Geoff Hodgson: Labour at the Crossroads, Martin Robertson, 1981, Hbk £12.50, Pbk £4.95
As I sit down to write, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party has just refused to endorse Peter Tatchell as parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey, and his General Management Committee has reaffirmed its support for him. Tariq Ali's application to join the Labour Party has just been rejected by his local ward, accepted by the General Management Committee and vetoed by the National Executive Committee, which has also voted to 'investigate' Militant. Neil Kinnock has received a going-over from his constituency party for supporting Foot's witch-hunt and Tony Benn has declared himself deputy leader.
All this in a few days — a fairly dramatic state of affairs even by recent Labour Party standards. At times like these — when the battle lines are clear and the action thick and fast revolutionaries in the Labour Party are in danger of losing strategic perspective in the heat of day to day skirmishes. For this reason, if no other, it is important to read as many serious analyses of the party as the rash of emergency meetings allows. Labour at the Crossroads is a case in point. Few books have been more timely. It is concerned with prospects for the party — and the left within it — and with the adequacy of its 'Alternative Economic Strategy' (AES).
It is in two parts, the first focuses directly on the party. It surveys Labour's origins, internal structures and patterns of electoral support, before tracing its political trajectory since 1945. The second part looks at Britain's economic crisis and the various 'solutions' on offer — of which only the AES receives the Hodgson seal of approval.
The opening chapters on the birth and constitutional ground rules of the party are well informed and clearly presented. But they are not very gripping. The next bit on electoral support is basically a statistical run through of voting loyalties since the war. It brings together much useful opinion poll and electoral data and analyses it sensibly. But, again, it is hardly nail-biting stuff. By about page 60 I was beginning to think that Crossroads would turn out to be one of those books you keep for reference but never read from cover to cover — infinitely more useful than its TV namesake but about as exciting.
But then it suddenly took off. The next three chapters on the political evolution of the party since 1945 — which become more detailed as we approach contemporary events — are really gripping. They are particularly strong on the complex interplay between the political and trade union wings of the labour movement. Here, in contrast to the earlier chapters, you get a feel for the movement as a living entity in flux, rather than merely as a set of institutions with rules, procedures and fluctuating support.
Hodgson suggests a metaphor which is worth developing. It concerns volcanic activity. At high points of class struggle hot lava bursts through previously stable social terrain. As the struggle recedes, the lava cools and forms a hard crust protecting this terrain from bubblings below. Call this layer trade union bureaucracy, or the right wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party. But the volcano is never fully extinguished. Lava is always liable to erupt and cause fissures in the crust. While some parts are cooling and hardening, others are cracking and venting.
Tracing the connections between these eruptions, coolings and fissures is crucial to an understanding of the development of the movement as a whole. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 do this well. This is very much to Hodgson's credit, because all too few on the Labour left are prepared to admit to the existence of splits between different sections of the movement — let alone analyse the lines of fissure. Most prefer to try to paper over the cracks.
In discussing the causes of the economic crisis, Hodgson correctly focuses on the poor productivity performance of the UK. This he rightly sees as being only partly explained by low investment; output per worker is also generally lower in Britain than elsewhere even when similar equipment is used. Hodgson puts this down mainly to poor 'managerial worker relations' but he seems curiously unwilling to attribute the major role in this situation to trade union strength at the point of production.
Turning to the solutions on offer, Hodgson demolishes the monetarist position on inflation and argues persuasively that the 'Thatcher experiment' is currently failing. But I think he goes over the top when he argues that a Thatcher-type approach could never provide a way out of the crisis for capital. Sustained unemployment could in principle shift the balance of class forces in capital's favour enough to lay the basis for a successful expansion. The other pro-capitalist solution Hodgson considers is 'corporatism' — by which he basically means the incorporation of existing trade union bodies into tripartite institutions with state and employers' organisations. This use of the term 'corporatism' differs from the classic one, which refers to formally similar arrangements in fascist regimes in which independent workers' organisations have been smashed and replaced by state puppets.
My view is that, so long as trade union strength remains intact, moves towards incorporation, whilst likely, can be little more than short term holding operations for capital. In themselves, they can offer no long term solution. (Incidentally the section of this chapter on proportional representation is very stimulating).
This brings us to the AES. Hodgson's defence of the strategy is the part of his analysis with which I disagree most. This is not the place to summarise the debate. But it is worth taking up two of Hodgson's rejoinders to left critiques of the AES.
One concerns the Trotskyist demand for more nationalisations than are envisaged in the AES — say Militant's 200 companies, as against the AES's 20 or 25. Hodgson objects to this demand in part because it seems to him inconsistent with another left criticism of the AES — that it fails to take seriously capitalist resistance — '...there is no reason to assume that the nationalisation of 200 companies would meet any less effective resistance than the public ownership of twenty five.' (p. 204) This is wrong. Obviously capital would be upset by widespread nationalisations. But that doesn't necessarily mean effective resistance: indeed, the point of widespread takeovers is precisely to deprive the bourgeoisie of one of its most powerful [illegible] of resistance — control over the means of production.
Another of Hodgson's rejoinders to the Far Left (he is fond of capitalisation) concerns import controls and the threat of retaliation. He argues that since the AES aims to expand, rather than reduce imports, the spectre of retaliation is illusory. Why should foreign capital object to an increase in UK sales (albeit a controlled one)? This is a correct point to make against crude assertions that import controls necessarily 'export unemployment'. But it misses the main point. Export volumes are not the only consideration when it comes to retaliation. In the context of the AES, import controls would rightly be seen as breaking the rules of the international capitalist game and as the thin end of the wedge of socialist planning.
In conclusion Labour at the Crossroads is an informative and stimulating book about an important topic. Anyone who gets the chance should read it.