invest. It is absurd to think that the government can order capitalists to invest if they don't want to. Nor will the threat of "competition' from public companies be of much use they will have to operate in the same conditions as private business, and, being burdened with extra responsibilities by government policy, will be even less competitive than private firms.
It remains the case that there is an absolute shortage of funds within the British capitalist system to finance new investment and growth. And all the fuss and bother in the world by a Labour Government will not be able to overcome this fact. It will serve no useful purpose to redistribute income within the capitalist class, it is a redistribution between classes that the capitalist system demands.
ATTACK ON WORKERS A Labour Government elected on this programme would not be able to get very far with it. But what course would it then adopt? The answer can be gleaned from some very revealing ILLUSIONS & AFTERWARDS passages in the section of the Programme concerning price controis:
Our price controls will also be used to curb those protits which we consider to be excessive . The only acceptable role for profits at the present i that they provide a large part of the finance needed for investment; thus in real terts the role of profits is to ensure that the nation saves cnough from its current output to provide the resources needed for capital price increases may have to be allowed in order to provide for investment In other words, when the contraditions in Labour's programme produce a conflict between protecting the interests of the working class and protecting profits, they will opt for the latter, Indeed, once it is accepted that profit is the way to 'provide the resourecs necessary for capital investment' there is no other alternative. Thas all the high-flown promises of new social benefits for the working class lead inexorably, through the logic of the capitalist system, to the necessity for launching big attacks on the working class.
'INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY The programme tries to wash down all these bitter pills with talk about industrial democracy". It i argued that since the working class will have to pay the price for higher profits and reinvigorated capital accumulation, they should also be given some stake and influence in the ДОПИВАТЬ» Such schemes only serve to whitewash the realities of capitalist society; in themselves they do nothing to alter the fundamental operation af that capitalist economic system. One particularly clear sighted bourgeois commentator, Peter Wisher, financial columnist of the Sunday Times, has understood this: You work for a company like Rolls Royce, say, and it gets into really big financial trouble some directors, are said to be representing the workers", which you naturally interpret as you and your colleagues. But where do their responsibilitics really lie? Are they supposed to he protecting you and your job? Or preserving the company and with it the value of the [state capilal sharing| fund's shareholding, which may mean massive redundancies, asset sales and so forth?
All these moves would simply serve to bind the working class movement to the capitalist system and weaken the ability of the class to fight back against Government-led attempts to protect profits by stepping up the exploitation of the working class.
While there is nothing in the new Labour Programme that can represent the real interests of the working cluss, it would be a mistake to dismiss this programme as irrelevant. It does Take up many of the major problems that are felt throughout the working class movement and offers solutions that appear superficially to be quite radical. It is certainly the most left' programme adopted by the Labour Party since the wat.
We should have no illusions about the nature of the Programme, but we should also recognise that if it were actually used as the basis for Labour's electoral pronoucements it could succeed in mobilising the mass of the working list measures were being planned.
Our task is not to sit on the side-lines and mutter dire predictions, in the belief that the masses will spontaneously rally to our side when we are proved correct. Nor is it to sow Illusions in the Labour Party and its leadership. in the expectation that this will make the shock of their inevitable betrayal all the greater, and thus drive the masses more decisively to the left. The direction taken by the mass of the working class after a further Labour government exposes itself" will depend upon the ability of the masses to see a way forward independently of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracies; it will depend upon Tribune, in the eye of the storm as it were, was the most cautious of the groups and public ations on the left. Its editorial spent some time explaining to the Labour right how the proposal to nationalise the 25 would not alienate the Labour voter, and would not jeopardise Labour's chance at the next election. Of course, the constitutional arrangements within the Labour Party must remain fluid - in other words Tribune won't challenge the leadership's veto at Conference to the point of a split. The front page of Tribune even carried an article by Michael Foot, a Tribunite who voted on the NEC against the proposal to specify the number as 25, who warns against making the row into a 'constitutional issue' within the Party.
The Communist Party acoepted the basic frame work of the Programme. There were it explained in the Morning Star, some worrying indications' that the Labour Party is hankering after a voluntary incomes policy'. The nationalisa tion proposals were a bit fuzzy". But the main epemy was the right wing who woul find many loopholes" in the document. The task now is to make the proposals more precise, and to exert pressure on Labour to carry out all the proposals. There is no explanation as to how this could be done, Nor was there any comment on what would happen if Labour nation. alised something against the wishes of the ruling class, or an explanation of what precise to take. A serious omission in the Star's coverage was any criticism of Labour's foreign policy (Ireland?), with the prominent excep tion of some metaphysics about how a camtheir ability to develop organisations of their own to carry the class struggle forward.
REVOLUTIONARY TASKS Our job must be to play an active part in the struggles of the mass of the working class, whether they are against the Tory government today, for the return of a Labour government tomorrow, or to wring conceasions from the Labour Government the day after, in order to argue for and develop these independent activities and organisations. As the battle berween the classes impels the struggle forward, we will, in this way, be able to wrest the leadership of the masses from the hands of the social-democratic traitors and muddlers.
It is necessary to put an end to a state of affairs in which material resources are only paign against entry into the EEC being conduct ed by Communists was not the same as the one being conducted by Enoch Powell. The CP believes of course in the possibility of achieving socialism through Parliament. Workers Press, organ of the Central Committee of the SL.L, correctly criticised the CP for its parliamentary cretinism. But its own slogan is 'Labour to Rower on a Socialist Programme'. The explanation for this slogan is the SLU's theory that the working class must fight to commit the Labour Party to nationalising all the monopolies. How this is to be done remains unexplained. When Labour refuses to do this it will be 'exposed". In this way the working class could be broken from the grip of refor mist leadership' (11 June).
This ignores the fact that few worker militants believe today that the Labour Party will intro duce a "socialist programmoe". On the grounds that the workers have learnt nothing from the last six Labour Governments, the SLL is conveniently absolved from putting forward slogans which would orientate the vanguard of the working class towards the creation of organs of working class power. We are not arguing here against placing demands on the Labour leaders but a 'socialist programme" involves, as the Comintern argued, at the very least the disarming of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of Parliament.
Finally, Socialist Worker, paper of the Inter national Socialists, argues for the smashing of the capitalist state. But this is not made at all concrete, and it fails to link the question of smashing the state to what the workers are doing today. Thus it fails to mention such vitally necessary measures as workers control forms a 'working class mobilisation" would have and the working out of a plan of production by the workers organisations. It is only by taking up such questions that any meaningful alternative perspective for working class power can be constructed.
turned to the needs of the people if capital cab be seduced to set them into motion. But this can only be done if the workers seize the means of production, irrespective of property rights, and set them into motion on the basis of a plan worked out by the workers" organisations.
Instead of targets worked out by teams of leading (bourgeois) coonomists, the workers themselves will make clear in the course of a new economic and polirical practice what their needs and demands actually are. If Parliament is un obstacle to legislation in the interests of the working class (and the civil service, with its links to capital, is an even bigger obstacle to its implementation) then Parliament should simply be abolished, and the workers organisstions should make all the necessary legislation Alf Jennings Red Weekly 22 June 1973 Page 5
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