There are at present three main forces in favour of the Labour Party moving to the left. First is the left wing of the party. Second is the leadership of the party, which hopes a left shift will help propel Labour back into office. Third is a section of the trade union bureaucracy which wants to avoid leading massive industrial struggles in the coming period and hopes instead to turn people's thoughts to ideas of an election.
But the thing which will determine the signficance of Labour's left shift will not be the aims of anybody but the actual objective effect which this shift will have on the class struggle. This will be determined by the attitude of the ruling class to the new Labour programme and by the questions and expectations that such a programme raises in the working class. 'LEFT' PROGRAMMES The new 'left' programmes being adopted by the social democratic parties all have roughly une same form. Incy mcide mcreasea social security services, a national minimum wage, and interest of the ruling class. It is not at all in some provisions for worker participation in manasoment or naustry. All unis is to De finan cd by increased economic growth. This growth is to be achieved by two main methods: mercases mn working class income ana demand are to be stimulated by redistributing income away from the rich to the working class and the . But the implementation of the type of prolower paid; and an increase in investment will result from increased state intervention in the including a programme of These programmes are completely contradictory and unrealistic. Increasing money income for the working class will simply produce inflation, not a higher standard of living, unless output of goods is increased. This could be done by putting unused economic resources to work and by increasing investment. The first method can be used very effectively in periods of economic re cession and high unemployment (the Allende Government in Chile, for example, cut unemployment dramatically in its first year in office). The crunch comes when all unused resources have been put to work: if investment does not then increase dramatically there can only be a rapid rise in inflation. In Chile the rate of inflation now runs at over 100% a year. The 'left' programmes of social democracy are quite incapable of overcoming this problem. The capitalist class will not invest while wage increases are cutting into their profits and they are permanently afraid of being nationalised by a left wing The left programmes of social democracy do not propose that sufficient firms be nationalised to end the domination of the economy by private industry and investment. In France, the proposed nationalisation of 13 industrial groups, and in Britain the proposed nationalisation of 25 companies would still leave decisive sections of the economy in private hands. Under a left' government, investment by these private firms would inevitably collapse, even if conscious sabotage were not carried out, and the economy would be thrown into chaos. In short, the left' proposals of the social democracy for the economy are totally unrealistic because they fail to take the economy totally out of the hands of the capitalists. On the political plane they are equally utopian because they do not tackle the question of the bourgeois state.
However the fact that the new programmes of social democracy are unrealistic, will not achieve the goals they set themselves, and certainly will not achieve socialism, does not mean that these programmes are in the direct the interests of the ruling class for the capitalist economy to be plunged into crisis by an attempt to carry out a left Labour programme. The 1945 Labour programme objectively strengthened the capitalist class and was therefore, in general, passively accepted by them.
gramme now being proposed would not at all strengthen the position of the British ruling class. For this reason the polarisation around this programme is not a fake polarisation. When Wilson vetoes the nationalisation proposals, for example, he acts in the direct interests of the ruling class. When the Labour left attacks his veto they act against the interests of the ruling class even though the actual measures they propose would not achieve socialism.
REVOLUTIONARY RESPONSE Even more crucial than the objective effects of Labour's programme is the impact such a programme can have on the working class even if it were not actually carried out. When the Labour party talks of nationalising 25 companies, the question is raised in the minds of the working class as to why only 25? When the Labour Party talks of some 'workers control' (by which it really means worker participation) the obvious question is raised as to why not real workers control? The effect of this turn by the Labour and Social Democratic parties will therefore be to raise a whole series of questions in the consciousness of the working class. Furthermore, revolutionaries can use individual points in the programmes in order to take the struggle of the working class forward and go far beyond the aims of the social democrats. Georges Marchais, leader of the French Communist Party abeyance until agreement is reached among all concerned parties" .. We have stressed the ambiguities of these formulations. Suppose, as is inevitable, that the "parties concerned" fail to "reach agreement". Then who makes the decision? The common programme implicitly concedes that the employer will decide. If the parties can't reach agreement, it says, then "the employees' representatives can appeal to The about cours sarang rom the crucisi of these equivocating formulations, and strongly conscious of the workers' democratic aspiramons revoluuonanes will bess lor workers control with veto power over firings, hirings, transfers, distribution of occupational positions, the way wages are paid, the work rate, health and security conditions, in short, all working conditions. anis conror must be exercisco or control committees composed of delegates from the shops, the assembly lines, or the departments, democratically elected by their fellow workers, responsible to them, and recallable at opening the companies books and management records, as the common programme itself calls for. The control committees must be accorded a sufficient time during each work day to consult witn the workers and to discharge tael dunes In Britain in the coming period revolutionaries can do exactly the same type of thing. Take for example the TUC proposals on 'industrial democracy'. These are completely ambiguous or wrong on all central. questions. One one page they say that it will be the workers and the company (in the last analysis the company) who will decide the question of sackings, speed up and so on. However only six pages before that they suggest that it should be 'representati ves of the workers alone who should make the decision - although even here they do not propose that it be made by the mass of the workers. But this raises in the consciousness of the working class an idea of unilateral decision-making by the workers - of real workers Another example is prices. The Labour Party calls for price controls. But who is to police and enforce them? The industrialists themselves or a 'prices board"? The experience of Phase 2 has already shown this is useless. Any call by Labour for control of prices immediately raises the question of the organisations of the working class taking up the regulation of prices. In the coming period these questions will be raised in the consciousness of the working class Francois Mitterrand, leader of the French Socialist Party by the working class bureaucracies themselves, far more powerfully than the revolutionaries could ever do by themselves.
LABOUR IN OFFICE The adoption of a 'left' programme by Labour will arouse expectations and questions throughout the working class which will result in political ideas well to the left of Labour, whether Labour in office actually tries to carry out that programme or not. If it comes to office on a programme which goes against the objective interests of the capitalist class, Labour has only two basic choices. The first would be not to implement the programme, and function more or less openly as a government acting in the interests of the capitalist class. That would be to repeat the experience of the 1964-70 Labour However the effects of this experience would be qualitatively greater than 1964-70 in terms of working class resistance. ern ment would have to carry out on the working class would be much greater, and the expectations dashed far greater. The ties between the Labour Party and large sections of the working class would be threatened and an entirely new period in British political history would open up. The growth of the revolutionary left under such circumstances would be extraordinarily rapid.
The other choice would be to attempt to implement the programme. This would be met with resistance from the ruling class through economic sabotage and so on. Economic crisis sky rocketing inflation, and massive working class mobilisations would be the inevitable outcome of such a government. Demands for workers control, for stopping capitalist sabotage, for resistance to the attacks of the capitalist state, would find rapidly growing support in the working class It is as yet too early to say which of these courses would be adopted by a new Labour Government. A Government formed in the wake of a massive working class upsurge would be in a very different position than one which came into office through an ordinary election. We can be certain of one thing. It is the revolutionaries and not social democracy who will, in the long run, gain from social democracy's new left turn.
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LEFT BOOKSTORES! RA