depressing how we are still fighting the same battles as those we were fighting, when I first joined the movement, nearly 40 years ago. As Marxists our job is to look at history, learn the lessons of what has worked, and what has not. 29 years ago faced with similar, but not the same, conditions as today, socialists were faced with the question of what to do in the upcoming election.
The WRP, already a seriously degenerated sect, stood candidates, and, if memory serves, even stood enough to get it’s own election broadcast on TV. It was annihilated at the polls. The SWP, having stood aside from the struggles inside the Labour Party, and continually attacked, not just the LP, but also the Left inside it, for engaging in such struggles, rather than joining the SWP, simply collapsed into uncritical support for Labour saying, in the words of Paul Foot, that they would be, for the period of the election, “The best supporters of Labour”.
But, there was another alternative.
At the time, I was a member of the International Communist League, whose paper was Workers Action. At the time, our membership amounted to the grand total of around 90 people, in the whole country. But, this tiny group achieved something rather amazing. It decided to launch a campaign for a Labour Victory at the election, but without making any concessions to the right-wing policies being put forward by the Labour Leadership. It appealed to all the Left in the Party to come together around a limited programme of demands whose basic idea was “Make The Bosses Pay”, and whose focus was to organise the Left for a struggle on that basis whoever won the election.
The Campaign won the support of other Left groups such as Socialist Charter (The Chartists), and a wide range of Labour Lefts such as Ken Livingstone, and many of those who were later to establish London Labour Briefing. From the outset four Constituency Labour Parties supported the campaign and committed themselves to fight the election on its programme, many more LP and Trade Union Branches, and Labour Movement organisations were to sign up in the months that followed. One organisation, unfortunately, which did not, was the Militant, which preferred to plough its own furrow, attempting to “build the party” – meaning the Militant of course not the LP. Had it signed up, the number of Labour Movement bodies fighting for a Labour Victory on a class struggle programme could have been even larger, and the result better. Had the SWP done the same who knows what might have happened?
Unfortunately, then as now the Left was scarred with inveterate sectarianism, and so the results, though amazing, given the tiny forces that set in motion, were not what they could and should have been.
What was similar, about the situation then with now, was that we had a Labour Government. From 1974 onwards, the Second Slump had hit the world economy. Attempts to apply the Keynesian demand management methods, used several times, to cut short recessions, during the post war, long wave boom, had failed, as that long wave boom ended. Now, those methods were resulting in inflation and Balance of Payments crises. In response, the Government, with the connivance of the TUC and Trade Union leaders, introduced a pay policy designed to hold down inflation by cutting workers wages. It was called the “Social Contract”, but, in fact, represented a dangerous move towards the establishment of a corporatist state, like that established by Mussolini in the 1920’s, in which the Trade Unions simply acted to control the workers on behalf of the bosses’ state.
People were urged to “Buy British”, in vain hope as cheaper, and often better, imported goods pushed out those of an increasingly decrepit British capitalism, suffering from years of neglect and under-investment by British capitalists, in part, itself a result of the fact that the strength of the labour movement, in the post war period, had succeeded in raising wages at the expense of the bosses profits – as Glynn and Sutcliffe demonstrated in their book, “Workers and the Profits Squeeze”.
In the hope of directing capital towards the private sector, the Labour government also began to cut public spending, in order to reduce state borrowing, which was a response to the arguments, by so called “supply side” economists, that Government borrowing “Crowded Out”, private investment from access to these funds, and pushed up interest rates. The same argument is being raised by the Tories today.
However, whilst Keynesian stimulus in the form of this public spending was, in the context of a new long wave downturn, failing to have the desired results, cutting this spending was not going to result in higher private investment either. If low and falling rates of profit had caused capitalists to fail to invest enough during a boom, then they certainly were not going to invest when such cuts in public spending reduced aggregate demand in the economy, increased unemployment and uncertainty, and when that was exacerbated by falling real wages due to the Social Contract!
From the mid 1970’s onwards, a still strong, militant Labour Movement – in 1974, the Miners had shown how strong when they threw out Heath’s Government - organised to resist the cuts. LP members, and the Trade Unions combined to continually oppose Government policy at LP Conference, but to no avail. At that time there was little LP members could do, because there was not, as there is now, the automatic right to deselect your MP. MP’s simply disregarded conference decisions. The campaigns against the cuts had mixed successes, but the fights put up by some councils like Lambeth did set the scene for later struggles, and did in some ways play into the idea of the SCLV, that LP members and organisations did not have to simply carry out the instructions and policies of the Government, especially where those policies conflicted with established Party policy.
By 1978, however, the four years of the Social Contract, which followed a pay policy of the Heath Government, was too much for workers to stand any longer. Ford Workers at Dagenham were the first to burst through the floodgates after a strike that bust the Government’s 6% limit. Had it not been that Callaghan’s Government, like all Labour Government’s before it, saw its role as managing the economy in the best interests of capitalism, then they would have seen the writing on the wall and changed course. Instead, they tried to hold the line, where they thought they could, in the public sector, thereby leading to the Winter of Discontent, and the inevitable defeat of 1979 that let in Thatcher.
But, the lesson of the SCLV then, which applies today is that there was an alternative to simply allowing that slow motion train wreck to unfold, an alternative that did not either mean relying on the kind of sectarian, adventurist strategy of the WRP, of standing candidates against Labour when it was clear that they had no implantation in the class, and whose existence was a complete diversion. We do not have to spend months of the various Left sects jockeying for position in trying to cobble together some election vehicle, whose sole purpose will be to make the members of those organisations feel better, that they have maintained their purity – alongside the inevitable view of such an organisation as just yet another means of trying to make the odd recruit so as to “build the party” – especially if such a vehicle ends up with the kind of reactionary programme that No2EU adopted, nor do we have to follow the CPB in simply tagging along behind the official Labour Campaign.
A Campaign could be started now for a Labour Victory around which the entire Left could mobilise inside and out of the LP. Those inside the Party – and as I’ve said before I believe that should be every Marxist – can begin in their LP Branch, TU Branch, Trades Council, TRA or other organisation, to try to mobilise support for such a campaign, and for the platform of class struggle demands around which it should focus its activity. Those outside the Party, where they are members of these other organisations can join in, but they can also form a United Front with those inside the Party fighting on this platform, organising joint debates, events, leafleting and so on. The basic message to the working class from such a campaign from all the Left would be, we recognise the inadequate policies of New Labour, but we need to build a Workers Party that stands on different ground, that is what we are fighting for, and in the meantime we are also fighting to keep the Tories out.
What is different today from 1978 is that, although we are currently coming out of a recession, we are in a new long wave upturn. In 1978, workers had faced increasing attacks on their pay and conditions from the late 60’s onwards. Thatcher’s victory, and certainly her victories in the following years, was as much an indication of the tiredness of the working class from its perpetual battles over that period, and the fact that the leadership of the class had failed to provide it with any kind of political strategy apart from repeated assaults “over the top” in militant strike action that failed to address the basic question of the position of workers as wage slaves i.e. failed to challenge the basis of capitalist property relations, and where such a political strategy WAS elaborated, it was one that STILL remained trapped within that set of property relations, offering workers only the prospect of exchanging exploitation by private capitalists, for exploitation by an even more powerful STATE Capitalist in the form of Nationalisation.
How could that be an attractive offer for workers when many of the biggest struggles during the preceding period had, in fact, been struggles against that very same STATE Capitalist into whose embrace the Left wanted to usher it???
My own view of the kind of programme that should be adopted now, which avoids those limitations is clear, as I have set out over the last few years. We need a programme, which mobilises workers to resolve their problems not by simply demanding reforms or concessions from the bosses or their State, but which fundamentally changes the basis of property relations, and which thereby shifts economic and social power irretrievably towards the working class. Especially in conditions where the working class, with good cause, distrusts its elected politicians, we should not be satisfied to frame demands in such a way that these very same politicians are the ones we are demanding act! Instead, we need to frame demands that devolve power and control away from the established centres of bourgeois democracy, be it in parliament or local council chambers, and into the communities and workplaces.
Instead of demanding that council’s act to renovate downtrodden council estates, we should demand that the houses on these estates be handed over to the workers who live in them, in the form of a Housing Co-operative. That way the workers themselves could control their rents, and tenancy regulations etc.
We should demand similar ownership and control over other community facilities such as schools. Where councils are threatening privatisation the first response must be to oppose it, but rather than simply fighting a defensive battle over such proposals we should put forward the alternative of handing over these services to worker co-operatives owned and controlled by the workers who work in them, and the workers that rely on those services. Where factories and other businesses are threatening closure we should follow the example of the Visteon and Vestas workers, who have responded by occupying the business, and the many workers in Argentina who, having occupied, placed these businesses under Workers Control, resumed operation, and developed their own Workers Co-operatives with the support of the local community.
If we created the kind of campaign as set out above we would already have the kind of embryonic force, which could also then act to co-ordinate such actions, and link the workers in each of them together, creating a new worker owned sector of the economy, each supporting and reinforcing the potential of others. That in itself would not just fundamentally change property relations and the balance of economic and social power in society, but would create the kind of conditions for creating a dynamic new workers’ movement that would completely renovate the political organisations of the working class.
Of course, many of the original demands of the SCLV were not of this nature.
The Programme included:
- No More Wage Curbs! No More strike-breaking by Labour! Wage rises should at the very least keep up with price increases. The same should go for State benefits, grants and pensions. Demand immediate wage increases backdated to make up for the drop in our living standards.
- End Unemployment. Cut hours not jobs – share the work with no loss of pay. Start now with a 35 hour week and an end to overtime.
- All firms threatening closure should be nationalised under workers control.
- Scrap all immigration controls. Race is not a problem; racism is. The Labour Movement must mobilise to drive the fascists off the streets. Purge racists from positions in the labour movement. Organise full support for black self-defence.
- Make the bosses pay, not the working class! Millions for hospitals, not a penny for ‘defence’. Nationalise the banks and financial institutions without compensation. End the interest burden on Council Housing and other Public Services.
- Freeze rents and rates.
- The chaos, waste, human suffering and misery of Capitalism now – in Britain and throughout the world – show the urgent need to establish rational, democratic, human control over the economy, to make he decisive sectors of industry social property, under workers control.
- The strength of the labour movement lies in the rank and file. Our perspective must be working class action to raze the capitalist system down to its foundations, and to put a working class socialist system in its place – rather than having our representatives run the system and waiting for the crumbs from the table of the bankers and bosses.
- The Capitalist police are an enemy for the working class. Support all demands to weaken them as the bosses’ striking force: dissolution of special squads (SPG, Special Branch, MI5 etc), public accountability etc.
- Free abortion and contraception on demand. Women’s equal right to work, and full equality for women.
- Start improving the social services rather than cutting them. Stop cutting jobs in the public sector.
- It is essential to achieve the fullest democracy in the labour movement. Automatic re-selection of MP’s during each parliament, and the election by Annual Conference of party leaders. Annual election of all trade union officials, who should be paid the average for the trade. These measures are essential if we are to have a leadership of the labour movement, which is responsive and loyal to the interests of the working class.
The main point would be, to create a campaign for a Labour Victory to keep the Tories out, but did so whilst at the same time mobilising the working class to fight. In that we have a big advantage over 1978. Then a new long wave decline had already begun, workers were on the back foot. Today we are near the beginning of a new long wave upswing. Around the globe new workers’ movements are growing rapidly, and becoming more militant as the consequences of that upswing are manifested in heightened demand for labour power, and the potential to raise living standards.
In Latin America we have seen the massive wave of worker occupations and growth of co-operatives. We have also seen a reflection of the material changes in the establishment of radical bourgeois regimes such as that in Venezuela, which are forced to appeal, on a populist basis, to their working classes for support, and which, given the development of independent Workers’ Parties, offer the potential for radical change.
Even in Britain, the effects of the long wave boom, even in its infancy, and weak state, given the declining condition of British capitalism, has begun to have its effect.
A year ago we had the strike of petrol drivers, which set a new groundwork for pay negotiation, at the time, after just a short strike, in which the bosses quickly collapsed, just days after some commentators were declaring that meeting the demands of the workers was impossible. We have had the strikes at LOR, and the supporting strike action of other workers in defiance of the anti-union laws. As we speak not only do we have national strike action by postal workers, but we have strike action by public sector workers in Leeds, and a rash of smaller strikes throughout the country.
The capitalist economy came out of recession in the second quarter of 2009, even if British capital is a few months behind. As the recovery takes hold the economic consequences will, further embolden workers. These are precisely the conditions under which Marxists have to begin to advance a political programme, which can take the working class beyond simple economistic struggle, and begin to challenge the fundamental property relations of capitalist society.
As Marx put it,
“At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"”
There is another similarity now with then. Not only is our aim to keep out the Tories, but it is also to fight the menace of fascism. For those who might be dismayed at the recent growth of the BNP, take heart. The situation in 1978 was much worse. Then, with an economic crisis, with a still militant working class, the full attack of the bosses’ state was directed against the working class and its organisations. And the National Front and other assorted boot boys of the Right represented a far more clear and present danger than does the BNP today. Indeed, the situation then was far more similar to that of the late 1920’s and early 30’s, that saw the bosses, in Italy and Germany, take fright and resort to supporting the fascists, than is the situation today. In the 1970’s sections of the ruling class discussed many alternatives including a military coup against Wilson’s Government.
In part, its true that the National Front was undermined because Thatcher’s Government stole their clothes on immigration. But, the fascists were also beaten by effective counter mobilisation by the working class. The best means today of defeating the fascists is a combination of counter-mobilisation, and, more importantly, the provision of a credible set of demands and actions to deal with the problems that workers face, and which the BNP utilise to put forward their crass racism and nationalism.
And for those who think that Labour today is fundamentally different to Labour back then a look through that first paper shows that this is not the case. Even the main headlines show that. The stories about supporting various workers strikes, at the time, such as that of the Post Office Engineers against the Government, could be written today. Whereas, Blair launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 1978 with a rising movement against the Shah, Callaghan showed where his class alliance lay, by supporting the Dictatorship of the Shah.
Some of the demands I have suggested above such as putting estates under workers ownership and control would immediately undercut the lies peddled by the BNP about ethnic minorities being given priority treatment, because it would be the workers themselves on those estates who would be responsible for dealing with allocations, through properly constituted democratic bodies on the estates themselves!
The fact that the anti-war movement is recruiting serving soldiers, and that the demonstration against the war in Afghanistan was led off by a serving soldier is a good sign. But, as I said in my blog on Proletarian Military Policy, the left generally does a bad job in this area of policy. Its politics are not just limited by Popular Frontism, but infected with a strong flavour of moralism and pacifism. It is necessary to address the understandable fears and apprehensions of workers about defence of freedoms, and the threat of terrorism. But, as I set out in that blog, it is possible to do that without ourselves making concessions to Nationalism. On the contrary, the whole essence of promoting self-activity by the working class undermines such ideas.
In fact, as the article in the above Socialist Organiser states, the demand “Not More Police, But Self-Defence”, sums that up. In the first instance, such a demand is needed to counter the attacks of the fascists and racist thugs. But, it goes hand in hand with the demand that estates be placed in the ownership and control of the workers who live there. It means organising the workers on those estates to police themselves as an organised group, to deal with the problems of anti-social behaviour, crime and drug dealing. But, having established that principle it is but a logical step to develop such self-defence further to the idea of a militia to provide real defence against external threat, and which can act as a basic defence for workers against the possibility of coups by the bosses against a future Workers Government that acted in workers interests.
As a basis for discussion I would put forward the following based on the original SCLV demands.
- No More strike-breaking by Labour! Scrap the antiunion laws, and for the Trade Union Freedom Bill. Wage rises should at the very least keep up with price increases. The same should go for State benefits, grants and pensions. Set up committees of Workers and Pensioners to calculate an accurate workers cost of living index.
- End Unemployment. Cut hours not jobs – share the work with no loss of pay. Bring Britain into line with other European countries. Start now with a 35 hour week and an end to overtime. No to any extension of the pension age, instead reduce the retirement age to 60, with the goal of 55.
- All firms threatening closure should be occupied, and placed under Workers Control. As the capitalist government in Argentina has done with the Zanon factory, a Labour government should legalise the take-over and make the workers the legal owners to run as a Co-operative. If the bosses can’t run the factories the workers can.
- Scrap all immigration controls. Race is not a problem; racism is. There is free movement of capital around the globe so capitalists can maximise their profits. We need the same right of free movement for workers to maximise their earnings. The Labour Movement must mobilise to drive the fascists off the streets. Purge racists from positions in the labour movement. Organise full support for black self-defence. Create workers defence groups on each estate under the democratic control of Estate Co-operatives, TRA’s or other democratically constituted workers bodies as they arise.
- Make the bosses pay, not the working class! Workers Co-operatives should get the same lavish funding that the state has given to the banks, which continue to pay out billions in bonuses. For democratic control of the £500 billion in workers pension funds, so that it can be used in the workers interests not in the interests of the bosses against workers.
- All hospitals, and other health provision to be brought under local democratic control. For democratically elected boards of health workers and patients in each hospital. Scrap the Primary Care Trusts, and place control in the hands of elected Health Boards, or Town and Parish Councils, which should be given control over other aspects of local, public sector provision.
- Freeze rents and rates. The Labour and Co-operative movement should mobilise its resources on a national and local level to create a National Construction Co-operative, founded on a federation basis. Co-operative communities should meet their housing and other construction needs through the Co-op, which could immediately also begin to train unemployed workers and youth with the skills needed to deal with Britain’s housing crisis.
- The chaos, waste, human suffering and misery of capitalism now – in Britain and throughout the world – shows the urgent need to establish rational, democratic, human control over the economy, to make the decisive sectors of industry social property, under workers control. We need to mobilise the existing resources of the Co-op Bank, and Co-operative Movement in general, to develop a dynamic Co-operative Movement to finance the development of Workers Co-operatives, and we further need to use the billions in Workers pensions to take over existing big business, and turn them into Co-operatives as part of a single Co-operative federation, established initially on a national basis, but extending its links to the Co-operative movement in the rest of Europe and the world.
- The strength of the labour movement lies in the rank and file. Our perspective must be working class action to raze the capitalist system down to its foundations, and to put a working class socialist system in its place – rather than having our representatives run the system and waiting for the crumbs from the table of the bankers and bosses. But, we cannot wait for some future government to bring that about, or for some single revolutionary event. We have to begin to create the society of tomorrow today, by taking back into workers ownership and control as many aspects of our lives at work and at home as we can now.
- The Capitalist police are an enemy for the working class. Support all demands to weaken them as the bosses’ striking force: dissolution of special squads (SPG, Special Branch, MI5 etc), public accountability etc.
- We recognise the difference between the police and armed forces as organisations of the capitalist state aimed against the working class, and the ordinary members of those organisations, who are themselves workers. We support Democratic Rights for all members of the police and armed forces, including the Right of Democratic Assembly, and the Right to Elect immediate commanding officers. Soldiers should have the right thereby to determine what level of training and equipment is required for any activity, and to demand that it be provided before that action is undertaken.
- A real defence of British workers and their freedoms begins by not attacking workers in other countries, but focussing that defence here in Britain. Bring the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and every other outpost of British Imperialism.
- For universal military conscription under democratic Trade Union control. Using workers defence committees on estates as the basis, develop local workers militia, initially linked to and trained by the existing workers in the armed forces, but ultimately as a replacement for the standing army.
- Free abortion and contraception on demand. Women’s equal right to work, and full equality for women. 35 years after the passing of the Equal Pay and Equal Opportunities Acts women remain unfairly treated in the workplace and in the home. This shows that statist measures such as passing acts of parliament, requiring certain types of behaviour, is ineffective without workers having the power to enforce those rights. That power only comes with ownership of the means of production. The development of Workers co-operatives providing that ownership would be an immediate way to enforce equal pay and opportunities.
- Start improving the social services rather than cutting them. Stop cutting jobs in the public sector. But, recognise that as state capitalist enterprises these services are there to meet the needs of the bosses not workers. The evidence of that is the extent to which most of these elements of the welfare state were developed during the depression by the Tory Chancellor Neville Chamberlain. All of them are run by state capitalist bureaucrats, and suffer all the attendant problems of inefficiency and expense that goes with it. As a beginning we need Office Committees of Social Workers to introduce Workers Inspection, and Control. We need Committees of Carers to oversee the work of facilities. But, ultimately real control can only come if these services are taken out of the hands of the bosses’ state, and placed directly in the hands of workers.
- It is essential to achieve the fullest democracy in the labour movement. Automatic re-selection of MP’s during each parliament, and the election by Annual Conference of party leaders. Annual election of all trade union officials, who should be paid the average for the trade. These measures are essential if we are to have a leadership of the labour movement, which is responsive and loyal to the interests of the working class.
- The expenses scandal has lifted the lid on the corruption of bourgeois democracy, but it has only told a fraction of the truth. Open the books on Bourgeois democracy. We need an elected committee from the labour movement to audit all MP’s expenses, salaries and other earnings. But, we also need to know about all the other members of this club. Full disclosure of all top journalists earnings and connections with the bosses along with those of the media monopolies they work for; full disclosure of the earnings and links of the top Civil Servants, the Judges, and Military Top Brass. For elected committees of Workers Inspection to open the books of the biggest companies to uncover the truth about the billions pocketed by the top bosses and the tax they avoid paying.
- Scrap the Monarchy and House of Lords. Complete the Bourgeois democratic revolution, and vest all legislative and executive power in the House of Commons. For annual elections to parliament, and the right of recall so we can kick the bums out when they fall down on the job.
- Capitalism is a global system, we need a global workers movement to fight it. To begin with we should at least develop an effective European Labour Movement. Socialists inside the LP, and other workers parties throughout Europe should combine to fight for a single European Workers party linked to a single European Trade Union. Scrap the European Commission and other unelected bodies, and vest power in the European Parliament.
- Workers Of The World Unite
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