That is problem that Ken Coates got to grip with in the final part of his pamphlet: "Labour's first year", We have reproduced this section here but would remind all new readers of The Week that the original fulllength pamphlet is still available (price 9d post paid) from 54, Park Rd., Lenton, Nottinghame The pamphlet contains a special study by Ralph Schoenman entitled "The nature of the Vietnam war" which is one of the most serious attempts to place the war in a historical -perspective yet made.
A new programme
The work of elaborating s programme is not one which ean be passed
aeross to three part time researeh workers, It involves a whole protracted
labour of discussion and education within a very wide area of the Labour
Movement, Precisely what has gone wrong with the fourth Labour Government
has been this old, elitist conception of programme, Polisy is left to the
wise, to the ones who know, Everyone else knoks doors. In the event, the
knowledge of the wise was insufficient : what they needed was no longer an
insight into 1aF wickedness of the world, but the social understanding and
the political th which to assault that wickedness, This ean only be
created in painstaking political discussion and organisation, starting from
the fundamental premise that the richest source of socialist potential is
the self confidence and self activity of the workers themselves,
The natural tendency which will emerge from the accumulating disillus-
ionment of Iabour's activists will be to seek immediate, partial solutions
te what are global problems, ‘There is diminishing scope for effective,
purely local, trade union militancy though, Labour needs a socialist
perspective, designed for praetical applieation, To those who see the
impossibility of piece meal solutions, there may arise the alternative of
seif immolation in a purely abstract and doctrinal socialism, The failure
of labour to meet its immediate, bread and butter commitments may impel ;
many on the left to reject all bread and butter demands as a deluding
distraction, and to seek in their place to elevate a purified and spiritual-
ised vision of commonweal as the motivating goal of socialist activity.
“nile it is acutely important to discuss the idea of socialism, and
to wic+u constantly the circle of peopb for whom its problems are already —
a livi.g reality, this can never be a suffident answer to the difficulties
in which we find ourselves today, It will not help the railwaymen to be
sold that “socialism is the only anaver to Doctor Beeching", true though
that aphorism may be. Unless we can offer some practical immediate steps
to soeialism, our railwayman is likely to choose either to belt hell out
of someone in the union, or, more probably, to look for another job,
Even slogans which in themselves could contribute to the growth of an
explicitly socialist awareness, like the demand for an integrated transport
policy, need to be linked inseparably with a whole series of complimentary
eonceptions, which taken together can form the mental bridge over which
the workers may pass from capitalist to socialist forms of reasoning and
action, Simple reiteration of demands for nationalisation alone do not
form such a bridge.
continued/
- eT
The programme which we need to elaborate, neither maximalist and entirely abstract, nor minimalist and blind, needs to lead from the particular ills of capitalism,as it is,to the general solution we have to offer, and from the partial, schizoid outlooks which are fostered by capital to a fully socialist world view. Such a programme must attack, not only the organisational failures,but the feel of capitalism, of subordination : it must expose its alienating effects plainly, so that they are devoid of mystery and terror. Clearly, in the fight against alienation which the workers suffer as producers, the major answering socialist response is the demand for worker's control. This becomes increasingly urgent as neo-capitalist rationelisations gather force. Workers control of job organisation, the speed of work, re-tooling, is no mere panacea. It can very well be understood by shop stewards and local union officers as fitting present needs. But neo-capitalist reorganisation extends from new practices in the shops up to the attempt to elaborate a comprehensive policy for incomes : and so too can the fight for workers' control, as it takes up the demand for complete and democratic accountability, the opening of the books, and the abolition of business segretse All the work of elaborating a :detailed campaign on such lines only be done in the creation of a movement for industrial democracy ¢ no amount of blueprints will replace its living agents in the factories. At the same time, the struggle for self management in the nationalised sector can feed and inspire such a movement. This already began to shape up in the steel industry in the discussions around the new Bill : and its embryos can be clearly seen in the mines, the railways, and, among the white eollar staffs in particular, in the other nationalised industries.
Outside the sphere of production, the New Left has frequently documented the manipulation of men as consumers. Here too, the socialist movement has a traditional answering response : the transition to welfare forms of distribution. Free public transport : free housing : these are no more utopian in modern Britain than the National Health Service or free compulsory schools. To a nation embarking on the structural change from capitalist to socialist organisation, they would not be frills, but essential means of obtaining a human focus on the inherited economic difficulties. If the Bow Group can put forward the notion that the roads be metered as a counter to the fact that rail computes its costs comprehensively while roads do not, cannot we respond by demanding the opposite kind of parity? Here surely is a real answer to Beeching, which would enable some true pisture of the travelling needs of Britain to be compiled.
In a context of public welfare, norms of consumption, the pressure for extended public control of industry becomes enormous. Arising out of the pioneer movement of a fight for more welfare and a fight for workers' control at every level, the arguments about the need for more national isation cease to be ritual incantation, and take on a more and more immediate necessity. Around the central core of such a programme as this, there are many issues to be resolved. But if someone speaks out, to say that socialist options are possible and practical, then there will be an answering call from very many people in the unions and the workshops. Only if the left is silent is there danger : for then each worker feels alone, his doubts his own, his conscience an isolate, and therefore, his will paralized. Voices must be found to enunciate the new socialism. The left muat areonian
Vietnam: