The Politics of Militant

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The politics of Militant ‘*,..I[t would, of course, be a disastrous error, an _ outright | deception, to assert that the road to Socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalisation by the | bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organisations.”’

Leon Trotsky

A SOCIALIST CHALLENGE PAMPHLET

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Published by Relgocrest Limited, 97 Caledonian Road, London N1 Typesetting by F.1.Litho Limited, 97 Caledonian Road, London N14 Printed by Interlink Longraph Limited, 45 Mitchell Street, London E.C.1. ISBN 0—85 612 018—-9

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Introduction TODAY, ON EVERY FRONT, THE MAIN ATTACKS ON THE WORKING CLASS HAVE BEEN SPEARHEADED BY A RIGHT-WING LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

The Labour left have no answer to these attacks. Not one left MP or union leader has spelt out that only mass action can throw back the Government’s attacks. No policies have been put forward by Tribune or Benn that can begin to organise the fight back.

Faced with this abject failure of the ‘left’ to mount a serious challenge to the Labour Government and the Labour leadership, a real responsibility is placed at the doors of self-proclaimed Marxists in the Labour Party such as the Militant current. This is particularly reinforced when the growing influence of this tendency is considered. Not only does the majority of the Labour Party Young Socialists National Committee support this current and its weekly paper of the same name, but the 57,000 votes received at the 1976 Annual Conference of the Labour Party for Militant supporters Dave White and John Ferguson imply some significant influence in the Party. Unfortunately the Militant and its supporters have not lived up to this responsibility.

LABOUR'S ATTACKS

The failure to turn the LPYS into an organisation that fights in action for socialist policies is a failure to fight the present right-wing leadership of the labour movement, and is the direct result of the politics of the current. It is blatant opportunism to call for the Labour Goverment to adopt a ‘Socialist Course’, as did the LPYS paper Left in its September/October 1976 issue, without so much a mention of the centre-piece of the Labour Government’s class collaborationist project. It has been the allegiance of the working class, through the trade unions and the treacherous role of the trade union leaderships which has been responsible for the lack of a fight-back. Militant similarly failed to take up this key issue. The result was Nick Bradley’s signature on a statement issued by the left on the Labour Party NEC. The statement disclaimed any intention to break with the Social Contract. The suggestion, said the signatories, ‘has no truth in it at all’. It went on

‘Nobody in our movement derives more satisfaction than we do from the constructive co-operation which has developed over the last few years between the TUC and the Labour Party, whether in Government or in opposition, and nobody is keener than we are to see it continued and strengthened.’ 3

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Andy Bevan — one of the main targets of the right-wing witch-hunt and Shirley Williams — one of the principal witch-hunters.

Not only is this defence of the Social Contract in contradiction with the policy of the LPYS, from which body Nick Bradley is delegated, but it represents a total capitulation to the reformists, and their main excuse for lack of action.

Bradley’s very belated disclaimer and the fact that the Militant has made its opposition to the Social Contract more prominent in it pages — after the event and under mounting pressure from the LPYS rank and file — was totally inadequate. It is necessary to consistently argue the case for the organisation of mass action to break the Social Contract and force the Government to reverse its policies. Militant has not done this.

‘MILITANT’ UNDER ATTACK

Capitulation to the reformists has also been a feature of Militant’s position on the witch-hunt. Red Weekly has consistently campaigned in a principled manner against the witch-hunt currently directed against Militant and its supporters. But we have also argued that the left, including Militant itself, has not adequately tackled the offensive of the right-wing.

The attack on Militant has been launched for three main reasons. First, the right-wing, Labour leaders want to use the witch-hunt as a bargaining counter in their negotiations with the foreign bankers: come to our aid, don’t impose too 4 a

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difficult conditions on the loan, or the Trotskyists will gain, they cry. At the same time, the right wing wants to show that, as loyal servants of international capitalism, they will ‘deal with the Trots’. This was why the start of the witch-hunt coincided with the negotiations over the IMF loan.

Second, the Government wants to isolate the far left and ensure that it does not act as a focus for traditional Labour left supporters who want to fight the Government’s policies and who see no fight coming from Tribune.

Third, the right-wing know full-well that whatever their witch-hunting rhetoric, their policies are stripping away the one great political asset of the Labour Party — its mass working class support. The witch-hunt is above all designed to minimise the impact of Labour’s forthcoming electoral defeat within the party. The right-wing fear that the process of reflection and debate within the party itself after the fall of the Government could flow into an organised opposition.

The right-wing mean business. Only by mounting a political counter-offensive can the Militant effectively launch its own defence. Every retreat simply plays into the hands of the right-wing. Despite this, Militant has sought to defend itself in the supposed haven of ‘respectibility’. It is quite legitimate for Militant supporters to deny any knowledge of the alleged existence of the Revolutionary Socialist League. Red Weekly also knows nothing of its existence. But it is legitimate to do this only if at the same time we state that if such an organisation did exist then we would defend its right to organise in the Labour Party.

Supporters of Militant have had one benefit from the witch-hunt. They have been interviewed by the Press, they have been on TV. They have been given a platform from which to campaign in front of millions for the case to end bans and proscriptions. But they have limited themselves to appeals to end the witch-hunt.

Like Red Weekly, Militant has also been forced to answer the charge of Shirley Williams that Trotskyism holds democracy in contempt because it believes that there is no parliamentary democratic road to socialism. But unlike Red Weekly, Militant has attempted to avoid the intended isolation from the traditional left-wing of the Labour Party by adopting the latter’s phraseology. Nick Bradley wrote a letter to the Guardian. He had no hesitation in replying to Williams that in Britain the socialist transformation would come ‘democratically’ and ‘peacefully’. Militant backed Bradley’s line to the full: ‘To her demand for unequivocal answers from us on whether our socialist objectives can be achieved democratically, we reply, Yes!’

These mistakes on the Social Contract and the witch-hunt are indicative of much more serious errors. Our main contention is that the Militant comrades have made major adaptations to Social Democracy both in practice and theory, This pamphlet is an attempt to make a critique of these political errors and the underlying method from which they stem.

It has been written not so much because of the growing influence achieved by Militant, but because of the specific brand of ‘British Trotskyism’ that this current represents, formed as it was with few real international links — members of its present editorial board finally severing their tenuous links with the Fourth International in 1965.

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INTERNATIONALISM

This lack of international ties is not at all secondary. As Lenin had stressed in Left-Wing Communism — An Infantile Disorder, in his famous analysis of the rise of the Bolshevik Party, the necessary conditions for the creation of a real proletarian revolutionary party were a mass tradition of revolutionary struggle, a firm grasp of Marxist theory and a wealth of international connections. Only the absorption of those most advanced experiences of class struggle could provide the guide to action necessary to lead a national revolutionary struggle.

Conditions in Britain were virtually the exact opposite of those Lenin had described. First, although the British working class has a tremendous record of trade union struggles, there is absolutely no modern tradition of mass revolutionary struggle. Second, British socialism was marked by an absence of any serious Marxist theory.

Finally, in contrast to the Bolsheviks’ ‘wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement such as no other country possessed’, the British labour movement was insular and shut off from these international connections and developments. While in Europe the Pole Rosa Luxemburg polemicised with the Frenchman Millerand on reform and revolution; the Russian Plekhanov denounced the German Bernstein on philosophy and politics; and the Austrian Adler was attacked by the Russian Lenin on the national question in Britain, many of the discussions were considered ‘hot air’ to be left to ‘theoreticians’ while British revolutionaries got down to ‘bread and butter practical issues’.

The great political underdevelopment of the British working class and British Marxists is not a reflection of the inferiority of the inhabitants of this island, but a product of the historical strength of British imperialism — a strength which in the nineteenth century kept the British working class under the domination of liberalism; and in the twentieth created the hegemony of the consistently reformist Labour Party. This political underdevelopment could not but deeply affect the development of Marxism in Britain. Marx himself pointed out:

‘The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real working class movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other’. (Marx to Bolte, 23 November 1871)

The counterpart of the great political underdevelopment of the mass working class movement in Britain was the ultra-sectarian and nationalist characteristics of those weak revolutionary and Marxist currents which did develop.

The sectarianism and national insularity of British ‘Marxist’ organisations developed right from the beginning of the revolutionary socialist movement on Britain. Already, by 1894, in describing the first Marxist current in Britain, Engels could write: 6

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‘The Social Democratic Federation....has managed to transform our theory into the rigid dogma of an orthodox sect; it is narrow mindedly exclusive and thanks to Hyndman (its leader) has a thoroughly rotten tradition in international politics.’ (Engels to Sorge, 10 November 1894)

The politics of the Militant are part of this legacy. Its lack of a serious internationalist perspective is intimately bound up with its political line and orientation. Internationalism does not mean simply analysing things taking place abroad. It is not even reducible to active solidarity campaigns with international struggles (though as we shall see, Militant is extremely weak on these aspects). As Trotsky put it:

‘Marx and Engels started the communist movement in 1847 with an international document and with the creation of an_ international organisation. The same thing was repeated in the creation of the First International. The very same path was followed by the Zimmerwald Left in preparation for the Third International. Today, this road is dictated far more imperiously than in the days of Marx. It is, of course, possible in the epoch of imperialism for a revolutionary proletarian tendency to arise in one or another country, but it cannot thrive and develop in one isolated country; on the very next day after its foundation it must seek or create international ties, an international platform, an international organisation, because a guarantee of the correctness of the national policy can only be found along this road. A tendency which remains shut in nationally over a stretch of years condemns itself irrevocably to degeneration.’ (Trotsky, ‘To the Editorial Board of Prometo’, Writings, 1930)

DISCUSSION

There is a real need, on the far-left today, for open and frank discussion of political differences, programmes and strategies for Socialist Revolution. It is only in this way that real clarity can be achieved and theory developed. We hope therefore that the comrades who write for and support the Militant will take up our polemic in a serious manner.

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THE FIGHT AGAINST WAGES POLICY, UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CUTS

We have indicated in the introduction how the Militant makes serious adaptations to the reformist bureaucracy of the labour movement. The failure of the paper to really take the so-called ‘lefts’ to task for their miserable record in the face of the Labour Government’s attacks is a glaring example. Quoting with approval the left talk of MPs, printing a front-page article from left-talker Alan Fisher (Militant, 330) with no comment is nothing more than giving a left cover for inaction and betrayal by these leaders.

Years of burrowing away in the Labour Party have undoubtedly taken their toll. Routine propaganda work in the reformist milieu in a period when Marxists were politically very isolated are the objective roots of Militant’s errors. Leon Trotsky pointed out in ‘Centrism, Sectarianism and the Fourth International’ that:

‘The period of existence as a Marxist circle ingrafts, invariably, habits of an abstract approach to the problems of the workers’ movement. He who is unabie to step in time over the confines of this circumscribed existence becomes transformed into a conservative sectarian.’

How much more is this true of Marxists working inside the Labour Party for long periods.

HOW ABSTRACT PROPAGANDISM LEADS TO TAIL-ENDING THE REFORISTS

Trotsky points to two features which are characteristic of the Militant — an abstract approach to the problems of the workers’ movement and sectarianism.

The second is a result of the first. Militant systematically substitutes abstract propaganda for a ‘Marxist Programme’ for an active intervention in the actual struggles of the working class. The Militant ends up counterposing its so-called ‘bold socialist programme’ to these struggles in a ‘maximalist’, sectarian fashion — that is, the only solution to your struggle is the implementation of a ‘socialist programme’ of nationalisation of the monopolies, etc! In the meantime....you may well ask, for one can search in vain to find a concrete analysis of the concrete situation that really grasps the key political features of the present struggles and developments. Maximum demands are often combined with minimum trade union demands, even some transitional demands such as the sliding scale of wages, but these latter play a totally secondary role — merely pegs 9

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on which to hang the propaganda for the ‘socialist programme’. Their transitional dynamic is not understood.

In vain will you look for the elaboration of concrete slogans and perspectives that point to the next step and line of march. In fact so rare is it, that significant events in the class struggle barely encroach on the routine nature of the paper. Articles covering these issues hardly stand out from the general run-of-the-mill propaganda articles, and only in the most general way relate to the actual political situation. An obvious feature that emerges, even from the most cursory glance, is the Militant’s complete lack of any urgency and its routinism.

Demonstration by 6,000 Leyland workers against the Social Contract. 10

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LEYLAND

If we take a look at one of the most important events in the British class struggle in 1977, we can see clearly how the abstract propagandism and passivity leads in practice to adaptations and to a tail-ending of the reformist bureaucracy. The demonstration by six thousand Leyland carworkers against the Social Contract and wage restraint, the call by the Leyland convenors for a ‘rank and file. TUC’ on3 April to organise national strike actionon 20 April, followed by the all-out strike by the Leyland toolmakers, constituted the first major challenge to the Labour Government’s policies from the core, industrial sectors of the working class. Militant reported these developments in ‘Car Workers Say: No Wage Curbs’ (18 February) thus: ‘But significant as the April 3rd meeting [sic] will be, it will not be enough just to record opposition to free collective bargaining.... The car workers must meet themselves to draw up an annual wage and conditions claim starting August Ist [!] for the whole industry....The movement of the car workers would be a signal for the rest of the labour movement to follow.’

And that’s it! The Militant totally failed to understand the significance of the struggle against phase 2 represented by the toolmakers’ strike despite its weaknesses. Instead they put forward a line totally in agreement with the left reformists and the Communist Party that the main task was to oppose phase 3. The significance of the Leyland stewards’ conference acting as an organising centre for the whole class against phase 2 was totally lost on the Militant. It saw only the narrow task of drawing up a wage claim for negotiation under phase 3. When the toolmakers actually took strike action, Militant in its following issue commented with a grave warning about the ‘divisive’ nature of the strike! Militant was thus totally unable to understand how the strike could become a focus for the frustration of other workers. Toolmakers at Rolls Royce, GKN and Ford’s took solidarity strike action giving the lie to the idea that because the strike was not called on the basis of Militant’s bold socialist programme it was doomed to complete isolation. Twelve hundred Lucas workers in Birmingham voted to follow suit. But the current issue of Militant did not even mention the toolmakers’ strike then in its third (and final) week and centre of the national political stage!

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CUTS

Other typical examples of the Militant’s abstract propagandism can be found in their intervention into the ‘National Assembly on Unemployment’ held at the end of March 1976.

The National Assembly organised by the CP-dominated No. 8 Division of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and the Political Committee of the London Cooperative Society was, as the Militant reported, one of the largest ever delegate conferences held by the labour movement in Britain. It had a turn-out of 3,054 delegates. It was held at a time when the Labour Government’s attacks on the working class were beginning to bite. The fact that the Assembly could have had the authority to begin the fight-back against these policies and reverse what was becoming a demoralising experience for the working class was not grasped by the Militant. 11

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In the report from the Assembly (Militant, 2 April 1976) and in the editorial of the same issue there is no analysis of the crisis of perspectives within the vanguard of the working class, no mention of the fact that the traditional ‘lefts’ in the trade unions and the Labour Party had been coopted into the Government’s class collaborationist project through the Social Contract. The Communist Party’s strategy of unity with the ‘left’ bureaucrats ensured that they had no intention of using the Assembly as a spring-board to mass action. Instead they planned to use it as a jamboree for letting off steam, whilst appearing to their base to be building opposition to the Labour Government’s attacks. Militant failed totally to understand the straitjacket which the Social Contract represented. Its conference report failed to even mention the Contract! Instead, we are presented with what amounts to a left cover for the bureaucrats’ inaction. Approvingly, Militant reports:

‘From the platform, Labour MPs Brian Sedgemore, Stan Thorne, Neil Kinnock and Denis Skinner with trade union leaders Ken Gill (AUEW-TASS) and Ray Buckton (ASLEF), all stressed the disastrous situation facing working people under capitalism and the burning need for the Labour Government to change course. Stan Thorne spelt this out clearly when he said “The choice is between managing capitalism or confronting the monopolies’’.’ and ‘Yet the biggest applause of the conference was for the contribution from Denis Skinner, MP for Bolsover, who answered many of the delegates’ misgivings by pointing out that unless the commanding heights of the economy, the banks and insurance companies were taken into public ownership, then the problem of unemployment could never be solved.’

Militant supporters such as Nick Bradley merely echoed these ‘fighting speeches’. They called for the nationalisation of the monopolies, and were welcomed by the chairperson as young people ‘with fire in their bellies’! The whole conference was characterised by such ‘left-talking’.

Militant did not even report the more positive proposals except the demands for the recall TUC and Labour Party conferences. They made no mention of the call to make May Day a real focus for action or the call for a national Day of Action on 26 May, and the establishment of Action Committees to campaign against unemployment. The fact that the Communist Party had no intention of carrying out these proposals is not the point (nor of course was this mentioned by the Militant either). The demands did at least partially express the real needs of the situation. Their adoption by such a body allowed the Marxist left to popularise them amongst broad layers of the working class. Instead, the Militant directs its criticism in another direction. It correctly criticised the chauvinist demands such as import controls and that

‘Many delegates realised that the demands in the document failed to give a lead, but accepted it after constant appeals for unity...’

Militant then goes on to explain why the document was unable to ‘give a lead’: ‘[It] failed to raise the question of who owns society....the key to the whole problem.’ (!!)

As with the Iskra groups in Russia, the Militant is incapable of projecting a line 12

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for the class struggle, or real concrete perspectives. The Militant counterposes in a maximalist, sectarian sense its ‘Marxist Programme’ to the actual level of consciousness and activity of the masses. The fact that this co-called Marxist Programme is merely the demand that Labour nationalise the monopolies under workers’ control and management, i.e. the maximum programme, will be dealt with below.

‘Such people’, says Lenin, can give ‘a tolerable description of the process of the struggle taking place before their eyes but are altogether incapable of giving a concrete slogan for this struggle.

Good marchers but poor leaders they disparage the materialist description of history by ignoring the active, leading and guiding part which can and must be played by parties that have realised the material prerequisites of a revolution and have placed themselves at the head of the progressive classes.’ (What is to be Done).

The essentially propagandistic nature of the Militant and its commentary politics are therefore not a new phenomenon. Ironically, the Militant reprinted Trotsky’s pamphlet, ‘Centrism, Sectarianism and the Fourth International‘ in 1965. In this pamphlet, Leon Trotsky had this to say about such a method:

‘Marxism has built a scientific programme upon the laws that govern the movement of capitalist society, which were discovered. This is a colossal conquest! However, it is not enough to create a correct programme. It is necessary that the working class accept it. But the sectarian, in the nature of things, comes to a full stop upon the half of the task. Active intervention in the active struggle of the working masses is supplanted, for him, by abstract propaganda for a Marxist programme.’

In the Transitional Programme, Trotsky is even sharper: ‘They simply dawdle in one place, satisfying themselves with a repetition of the self-same meagre abstractions. Political events are for them an occasion for comment and not for action.’

Trotsky, in his discussions on the Transitional Programme (Writings, 1938-39), pointed out that the consciousness of the working class ‘....is in general backward, delayed in relation to economic development’, and: ‘To a great extent this delay signifies that the workers are not equal to the tasks put before them by objective conditions; but in times of crisis this delay may becatastrophic.’

It follows from this that revolutionaries donot ‘adapt their programme to the political conjunctures to the thought and mood of the masses as this mood is today, but we adapt our programme to the objective situation.’

Militant’s method is the opposite of Trotsky’s. It starts from the consciousness of the working class. This is the only explanation for Militant’s campaign to ‘implement the 1974 Labour Manifesto’. Inthis campaign, Militant seeks to play on the contradictions between the aspirations of the Labour Party rank and file and the Government’s policies. But Militant never points out that the centre-piece of the Manifesto was the Social Contract. By no stretch of the imagination could its implementation correspond to the needs of the objective situation. 13

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MASS VANGUARD

Militant attempts to defend this passive propagandist method by alluding to the central task of taking up the fight within the traditional organisations of the working class. They attempt to justify their line with reference to the classical Trotskyist positions on the united front. But the fight for the united front, the struggle inside the mass organisations of the working class was never explained by Trotsky as a prescription for waiting for the reformist leaders to act before the revolutionaries take action themselves.

The masses, and still the majority of combative workers, remain under the political hegemony of the Labour Party. From this fact, it flows that revolutionaries must have a strategic axis of united front towards the Labour Party. It necessitates projecting the general formula addressed to the reformist leadership, and suitably concretised at each point in time, that they break with the bourgeoisie around the decisive issues of class collaboration of the day.

In doing this, however, revolutionaries must take advantage in their tactics of the emergence of a new political vanguard, predominantly proletarian in character, which is breaking or has already broken with the political line of any section of the reformist bureaucracy.

Through utilisation of this mass vanguard, it is possible for revolutionaries to appear as a force not merely gaining in weight in local and sectoral struggles, but as one capable of both leading political actions and of carrying out a general political challenge to the reformist parties for an increasing number of workers. this allows a qualitative transformation of the political capacity of the revolutionaries compared to that of previous phases of the class struggle. Strugale.

The united front tactics which flow from this combination of the continued domination of the masses by the reformist bureaucracies, but of the emergence of a vanguard politically breaking with these leaderships, consists not of attempting to bypass the reformist leaders as the ultra-left line of the Socialist Workers Party (formerly the International Socialists) would let us believe. On the contrary, it is necessary to attempt to utilise the emegence of the vanguard in such a way as to create the most favourable conditions for imposing united action and political struggle on the reformist leaders and cadres. This has in common with the class tactics used by the Communist International on the united front that its aim remains that of imposing united action and political struggle on the reformist leaderships and apparatuses whilst it understands clearly that the development of the new vanguard makes it possible to take actions in pursuit of the programme necessary in a situation even where the bureaucratic leaders refuse to do so, and such initiatives in action are the best way in which to impose united actions on the bureaucrats. Furthermore, even in those many cases where united action still starts with the cowardly initiatives of the bureaucracy, it is possible for this vanguard to take the struggle to a higher level programmatically, and to construct a revolutionary force within the united front with the reformists.

Militant’s denial of the existence of this mass vanguard, their fetishism of the official organisations of the labour movement wherein they identify the only significant developments for fighting for the Marxist programme, condemns it to the ghetto of simply passive propaganda and, as we have shown in the previous section, to tail-ending the reformists. Not only in Britain; its international prescriptions lead to exactly the same conclusions. 14

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THE MARXIST PROGRAMME AND THE STATE

‘Historical inevitability’, determinism, is also an error of method that clearly informs Militant’s abstract propagandist passivity. During the 1950s and early 60s, Marxists were relatively isolated groups of people. There is invariably a tendency to reduce Marxism to simply stress the objective, essentially economic, process within society. The ‘active’, ‘leading’ essence of Marxism tends to be replaced by a form of economic determinism. These ‘objective’ factors will, we are told, spontaneously generate a Marxist consciousness in the working class.

Minimising the subjective role of the Marxist Party lays the basis for liquidationism.

THE MARXIST PARTY

Ted Grant, leading Militant theoretician, continually uses formulas such as ‘events, events, events themselves (sic) will forge a socialist consciousness’, or ‘under the hammer blow of events’ the workers will see the need for and ‘come’ to the Marxist programme (i.e. Militant’s programme) after having gone through the reformist experience, etc. This theoretical muddle reduces the task of revolutionaries to doing education and propaganda for the so-called ‘socialist programme’ to which the ‘events’ of the class struggle are inexorably pushing the working class anyway. Not only does this method result in a failure to actively intervene politically into the actual struggles of the working class, as we have seen above, but from their armchair:

‘The sectarian looks upon the life of society as a great school with himself as teacher there. In his opinion the working class should put aside its less important matters (i.e. their real struggles — RW) and assemble in solid rank around his rostrum: then the task would besolved.’

And

‘The sectarian sees an enemy in everyone who attempts to explain to him that an active participation in the workers’ movement demands a constant study of objective conditions, and not haughty bulldozing from the sectarian rostrum.’ (Trotsky, Ibid]

This failure to understand the role of the subjective factor in the revolutionary process — the conscious revolutionary party — leads to Militant’s inability to understand the role and significance of the Marxist programme and to eliminate its revolutionary content. 15

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WHAT IS A MARXIST PROGRAMME?

For Marxists, the programme is not a series of dogmatic demands carried on placards and banner, aimed primarily at educating the working class in an abstract manner. Nor is it a series of ‘exposure demands’ placed on the Labour bureaucracy who will in practice ignore them anyway, except for ‘holliday speechifying’.To reduce the programme to a set of ‘exposure demands’ without projecting an independent line of march would only sow illusions in the bureaucracy and assist its attempt to periodically put on a ‘left face’ in order to maintain its base in the working class. Rather, the Marxist programme embodies the actual tasks of the revolution.

The Transitional Programme, drawn up by the Fourth International in 1938, embodies and codifies the type of programme elaborated by the Bolshevik Party and the first four congresses of the Third International. It is primarily a revolutionary strategy, incorporating a series of demands and measures around which revolutionaries attempt to organise working people in struggle to defend their interests, raise their self-activity and confidence, and develop a revolutionary class consciousness of the need and means to achieve Socialism. From this flows the need to wage an intransigent battle against the reformist bureaucracy and all the misleaders of the working class and build a revolutionary leadership and party.

‘Marxism’, as Trotsky pointed out, ‘has built a scientific programme upon the laws that govern the movement of capitalist society which were discovered by it. This is a colossal conquest.’ All the most important experiences over the last hundred or so years have been analysed and incorporated into this programme. Centrally, Marxists recognise that the State, including Parliament, is the instrument of the capitalist class. In every plane of the class struggle this programme has to be developed, made more specific, but at all times it must express the objective needs of the political conjuncture and the historical tasks of the working class.

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REVISIONISM; OR HOW MILITANT REDISCOVERED KAUTSKY

The systematic adaption to the reformist consciousness of the working class and the Social Democratic bureaucracy has finally led to an abandonment of the Marxist theory of the State. Demands and slogans like “Labour to Power on a Socialist Programme’, Militant’s central slogan when Labour is out of office, give the impression that Labour can carry out a socialist programme through parliament on behalf of the working class, thus strengthening illusions in parliamentary democracy and by-passing the whole question of the State. Their so-called socialist programme is not a revolutionary programme precisely because it avoids the question of the bourgeois character of the state, and does not embody a strategic orientation to dual power, to the creation of independent organs of workers’ power, to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Their ‘socialist programme’ is equated with the nationalisation of the sometimes 200, sometimes 220, sometimes 250 monopolies (through the bourgeois state). They envisage that the socialist programme of nationalisation can be implemented through passing a special ‘Enabling Act’ in Parliament. This, we are told, will empower the Labour Government to expropriate the bourgeoisie and therefore eliminate capitalism!

Militant, 4 February 1977, spells out clearly that its socialist objectives can be achieved democratically, but only if:

‘the Labour leaders mount a massive campaign to expose the rackets of the capitalists, to show how they are leading Britain to poverty and dictatorship, to rally the mass of the population in their support. Only if they are ready to introduce an Enabling Act (as proposed in 1937 by Clement Attlee), abolishing the House of Lords and the Monarch and taking emergency powers to nationalise the monopolies, with compensation on the basis of proven need, under workers’ control and management.’ [Our emphasis] By ignoring the class character of the state, they ‘say nothing about the fact that the transitional stage between the state as an organ of the rule of the capitalist class and the state as an organ of rule of the proletariat is revolution which means overthrowing the bourgeoisie and breaking up, smashing their state machine.’

Lenin goes on in the same text: ‘ ““We’’, the revolutionary Marxists, never made speeches to the people that the Kautskyites of all nations love to make, cringing before the bourgeoisie, adapting themselves to the bourgeois parliamentary system, keeping silent about the bourgeois character of modern democracy and demanding onlyits extension, only that it be carried to its logical conclusion.’ (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky)... This attitude towards the state was arrived at by Lenin through Marxist study of actual revolutionary crises and working class struggles. The origin of such study dates back to Marx and Engels themselves.

REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY AND THE MARXIST THEORY OF THE STATE

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx, while recognising that the state was an 17

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organ of class rule, did not exclude the possibility that the working class could take political power through the extension of the parliamentary vote and the transformation of the bourgeois state into a state which would be the proletariat organised as the ruling class.

But the experience of the revolutionary struggle in France in 1848-51 convinced him that the working class had not to perfect the state but actually to smash it, since no matter how democratic it was in form, the bourgeois state could only act as an obstacle to the seizure of power.

Actual revolutionary events again showed Marx what would replace the state. He described the experience ofthe Paris Communeof 1871 inhis book, The Civil War in France:

‘The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time ..... Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and suppress the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business.’

So Marx and Engels, in a Preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto, printed in 1872, stressed again their conclusion from the last revolutionary upsurge of the masses in 1848 that: ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery and wield it forits own purposes.’

Lenin drew both on this legacy of Marx and Engels, and on his assessment of the specific experience of the Russian revolution in 1917. In analysing the chief features of the Revolution, Lenin wrote in Left-Wing Communism — An Infantile Disorder:

‘Experience has proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, ai/ countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done’ (Lenin’s emphasis).

And what was this very important question to which Lenin was referring? It was that: ‘... Only workers’ Soviets, not parliament, can be the instrument enabling the proletariat to achieve its aims; those who have failed to understand this are, of course, out-and-out reactionaries ....’

It was because this question was so ‘very important’ that it was written into the Programme of the Communist International: ‘The conquest of power by the proletariat is the violent overthrow of bourgeois power, the destruction of the capitalist state apparatus (bourgeois armies, police, bureaucratic hierarchy, the judiciary, parliaments etc.) and the substitution in its place of new organs of proletarian power.’

The task of securing the dictatorship of the proletariat is embodied in the Transitional Programme. Revolutionary Marxists understand the need for mobilising the working class, for creating Soviets, not as pressure to ensure the smooth passage of legislation — be it an Enabling Act or whatever — through a bourgeois Parliament, but as part of a strategy involving a complete rupture with, the smashing of the bourgeois state. 18

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NATIONALISATION AND THE STATE

A Transitional Programme therefore is one which encompasses all the phases of the revolution up to and including the measures necessary to secure the dictatorship. It includes the establishment of dual power, the arming of the workers, etc. Soviets were the central axis of the Transitional Programme as far as Trotsky was concerned. It is in fact only within the framework of the incipient proletarian state that the various elements of the Transitional Programme make sense.

Nationalisation under workers’ control, for instance, has an entirely different meaning depending on whether it is placed within the framework of the bourgeois state or the incipient proletarian state. Nationalisation on the basis of the hegemonic capitalist state means nationalisation in favour of the bourgeoisie. It constitutes merely a formal change in ownership which in no way affects the basic social relations, i.e. the extraction of surplus value. Revolutionaries call for the nationalisation of firms declaring redundancy, of the banks and finance houses, of the social service supply industries as necessary measures for resolving the crisis in the interests of the working class. We promote the united action of the working class in struggle for such demands and support a Labour Government when it takes an industry out of the hands of an individual capitalist.

But revolutionary Marxists end that support when the Labour Government returns that industry to the capitalist class as a whole as it has done with steel, with the mines, with transport etc. Once these industries are returned to the capitalist class, when they are nationalised on the basis of extortionate compensation which bleeds them dry, when their operations are governed by the law of value, they are state capitalist parts of the capitalist economy not havens of socialism within it. This is true whether as in Britain they are in a minority, or as in Syria or Burma where the majority of the economy has been nationalised. Militant’s inability to understand the centrality of the Marxist theory of the state leads them to ‘invent’ revolutions in these countries, to see workers’ states where none exists. If you can invent a workers’ state abroad, what is to stop you....

THE PEACEFUL ROAD?

In the pages of Militant, there are many references to the overwhelming strength and power of the British working class: Militant argues that this strength can ensure a peaceful transition to socialism. The centre-spread of the Militant of 4 March 1977 is entitled ‘WHICH ROAD TO SOCIALISM? Marxist Programme can ensure a peaceful Socialist revolution’.

Even the Portuguese revolution ‘could’ be peaceful. We read in Militant, 2 July 1976: ‘....70% of industry has been nationalised; there are elements of workers’ control in the factories; and the peasants in the South have seized large private estates. Such was the power of the working class that a complete transformation of Portuguese society along the lines of workers’ democracy could have been achieved peacefully.’ 19

[page 20]

The LPYS document on ‘Spain and Portugal’, 1976, also states that ‘the developments in Portugal since April 25th have given the working class one of the most favourable situations for peacefully carrying through a socialist revolution in a European country since the last war.’

.

But there have been numerous examples of the need for workers’ armed self-defence, the attacks of the far right on the offices of the trade unions and political parties, Spinola’s ‘march of the silent majority’, the 11 March 1975 abortive coup, not to mention the repression that followed 25 November 1975, not to mention the reactonary ‘liberation army’ in Spain, the NATO manoeuvres and the activities of the CIA!

Propaganda that disarms the working class in the face of reaction in the way the Militant does cannot be redeemed by calls to arm the workers ‘at five minutes past midnight’.

‘One cannot sing lullabies to the masses day after day, full of gabble about a pacific, painless, law-abiding parliamentary democratic transfer to socialism, and then at the first serious blow received on the nose, to arouse the masses to armed resistance. That is the surest way of assisting reaction’s break-up of the proletariat. In order to prove themselves capable of revolutionary resistance the masses must be ideologically, organisationally and materially prepared for it. They must understand the inevitability of intensification of the class struggle and its transformation at a certain stage into civil war. The education of the working class and the selection of personnel for leadership must be adapted to that perspective. It is necessary from day to day to struggle against compromising illusions, in other words to declare a life and death fight with MacDonaldism.’ [Trotsky, Where is Britain Going?).

The whole method of Trotsky can be seen in the nature of his ‘warning’ about the inevitability of civil war. For Trotsky it was not even a question of just printing articles about armed self-defence, civil war, etc. No, his warnings were actively incorporated in the orientation which guided his day to day work. He always stressed the need to actively intervene in all the day to day struggles of the masses with the aim of developing the political conceptions and organisational forms that were necessary if the working class were to be able to both defend itself against capitalist violence and apply revolutionary force to confront, defeat and disarm the bourgeoisie.

For a peaceful transition to Socialism, the proletariat needs to be armed to the teeth for war.

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WORKERS’ CONTROL

Militant has correctly issued forceful denunciations of all workers’ particpation schemes in private industry, such as those proposed in the recently published ‘Bullock Report.’ But their abandonment of the Marxist theory of the State has resulted in revisionist positions on workers’ control in the nationalised, i.e. state capitalist industries. This inturn reflects a misunderstanding of the centrality of workers’ control in the revolutionary process, and the role and character of the traditional organisations of the working class in this process.

As early as Militant number 143, in March 1973, we can read: ‘If the leaders of the trade union movement were Marxists, the way forward would be prepared, to take the power slipping out of the hands of the capitalists, firmly into the hands of the working class.... ‘It is an imperative necessity, if a viable economy in the interests of the workers is to be built, to nationalise the banks, the 300 monopolies, insurance companies and land, with social service compensation on the basis of need.

This must not be an old style state capitalist nationalisation where admirals, generals and capitalist directors run industry as before, in the interest of the remainder of the capitalist class. The boards of management must be elected, with the right of recall, one third by the TUC, one third by the unions, and one third by the state, with workers’ control by the shop stewards in the factories, depots and pits. The workers must be given a plan of production for the benefit of the people and not for profits. This could lift production and standards to undreamed of heights and prepare the way for socialism nationally and internationally.’ [our emphasis]

And in reply to a letter on the subject, Shane De Lacy writes in Militant 291: ‘{the] question of transforming the nationalised industries is essentially a question of control.’

What a load of rubbish! The question of transforming the nationalised industries is not ‘essentially a question of control’. It is a question of the class character of the bourgeois state and the question of revolution. Trotsky was clear on this. Pointing to the danger of sabotage by ‘the banks and other capitalist enterprises, upon which a given branch of the nationalised industry depends in the economic sense’, the revolutionary Marxists would argue that:

‘it is necessary to expropriate the banks and establish a single national bank, which would be the accounting house of the whole economy. Of course this question must be indissolubly linked to the question of the conquest of power by the working class.’ (Trotsky, Nationalised Industry and Workers’

Management, in Writings, 1939 — Trotsky’s emphasis)

Trotsky emphasised in the same text: ‘It would, of course, be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to Socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalisation by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer, into the hands of the workers’ organisations.’ 21

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A genuine fight for workers’ control of the state capitalist industries would undoubtedly be a major step forward in this direction. But the Militant reduces this to the ‘one third, one third, one third’ formula. but any rigid schema is mistaken. In the heat of the struggle, the workers themselves will produce far more creative schemes and will themselves decide the most effective measures for imposing control.

LIVINGSTRUGGLES

At the Lip watch factory in France, workers met the threat of closure by an immediate occupation. they elected a democratic committee to run the occupation. Delegates to the committee were subject to the immediate right of recall. The workers contined producing watches and, in defiance of the law, sold them to finance the struggle.

The Setenave shipworkers in Portugal decided to discuss the reorganisation of the shipyards. Five alternative plans were drawn up by different groups of workers. The plans were democratically debated at mass meetings. Votes were taken and a committee democratically elected to implement the final choice. The full backing of the work-force was to be the insurance that the plan was imposed.

Militant does not refer to such real, living examples of workers’ control and management when putting forward their solutions. Instead they propose abstract schemas of their own. There is, of course, nothing wrong in principle with advancing schemes for workers’ management of the nationalised industries, or even participating schemes laid down by bourgeois governments. Above all, the question is a concrete one and involves a concrete assessment of the particular scheme, and the relationship of forces at any particular point in time.

It might not be unprincipled in abstract to advance schemes for workers’ management of the nationalised industries, but this in no way legitimises the actual scheme proposed by Militant. In 1975, the 5/909 branch of the TGWU at Rover passed a resolution moved by supporters of the Militant for dealing with British Leyland Motor Corporation. The resolution was also passed by Birmingham Trades council. It read: ‘That the Labour Government nationalise BLMC under workers’ control, with members on the board of management being on the following basis: one third elected by workers in BLMC, one third elected by the TUC, and one third appointed by the Government.’

What has been the role of the TUC and the Labour Government over the last two years at Leyland? It has been to systematically collaborate in the schemes of the ruling class: to reduce staffing levels, to introduce speed up, to police the Social Contract and its wage-cutting by supporting proposals to put a straitjacket around the shop stewards movement. The collaboration between the Government, employers and union leaders against the toolmakers was only the . most blatant example of what has taken place since Ryder’s NEB-financed proposals have been implemented. Of course, the participation proposals in the Ryder Report are not as extensive as Militant’s. The Cars Council, the highest 22

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body on which the worker ‘representatives’ sit, is only an advisory body. It has neither power nor is it a proposal for workers’ management. It is another version of the Bullock proposals which Militant rightly condemns.

LABOUR BUREAUCRACY But this is beside the point. What actual difference would the ‘one third, one third, one third’ schema have made in the case of Leyland, with its two-thirds majority for the TUC and the Government? Trotsky warned against placing any confidence in the trade union leadership playing a role in plans for workers’ management: ‘It would be lightminded to close one’s eyes to the dangers that flow from a situation where the trade unions play a leading role in the nationalised industry. The basis of the danger is the connection of the top trade union leaders with the apparatus of state capitalism, the transformation of the mandated representatives of the proletariat into hostages of the bourgeois state. But however great this danger may be, it constitutes only part of a general danger, more exactly of a general sickness: that is to say, the bourgeois degeneration of the trade union apparatuses in the imperialist + epoch, not only in the old metropolitan centres but also in the colonial countries. The trade union leaders are,in the overwhelming majority of cases, political agents of the bourgeoisie and of its state. In nationalised industry . they can become and already are becoming direct administrative agents.’ (Trotsky, Ibid)

* ”

Lip workers sell watches, in defiance of the law, to finance their struggle. 23

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And in another context, Trotsky points to the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party: “Up until now we have not mentioned the Labour Party, which in England, the classic country of trade unions, is the only political transposition of the same trade union bureaucracy. The same leaders guide the trade unions, betray the general strike, lead the electoral campaign and later sit on the ministries. The Labour Party and the trade unions — these are not two principles, they are only a technical division of labour. Together they are the fundamental support of the domination of the English bourgeoisie. The latter cannot be overthrown without overthrowing the Labourite bureaucracy.’ (Trotsky, The Errors in Principle of Syndicalism)

But Militant tells us that these self-same ‘fundamental supports of the domination’ of the ruling class are to constitute two-thirds of their schemes for workers’ management of the nationalised industries! And in a more recent copy of Militant (18 January 1977) we are told what this would mean:

‘Workers’ management would reverse the tide of capitalist destruction. In Britain a six hour day and a four day week would be almost immediately possible. The unemployed would be given work in crash programmes to build schools, hospitals and houses. The working class in their millions would be involved in drawing up the plan of production.’

There we have it! ‘Workers’ management’ has become a synonym for a workers’ state! Again, the method of the Militant is exposed! Workers’ control and management, which for Trotsky constituted a banner for the anti-capitalist mobilisation of the working class, is reduced to a peg on which to hang propaganda for the tasks of a workers’ government! The revolutionary dynamic of workers’ control is thus lost. It is reduced to the education of individual workers. Shane De Lacy makes this abundantly clear:

‘The one third, one third, one third, demand points the way towards the transformation of the nationalised industries.’ [Our emphasis]

Once again Militant resolves the question of programme by adapting it to the supposed present level of consciousness of the working class and to convincing individuals of the necessity and superiority of socialism.

24

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POLITICS AND THE POITICAL STRUGGLE

The depth of Militant’s adaptation to social democracy and its abandonment of Marxism can most clearly be seen here at the fundamental level of strategy and programme. The Economists in Russia, the Webbs and other Fabians in Britain said to the workers that the struggle against the employers in defence of living standards must be extended into the political arena. The pure trade union struggle is not, they said, adequate by itself. The Economists in Russia said that the workers ‘must lend the economic struggle itself a political character’ which, as with the Fabians and the other theorists of British ‘Labourism’, meant that the workers must fight for a government which will grant them their economic demands through parliament. This theory became a real force in Britain, (though not in Russia), because the reformists were able to build on the illusions that the state was neutral. The British imperialist nation state of the late nineteenth century was able to make some important concessions to the working class because of the Empire and British imperialist plunder. It was therefore able to generate a ‘national consciousness’ in the working class, involving allegiance to the nation state. This idea existed particularly within the ‘aristocracy of labour’, that section of the working class ‘bought off’ by the vast reserves of British imperialism.

MILITANT’S FUNDAMENTAL ECONOMISM

This ‘economism’ or ‘trade union politics’ as Lenin calls it is the specific form taken by Social Democracy in Britain. Economism not only maintains a division between the struggle at the point of production and ‘politics’ — Lenin described elections as ‘bourgeois politics’ — but completely fails to grasp the necessity to unify in struggle, through more advanced, non-sectoral forms of organisation, the broad masses. Soviets are the organising centres which embody this political unity.

Militant is unable to understand the role of the Soviets, workers’ councils, or councils of action, as the highest expression of the workers united front. Drawing in the broad masses through a great variety of organisational forms as they do — political parties, trade unions, factory committees, neighborhood committees, women’s organisations, black organisations, soldiers’ and sailors’ committees, student and school students, middle class layers and, in the case of the less developed capitalist countries, the peasantry, etc.Militant fails to understand the tasks of winning these layers to the side of the proletariat and organising them, and therefore to lay the mass basis for a challenge to the bourgeois state.

For the working class to be able to win the leadership of these layers, it is necessary to fight for a programme in their interests in the organised working class, and against its sectoralist and corporatist limitations. Militant’s line on 25

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such questions as the fight against racism and women’s oppression illustrates how their so-called Marxist programme is an Economist programme.

THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN'S LIBERATION

The 1976 National Conference of the LPYS had the dubious distinction of passing not one single resolution on the struggle against women’s oppression, as the only resolutions on this question were submitted by supporters of other tendencies and the Militant recommended a vote against them all! The Militant has been forced to slightly ‘change its tune’ through the pressure of ‘embarrassment’. But the positions they advance are no better than their previous silence. They relegate the struggle of women for their liberation to the future socialist society. They concentrate almost exclusively on economic equality and democratic rights, and then only at the level of abstract propaganda.

Notoriously, the Young Liberal have a formally better position on Gay oppression than does the LPYS.

Virginia Morris in an article in the Militant, 23 February 1977, entitled ‘Tory threatens abortion rights’ presents us with a reasonable critique of the (Tory) Benyon Bill. It typically makes no criticism of the role of the Labour government or anti-abortionist Labour MPs. However, in its usual fashion, there is a side-swipe at the NAC, the main broadly-based campaign fighting for abortion rights: ‘But it would be wrong to see abortion as a panacea for all social problems’ and goes on ‘The crucial point is to link the demand for abortion with other demands and not to treat it as an isolate issue. One problem [?] with the NAC is that it concentrates exclusively on the demand for freely available abortion....Above all, we must place the blame fairly and squarely on capitalist society for failing to solve the problems that it has created.’

Of course, Militant is entitled to criticise what it considers to be the limitations of a particular single issue campaign. But does Militant support the NAC? Amazingly enough, the above quotation is the only mention of the NAC ina nearly full-page article, a true indication of Militant’s seriousness in organising a real fight on this issue....Only irrelevant sectarians refuse unity in action except on (their) programmatic basis. In this case, the absurdity of their ‘programme’ is shown yet again: the fight for women’s liberation being unilaterally tied up to the ‘nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy’. They totally oppose the idea of the autonomous self-organisation of women to fight against their oppression. After all, how can women organise separately from the working class in the fight for the nationalisation of the monopolies?!?! Their reference to the ‘petit bourgeois’ Women’s Liberation Movement, ‘barren and hostile’ (sic) to the labour movement, is well-known.

In the name of so-called unity Militant splits the working class by denying the right of women to organise to fight their oppression. Rather than struggling within the working class and the labour movement for active support for the struggle against women’s oppression, Militant prefers to make propaganda for some future ‘struggle for socialism’. 26

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RACISM

Like all economist currents, the Militant starts from the incorrect assumption that the proletariat is already homogeneous; that the divisions on racial or sexual grounds are really just the results of attempts by the capitalist class and its agents in the media to divide the working class. Racism is seen as being something completely separate from the labour movement. The LPYS pamphlet on racism, ‘Racism — a threat to all workers’, says almost nothing about Britain’s imperialist past, the rape of the colonies and the benefits that sections of the working class gained from this which led to its identification with imperialism and the nation state. There is nothing about the chauvinism and patriotism that is involved in the labour bureaucracy, including the lefts. Not a word about the Immigration Act, passed by a Labour Government. No criticism of the racist Labour leaders like Mellish or Fred Jarvis, now ex-Secretary of the Birmingham Trades Council.

You will find only the mildest criticism of the role of the trade union leaders who helped scab on strikes of black workers, such as the Mansfield Hosiery Mills or the Imperial Typewriters disputes. At the end of the Imperial’s disput (which Militant and its supporters found altogether ‘embarrassing’), when racist white workers, who had scabbed on the strike, demanded the victimisation of the Asian strike leaders — with official support from the white-dominated trade union branch meeting — the Militant criticised....the Asian workers (!) for crossing the ‘official’ picket!! Militant’s whole role in the affair is even more scandalous when seen in the context of the pathetic level of support given to the campaign of the Asian workers and their just demands. Militant supporters did a lot of work on the picket line to get the black workers to support the LPYS demonstration in Bradford (though the Militant leadeship passively accepted the demonstration’s cancellation by the Transport House bureaucracy). However, nowhere were they to be found, unlike the rest of the far left, on the massive demonstration called by the Imperial’s strike committee and the Asian community in Leicester, except for a few paper sellers.

Because of the false assumption about the already existing unity of the working class, they have openly opposed the self-organisation of black people as well as women, on the grounds that this too splits the working class.

The Militant always stresses in its propaganda examples of black and white unity and their demand ‘Black and white unite’. By giving a false view of the racist problem of the workers’ movement, they in practice adapt to the backwardness of the workers movement. They attempt to cover themselves by a so-called polemic against other far left tendencies: ‘It is contemptible for white so-called Marxists to make a fetish of separationism in the union, when black workers themselves [?] have been guided by surer class instincts’. (Militant, 15 February 1974)

But the name of the game was given away on 26 February 1977, during the Stechford by-election campaign. The Morning Star described the scene:

‘The city of Birmingham was the centre for protest demonstrations against racialism on Saturday.

The first, organised jointly by Birmingham Trades Council and Labour Party, was part of their ongoing campaign against racialism.

Nearly 300 marched from Adderly Park to the city centre, led by the regional banner of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Other banners 27

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represented the Post Office Engineers.... Labour Party and Communist Party branches.

Later, from the same assembly point, a much larger demonstration set out, organised by the International Marxist Group, the Indian Workers Association, the Socialist Workers Party and a number of Bangladeshi organisations.

They mustered 3,000....° [28 February 1977]

Needless to say, Militant supported the official Labour Party demonstration. Perhaps it was embarrassed, however, by the fact that the Asian workers decided to followed the lead given by the ‘ultra-left sects’ rather than Militant’s own ‘bold socialist programme’, despite their ‘surer class instincts’. Perhaps Militant was just maintaining its consistent coverage of the class struggie. The issue of the paper following the Birmingham demonstration carries articles on a strike of 14 building workers in Southall, on a meeting at which Andy Bevan spoke in Littlehampton, but they did not have enough space to report on either of the Birmingham demostrations!

This is called bending to the pressure of the white working class. The full impact of such a tailist method is really brought home when we find that Militant advances the ‘black and white unity’ slogan as a central policy not only in Britain, but also in South Africa!

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SOUTH AFRICA

In reply to a letter questioning such a strategy in South Africa the editors of Militant state

‘Given the right leadership, the black working class, which holds the key to the overthrow of apartheid and the fight for socialism, could win the support of sections of the white workers, and at least neutralise others.’ [Militant, 24 September 1976, our emphasis]

In a centre-spread in Militant in the wake of the first Soweto events their African correspondent makes a similar statement:

‘,...the recession in South Africa has brought with it the first sign of fissures in the organisation of the white skilled workers. A section at least of white (and certainly coloured) workers can be won on such a programme to unity with the black working class.’ [Militant, 16 July 1975, our emphasis]

In both these quotes Militant speak of winning sections of the white workers, rather than just individuals. They argue that under the pressure of worsening economic conditions the white workers movement will split down the middle. Is this a realistic strategy in South Africa? Should black militants be making this their main axis of political work in South Africa? To both of these questions we state categorically no! Again Militant’s programme has been tailored to consciousness of the British working class, rather than being based on the objective needs of the class struggle in South Africa.

The white working class in South Africa is, apart from a few individuals, completely integrated into the racist Vorster regime. This integration was a conscious policy of the Afrikaner ruling class implemented and consolidated over the past fifty years.

Of course, in comparison to the subsistence wages paid to blacks, the white workers receive very high salaries. Wage differentials in 1972 between white and black workers were as follows: Construction and Manufacturing 6:1 Mining 18:1 Agriculture 20:1

Such disparities also exist when it comes to unemployment. In 1970, out of every 100,000 whites only 24 were unemployed! Among blacks, 624,000 were out of work, without even including the massive underemployment of blacks in the homelands.

The white skilled workers associate their privileges with the white racist regime. They understand perfectly well that any concessions made to the black masses will be at their expense.

In defending their absurd formula of ‘black and white — unite and fight’, Militant can cite only two examples of whites joining a common struggle with blacks. First, in the 1930s ‘mass demonstrations against unemployment’, and second, the activities of white students against apartheid. What convincing proof! No examples can be found since the 1948 election of the Nationalist Party, 29

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which consolidated the apartheid regime through black repression and wnite privilege. What response came from the white working class when hundreds of black people were shot down in cold blood at Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976? Surely that would be a better indicator of sections of the white population coming over to the side of the black workers. Clutching at straws the Militant can only seize on some joint demonstrations over 40 years ago.

The white workers’ integration into the racist regime will be broken only when the root of these privileges is smashed, that is when apartheid and with it South African capitalism is destroyed. South African capitalism is totally dependant upon the continuation of apartheid for its survival, as are the white workers. The struggles launched by the black masses for basic democratic rights against apartheid in turn challenge the whole capitalist structure. The black movement is absolutely correct to reject any strategy based on alliances with white racist workers, despite the advice of Militant.

TRELAND

Nowhere is the economism of Militant so graphically illustrated as it is in their ‘treatment’ of the Irish question. They see the struggle in Ireland as a purely ' economic issue. Just as in their appeals to black and white unity in South Africa, Militant proceeds not from where the struggle is today, but from where they would like it to be. It would be so much easier if Catholic and Protestant workers were united in struggle for higher wages, against unemployment and so on. So Militant tries to act as though they were. It tries to avoid the fact that there are real historical roots for sectarianism.

These roots can be found in the hundreds of years of oppression of the Irish people by Britain. In the last fifty years it has included the ravages of the Black and Tans (criminals and lunatics in uniform); the partition of the country and the setting up of a fictional ‘Ulster’ which does not even correspond historically to what was Ulster. In addition, at the birth of this monster, the Catholic population of the north lived under a virtual state of siege and since 1969 the British army has tried to re-establish this. Since then hundreds of Irish people have been killed by these troops; there has been the Bloody Sunday massacre; we have seen the activities of the hated SAS and now the British government has been found guilty of torture.

It would be difficult for any intelligent person to ignore these facts of oppression. It would be impossible for a Marxist to ignore them. But it is easy for the leadership of the LPYS and their Militant co-thinkers to do so.

In all its material, the Militant’s attack is necessarily against the ‘sectarians’ and ‘terrorists’, because clearly these forces upset the simplicity of the economic struggle by raising all sorts of political, social and historical questions — such as partition and British oppression. Such things for Militant are a diversion. The definition on page 1 of the LPYS pamphlet speaks volumes : ‘The question of sectarianism is linked up to the complete failure of British capitalism to solve the economic problems of the area.’ Of course, for a Marxist it is elementary that British capitalism would be incapable of solving such problems in Ireland and 30

0 OQGQGGQGOQOaE OQ) —————

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further has no right to even try. The real ‘failure’ of British capitalism is that it did not rapidly vacate the country.

The really despicable side of the capitulation of this ex-Marxist grouping is the conclusion that the sectarian divide, which does exist, is the fault of those people and organisations which try to fight it. We in Britain can and do have major differences with organisations in Ireland. But what a disgusting capitulation to British imperialism and to the backward consciousness of the British working class to say that, because we disagree with programmatic and tactical questions concerning other organisations, these anti-imperialist forces have caused the sectarian divide!

This capitulation leads Militant to give political support to the agents of British imperialism. Militant, 17 September 1976, carries an article by Peter Hunt. It attempts to scold the so-called ‘Better Life for All’ campaign for not having the same courage to march as the ‘Peace’ women had.

The ‘Peace Women’ and their real allies.

Hunt not only boasts that the peace rally of 28 August attracted up to 30,000 people, he claims that the ‘...people of the Shankill and the Falls had shown to the world that there was no difference between these two communities’. If this grouping had any influence in the labour movement we would have to demand a repudiation of such lies. Mr. Hunt knows what the people of Andersonstown and of Derry think of the ‘peace at any price’ merchants. They have shown their contempt for this grouping time and again. The fact that Mr. Hunt did not know 31

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on 28 August of last year that by March of this year the Peace Movement would be dead in England and Ireland (if not in more distant parts of the world) is no excuse. Its character was clear to Marxists from the word go. It became clear to the mass of the Irish Catholic population when its leaders supported the Britsh Army and shook hands with the RUC. The message was rubbed in when they appointed none other than ‘peace loving’ Mrs. Ewart Biggs as their London representative.

In this odious article Hunt writes half a paragraph condemning the past policies of British ‘rulers’ (imperialism is the word Mr. Hunt was doubtlessly searching for). But this half paragraph is slapped in merely as an excuse to belt the forces that actually fight British imperialism. ‘The peace women point at the guilty men in this society’, intones the reverend Hunt. Who are the guilty men, you ask yourself? Mr. Hunt and the peace women will tell you. ‘They point at the paramilitaries, particularly the Provisionals.’

It is small wonder that Militant has only derisory support in Ireland, especially in the northern part of the country. They ask their supporters to advocate the setting up of a trade union defence force to end sectariansim. Workers in Ireland understand something that Militant scribes in London’s East End do not know. They know that sectarianism is a malignant cancer that runs through the entire body of the Six County statelet. The state was set up over 50 years ago to be sectarian. The institutions of that state at every level are discriminatory and sectarian. What is more, Mr. Hunt and friends, the trade union movement in the north reflects and embodies the same divisions. We do not like that, but neither do Catholic workers like to see the trade union movement actively participate in the discrimination against them over jobs. Catholic workers know that the trade unions in the north of Ireland are sectarian and encompass overwhelmingly Protestants in their organisation. This is not good. It has destroyed many working class struggles in the north of Ireland. This is bound to be the case in a society where the national question is unresolved and where a large minority like the Protestants (yes, Mr. Hunt even Protestant workers) actively support the oppression of their country by British imperialism and its army.

It is for these reasons that Hunt’s appeals to the trade union movement to step in and hammer out a socialist programme fall on deaf ears. The Protestant worker, desparately afraid to lose his few privileges, will not support his trade unions doing such things. His ‘trade union defence force’ is either the UDA or UVF, if it is not the British Army. The Catholic worker knows that any ‘trade union’ defence force will never include him, and in any case it would never fight to smash the very existence of the British statelet which has institutionalised repression and sectarianism.

The pundits of the English Militant can feel pleased with themselves. Their beleagured and ineffectual supporters in Ireland did not even mention the national question in their pamphlet Labour to Power — Break the Coalition. They talk about the health service, education, jobs and small farmers, but partition and the splitting in two of the working class is not given even the meagre 14 lines that Hunt gave the British Army!

Revolutionary Marxists will continue to argue for the right of the Irish people to self-determination and for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. The success of this fight will be a real service to the Irish revolution and to the British working class in its fight against the British ruling class. 32

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ACID TEST: THE ‘HOT SEAT’ OF WORLD REVOLUTION

Marxists have always recognised that is through great events that revolutionary ideas are tested out and clear characterisations of tendencies can be made. The titanic movement of the Portuguese masses over the past three years and the development of a pre-revolutionary situation in Summer 1975, the mounting struggles in Spain are such tests.

PORTUGAL

During the crucial period from March to November 1975 Militant’s analysis and line of march was at best confused, ill-informed, and at worst it verged in practice in lining up with the counter-revolution. After the attempted right-wing coup an the overwhelming victory of the working class parties in the Constituent Assembly elections, the resulting CP/MFA Government headed by Goncalves was forced sharply to the left under the enormous pressure of the mass movement. The measures it had taken and the actions it had stimulated and ‘legitimised’ meant that, as far as the bourgeoisie was concerned, this left reformist Government was losing control of the situation. In this situation, the Socialist Party leadership allowed itself to become the main instrument of Imperialism in its attempt to role back the gains of the working class and establish a ‘strong’ bourgeois state. The blatantly counter-revolutionary role of the Portuguese Socialist Party (PSP), analogous to the ‘democratic counter-revolution’ perpetrated by Ebert and Scheidemann in the defeated German revolution of 1919, was covered up, even justified, occasionally mildly criticised by the Militant. (Wiser after the event, Militant has come out with sharper criticisms of the role of Soares and the PSP, but without any self-criticism). In practice, Militant acted as a left cover for the ‘democratic counter-revolution’. In Militant, 1 August 1975, we read: ‘Soares is wearing the Socialist workers out with one futile(!) demonstration of protest(!) after another while the officer cast consolidates its control’(!!!)

Militant completely fails to mention that these demonstrations of ‘protest’ were a major focus for the forces of the right, and the counter-revolution. Left-wing paper-sellers were beaten up by PPD, CDS and fascist thugs that increasingly formed the majority of these demonstrations. This was part of the orchestrated offensive on the workers organisations which included attacks on the offices and individual members of the CP and far left organisations, etc. The Militant also fails to make clear that these ‘protests’ against the MFA/CP Government and its undoubtedly ‘bonapartist’ nature were not for workers’ democracy and workers’ councils, but against the advances of the workers’ movement and for bourgeois democracy. Thus after the resignation of the PSP from the governmentin July1975, Soares said that it was urgent that a government of ‘national salvation’ was formed ‘to create a climate of confidence, labour and discipline in the country’. He also stressed that 33

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‘One cannot tolerate political manipulation and hand votes, of the so-called ‘‘popular assemblies’’ organising themselves to compete with and destroy the democratic and legal structure of the state in building a sort of ‘‘dual 999 power’’.

In the 1976 LPYS Conference document on ‘Spain and Portugal’ written by the Militant NC majority, we can read even after the events, that the SP

‘mobilised mass support on the basis on many workers’ suspicions of the PCP’s measures to gain poisitions. Thus on the issues of press and trade union freedom and control of local councils the SP gained mass support in the Summer of 1975’.

Though, by this time, there are signs of a shift from their previous positions: ‘,,.the Socialist Party leaders ended up either consciously or unconsciously [!] being used to whip up anti-communism and provide reaction with a basis to try and win support. Thus in the North fascists and supporters of the CDS and PPD used the SP campaign as an excuse to start a campaign of attacking PCP buildings and workers.’

Needless to say, Militant makes no self-criticism: such vacillations, shifts and ambiguities are typical of what Trotsky referred to as ‘centrist swamps’.

Whilst correctly criticising the bureaucratic way that the MFA proposed the setting up of ‘workers’ councils’, pointing out that these were intended to be controlled from above, Militant nonetheless ( 18 July 1975) completely failed to grasp the potential dynamic that was already underway. They failed to grasp that genuine workers’, soldiers’ asnd peasant committees were already emerging and that it was precisely under the pressure of these events that the MFA made its call for them. The real criticism of the position of the MFA on workers’ committees should not have been simply that their conceptions were bureaucratic, which of course they were, but that they attempted to subordinate these councils tothe bourgeois state.

May Day demonstration in Lisbon.

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WORKERS’ STATE?

Trotsky’s description of centrism being a ‘swamp’ of ambiguity and confusion is clearly highlighted by Militant’s at best ambiguous class characterisation of the Portuguese state. This is a crucial theoretical and practical question for the revolutionary process. In Militant, we read: ‘,..the possible outline of a one party system beginning to emerge.’ on the model of Cuba, etc. It appears that a bourgeois movement, the MFA, based on the bourgeois state apparatus in alliance with the reformist CP had managed after the 1975 Constituent Assembly Elections to carry through bureaucratically the socialist revolution! This error is only possible if nationalisation of the bulk of the economy equals socialist revolution. In the article by Bob Reeves, we read:

‘Imperialism looks on impotently (?) as Portuguese capitalism goes through its death throes... Already something like 75% of the economy is nationalised.

Foreign capitalists who have fled are being expropriated... But if Big Business is a spent force (?) it is no thanks to the leaders of the workers. parties the CP and the SP.’

And in the Editorial of Militant, 1 August 1975, we read: ‘The programme of the generals [which was apparently being carried through - RW] is the ‘‘Socialism’’ of Cuba, China and Russia - i.e. of the elimination of landlordism and capitalism, but with power in their hands and not those of the workers, soldiers and peasants.’

Even after the defeat of 25 November 1975, the establishment of another capitalist government of right-wing generals together with the right-wing leadership of the LP, when army discipline and military hierarchy was restored, similar formulations can still be found. In the 1976 LPYS Conference document, we can read:

‘,..in Portugal, today, the economic basis for workers rule has been laid.

The whole series of nationalisations since March 17 has stripped the Portuguese capitalists of their power and wealth.’

Or ‘the resulting nationalisations broke the back of the Portuguese capitalists.... The lack of any campaign for workers’ democracy in order to complete the Portguese revolution could allow the MFA to consolidate itself into a ruling stratum on the lines of the ruling bureaucracies of Eastern Europe’.

Or ‘World Imperialism clearly wishes to see capitalism restored (!) &)

Portugal.’

Or ‘Failing counter-revolution, the best that Imperialism can hope for would be for the MFA to consolidate its position as the ruling elite and develop Portugal on the lines of a relatively ‘independent’ Stalinist country like Yugoslavia’. 35

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Peter Taaffe, in Militant, 2 April 1976, being forced to recognise the existence of bourgeois rule on the basis of the bourgeois state, makes a shift away from previous positions, but says in relation to the possibilty of counter-revolution: ‘....it is more likely that a right-wing coup will be defeated...’ and schematically goes on ‘The regime which issued from such a situation would be compelled to complete the nationalisation....pro-capitalist parties would be banned....

Power would be concentrated in the hands of the radical officers of the MFA....Such a regime would be similar to Castro’s Cuba in its first period [?] [still avoiding the central question of the state — RW]. But management of the state and industry would remain firmly in the hands of the military caste... A regime such as this is defined by Marxism as a ‘‘deformed workers’ state’ or a variety of ‘‘proletarian bonapartism’’. It is a workers’ state because it rests on and defends the result of the working classes’ elimination of landlordism and capitalism. At the same time, the lack of workers’ management allows the state to raise itself above the class on which it rests and rules in an uncontrollable and arbitrary way.’

With this analysis of developments during the pre-revolutionary situation leading up to 25 November, the main question facing the working class is not revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat (it has already happened?!?) but an offensive against bureaucracy and bonapartism. Of course, this conveniently allows Militant not to clearly differentiate itself from the counter-revolutionary ‘democratic’ crusade of the SP leadership. It is consistent with Militant continuing to advance ideas for the socialist transformation in Britain by the nationalisation of the monopolies. Unlike the Militant, however, Soares and the Portuguese ruling class have no illusions whatsoever that capitalism is finished and a workers’ state is established in Portugal!

SPAIN

On one issue, Militant’s grasp of the importance of political events has been significantly correct — their appreciation of the importance of the class struggle in Spain for socialism throughout Europe. As Roger Silverman wrote in Militant on 26 September 1975, ‘The Militant and the LPYS have said for many years that Spain would be the key to the socialist transformation of Europe’.

Unfortunately their analysis of the political problems which this momentous development poses has not been equally sound. Militant have been persistently unable to develop a clear understanding of the nature of the PSOE (the main Spanish Social Democratic party) and a clear strategy for socialists, both those in Spain and those abroad, who wish to assist the Spanish struggle.

Militant believes that the most politically advanced workers in Spain are grouped within the PSOE, and that as the struggle of the Spanish workers develops this will become even more the case. As Roger Silverman argued in the Spanish Young Socialists Defence Campaign Bulletin in Spring 1976, 36

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‘After the fall of the regime the workers’ parties will hold the key to Spain’s future....the various fringe groups — Maoist, pseudo-Trotskyist, terrorist will fade into obscurity as in Portugal, once the mass workers parties move into action.’

There are many problems with this prediction. To take the first: under what conditions will the mass workers’ parties ‘move into action’? Certainly their record since the death of Franco has been one of abysmal inaction as far as the defence of workers’ interests is concerned.

Militant has never been hesitant in exposing the class collaboration of the Spanish Communist Party. But they have generally attempted to distinguish between these treacherous policies and that of the PSOE, arguing that with the election of the Gonzalez leadership, the PSOE has ‘moved to the left in recent years’ [Militant cited above] and that

‘the PSOE leadership has not gone to the same grotesque lengths as the PCE in trying to restrain the workers from strike action to avoid frightening the liberals away.’ [SYSDC Bulletin}. “

But the overwhelming evidence of the class collaborationism of the PSOE has forced Militant to admit that

‘the most farsighted strategists of capitalism have eargerly seized on the PSOE as offering the smoothest possible transition to ‘‘democracy’’. By confining its current goal to that of ‘‘democracy’’ the PSOE has offered the capitalists a lifeline.’

Militant is never able to sort out these two contradictory views, and as a result ends up with a position that is a confusing amalgam of usually rather mild criticism of the PSOE leadership with the assertion that the PSOE will be the leading force in the Spanish revolution:

‘The new generation of workers is rediscovering the best traditions of its forefathers. It is their silent pressure which is pushing the PSOE into a living organism’

and exclusive concentration of their solidarity on promotion of and aid to the PSOE and its trade union and youth organisations. The depth of their confusion is shown by their response to the funds which international social democracy is pumping into the PSOE to underwrite its class collaborationist project: “We welcome this belated support....’ they say, adding only that ‘No strings must be attached’, ignoring the clearly divisive role which such assistance plays. And as if the PSOE leadership needed international ‘strings’ to bind it to a policy of class collaboration!

What Militant fails to admit is the inevitable conclusion of the fact that the leadership of the PSOE and the Communist Party are destined to be one of the principal props of the attempt to salvage capitalism in Spain: one of the central tasks facing those who want a socialist Spain is the uncompromising struggle against this class collaborationist leadership.

Militant therefore have no idea how to fight this leadership. They mix up the 37

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undeniable mass influence that the PSOE and LP exercise today and will in the future with the location of the most politically advanced workers upon whom the struggle against the CP and SP leaderships will be based. The blatant class collaborationism of the Gonzalez and Carrillo gangs have exposed them in the eyes of tens of thousands. In many parts of the country — especially the Basque country where class consciousness is reinforced by opposition to national oppression — the ‘various fringe groups’ that Militant dismisses so contemptuously are able to lead hundreds of thousands of workers in strikes and demonstrations in spite of the active opposition of the SP and CP ‘leaders’. They are organised as a tendency fighting for a united, democratic and class struggle trade union movement inside the workers’ commissions, with the support of perhaps 20% of the militants of this most important trade union body.

How can the CP and SP misleaders best be fought? Simply by working for better resolutions or more ‘Marxist programmes’ inside the PSOE? Or by organising this powerful layer of militant workers to demonstrate to the mass of the Spanish working class in practice that there is another road than that of Carrillo and Gonzalez? Of course this will require a consistent united front approach towards the mass of CP and SP workers, and a readiness to fight with them to put their leaders into office, the better to espose their class collaborationism in practice. But it does not mean that the principal battle-ground will be in the corridors of the PSOE: on the contrary, it will be in the factories, neighbourhoods, barracks and streets. And all the evidence is that the socialists in the ‘fringe groups’ will play a more central role than any force inside the PSOE or the PCE (as was the case in Portugal, if one looks the facts in the face rather than through Militant’s looking glass).

This confused position of Militant has completely hamstrung their ability to develop an effective solidarity campaign. At one time this was a central task of the LPYS; but the irony is that as revolutionary events have come closer in Spain the SYSDC campaign has receded. The reason is simple: the revolutionary tide has brought ever more to the fore the class collaborationism of the PSOE leadership and rendered bankrupt a campaign based on support for them. The SYSDC campaign now serves only one purpose: as a rather well-worn scarecrow trotted out by the LPYS leadership at each conference to provide an excuse for doing nothing about ‘the key to the socialist transformation of Europe’.

What is really needed is the involvement of the LPYS in a broad campaign that unites all those forces in the British labour movement concerned with Spain to organise aid, political solidarity, and practical assistance with all those fighting the dictatorship in Spain, and to prevent the right-wing Labour leaders and the British capitalists from aiding their Spanish counterparts.