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The Battle for Trotskyism

Documents of the opposition expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party in 1974.

Written: 1974.
First Published: February 1976.
Source: Published by Folrose Ltd. for the Workers Socialist League.
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Correct the Wrong Positions of the Party – Return to the Transitional Programme

I submit this statement to conference both as a critique of the wrong positions of the party, positions which in my view threaten to liquidate the party, and as an attempt to create the conditions to direct the party back to the founding document of the 4th International – the Transitional Programme.

I began to develop differences involving the programme, method, and practice of the party and differences on a number of theoretical positions about a year ago. I passed through great hesitation and political crisis before taking the decision to bring these differences into the party and fight them through.

Firstly, I must make it clear that I have no differences with the founding principles of the 4th International. The British movement has established its present position through a basically correct appraisal of this epoch as one of wars and revolutions and of the advanced nature of the crisis of the capitalist system. The party upholds the basic proposition of the Transitional Programme that the crisis of mankind is the crisis of proletarian leadership. The movement is based on an understanding of the necessity to construct independent revolutionary parties in each country based on the struggle to develop the revolutionary theory of Marxism, dialectical materialism. It has been forged in an implacable struggle for international revolutionary perspectives against peaceful co-existence with capitalism, against various forms of revisionism, against social democracy and centrism.

On this basis the SLL and the WRP have carried forward the struggle for Trotskyism in Britain in the post-war period. I therefore take up the fight against the deviations from the Transitional Programme within the framework of this tradition of struggle and in defence of the theoretical and practical gains made in the struggle for Trotskyism. As Trotsky wrote in In Defence of Marxism:

The correct philosophical doctrine, that is, a correct method of thought, is of decisive significance to a revolutionary party just as a good machine shop is of decisive significance to production. It is still possible to defend the old society with the material and intellectual methods inherited from the past. It is absolutely unthinkable that this old society can be overthrown and a new one constructed without first critically analysing the current methods. If the party errs in the very foundations of its thinking it is your elementary duty to point out the correct road.

This is the purpose of this discussion document.

I was unable, during the oil crisis, to accept the party position that the three day week was a deliberate decision by Heath to crash the economy to defeat the working class in order to solve the crisis at their expense. Quote from Workers Press, December 31st, 1973:

Tory sources admit publicly that Heath could stick to the three day indefinitely – creating mass unemployment throughout industry. It is the Tory government’s way of crashing the economy and implementing a recession.

This was backed up with the contention that the aristocracy had re-established themselves as the dominant section of the ruling class (in the persons of Whitelaw and Carrington) and that they would lead the way in crashing the economy because they would survive whereas the industrial capitalists would not. Quote from Workers Press, January 9th, 1974 crisis issue:

“The new Whitelaw-Carrington axis reveals conclusively that the Tory squirearchy, which has the closest links with the military, has gained the ascendancy in the cabinet.”

I could not accept this. In my view the three day week was introduced primarily to conserve oil. Later, as the oil was restored and the miners struck, it was continued in order to fight the miners. The damage inflicted on businesses and on the economic and political fabric of capitalism itself still has to emerge in its full force. The increased oil prices, which came out of the crisis, are central to the accelerating rate of inflation and the deepening crisis of the capitalist system.

During this period an imminent military coup was predicted by the party, and action taken organisation ally in preparation. I think this prediction was wrong. It is true of course that a military or some other open dictatorship was and is the requirement of the ruling class. It is true that sections of the ruling class advocated this and that the troops at Heathrow were a preparation for the use of troops under civil war conditions. It seems to me wrong however to make a prognosis based simply on the subjective intentions of sections of the ruling class. What is involved in such an assessment is a study of the movement of all classes in society. We have to take account therefore that, in this sense, the predominant feature of the three day week period was the emergent strength of the working class. They were never intimidated by the three day week. The CBI at one point approached Heath asking for the legal suspension of all agreements on the basis of the national emergency but Heath was unable to implement the proposal. In the event the working class took action and forced all agreements to be honoured during the period despite the crippling costs involved for the employers.

The three day week was brought to an end when the Tory government was forced to resign by the miners and the working class brought to power the minority Labour government. Internationally this offensive of the working class has continued unabated with the removal of the military rule in Greece, and the ending of 40 years of fascism in Portugal. The Industrial Relations Act has been removed, along with the Industrial Relations Court. The working class has moved into a massive wage offensive and have replaced the minority Labour government with a majority Labour government. It is indisputable of course that this Labour government will betray and will open the door to reaction. They were placed in office nevertheless by the strength of the working class. In such a period it is too simple to say that military rule is on the immediate agenda in Britain, with the most organised working class in the world, simply because the ruling class require it. When we look at class forces we have to take into account which class is on the offensive, and in this period it has been the working class.

It is true that this offensive drives the two main classes into confrontation and that this strengthens the drive of the ruling class towards dictatorship, but they still have to carry it out under the prevailing objective conditions – which means taking on an undefeated working class which is on the offensive.

When the news broke, last November, of the Arab decision to slash Middle East oil production by 25 percent we were forced in Oxford, as the direct leadership of a section of the motor industry, to develop policy and to move quickly in the defence of jobs. The key decision to be made was an assessment of the possibility of the oil supply being restored. There had been a bloody war in the Middle East ending only a month before in the defeat of the Arab forces at the hands of imperialism through Israel. It seemed feasible that the Arab nationalist leaders would attempt to extend that war using oil. On the other hand the Arab nationalists need to sell oil in order to survive and, through oil and the oil companies, are intimately connected with the major capitalist countries.

The party put forward the position that the oil would not be restored under any conditions. One of the theories advanced was that Faisal would not retreat until all Arab lands were returned including Jerusalem with its religious significance. Irrespective of this it was clear that advanced oil-based economies were in grave danger. Even if the oil was restored no-one could tell at what point the connection between the specific factor oil and the general factor of the crisis of the system would make recession inevitable. We took the decision therefore to prepare for a full-scale occupation of the plant in the defence of jobs. There is no doubt, in hindsight, that this decision was absolutely correct. By the end of December we had every single trade union body in the town connected with the motor and engineering industry committed to occupation in the event of closure or redundancy. We went on to lead two sit-ins which whilst having a definite limited objective of their own (defence of agreements) were a preparation for a full-scale occupation.

When the oil was restored and the three day week brought to an end, the pull back from this policy left us inevitably vulnerable. This vulnerability was however compounded by the wrong positions of the party during that period, particularly the military coup positions and Heath crashing the economy with deliberate intent. The effects of this continued throughout the struggles which followed in Cowley. I raise this in order to illustrate the damage which can be inflicted by wrong positions to struggles conducted by the party, particularly where we are in the leadership positions and thousands of workers daily follow closely our analysis and prognosis in deciding to support our policy and programme.

It was primarily my differences during this period, which were known by the leadership at the time, plus my experiences on the national trade union committee of the party which led me to a serious critique of the party practice throughout the summer and autumn of this year.

At the founding conference of the Workers Revolutionary Party in November last year a number of workers were brought onto the Central Committee from various industries to strengthen the work of the CC. They reflected the new layers which had come into the party in the period of expansion which preceded the conference. (Most of these workers have left or no longer attend the Central Committee for one reason or another).

At the CC meeting following the conference a trade union committee was elected from the CC to direct the trade union work nationally. This committee met a week later under the direction of comrade Mike Banda to start its work. It was clear that faction work both on an industry basis and in individual unions must be an indispensable part of our trade union work. The committee therefore mapped out a series of faction meetings covering December, January – March. With the exception of car workers and engineers these faction meetings were overruled by the Party leadership and never took place. The committee was never consulted on any of the cancellations.

This raised for me two questions (which I raised at the time). Firstly, it struck a blow at our trade union work in a crucial period; secondly it raised the issue of the authority of the trade union committee itself. I fully accept of course that the TU committee is subordinate entirely to the CC in all matters and that the party leadership, through the Political Committee, speaks for the CC between meetings – but this is not the issue at stake.

In my view a committee must have, whilst working under the direction of the party leadership, authority to function. If its decisions are consistently overruled, without the knowledge of members of the committee, the committee will become ineffective and will die. This happened. From December until August the committee never met.

At the July meeting of the CC the TU committee was reconstituted with a smaller number of members. It met in early August. I again expressed my view that if the committee was to do its job it must have the authority to function. I was assured that on this occasion it would. The item discussed at this meeting was whether to hold a national conference of the All Trades Union Alliance in October or November or alternatively industrial conferences of car workers, engineers and miners.

I pressed strongly for a national ATUA conference (the last one was in October 1972) on the basis that we badly needed not only a national conference but a national campaign in the unions. I argued that many sections of workers who had been in struggle during the summer would be left out if we went ahead with the three industrial conferences proposed. After this discussion it was agreed unanimously that we should have a national conference in October. Two weeks later comrade Banda informed me that it had been cancelled. In the event no conferences were held at all. The TU committee has not met since.

I raised this as an important issue for this conference not simply in the context of its impact on the TU work in the period between the founding conference and now, but because it raises questions on the method employed by the party leadership when dealing with the essential departmentalization of the party work and the delegation of authority. This is related to the fact that the National Committee of the ATUA has also ceased to function and that major policy decisions on TU work are taken without discussion of any of the TU committees of the party. These methods in my view cannot be separated from other aspects of party practice and are an additional factor in isolating our comrades in the factories through ill-prepared and uncoordinated practice.

The non-functioning of party TU committees has meant that wrong policies have been pursued with no opportunity for the TU comrades to fight to change them. The call for a triple alliance of power engineers, engine drivers and miners campaigned for last December created a difficult situation in the factories because all three sections were only banning overtime. The difficulty of calling for support for a triple alliance of overtime banners was immense. The party made no call for a miners’ strike prior to the ATUA Miners conference on January 20th by which time the overtime ban had been 9 weeks in existence, was almost ineffective and represented an avoidance of struggle with the leadership.

The non-functioning of the party’s TU committees has also meant that there has been no organisation for TU elections – most of which have passed by without party intervention.

I am convinced that over the past year the conditions were favourable for the recruitment of decisive cadres in the factories. These conditions are even more favourable today. But this penetration into the factories and the unions has not taken place. In my estimation the cadres in the factories are weaker today than they were a year ago and this is the most decisive area of party work and should be recognised as such.

One of the main strengths of our movement has been its continuous defence, throughout the boom period, of Marxist economics, the theory of the laws of motion of the capitalist system itself. The party struggled for the materialist theory of the law of value and showed its working through in the form of developing world monetary crisis in the years from the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 to Nixon’s ending of the convertibility of the dollar into gold in 1971. Only our party therefore was able to understand the world significance of this development and take it into the struggle to build an independent revolutionary leadership for the working class, correctly pointing to a massive sharpening of the contradictions of the capitalist system which underlay every development of the class struggle. This struggle had to take place against the idealist impressionist conceptions of “neo-capitalism– and the “permanent arms economy” developed by the revisionist groups and the reformist perspective of the Stalinists’ British Road to Socialism. This analysis and perspective of the economic crisis was the main motive force for recruitment into the party and for the development of the party. This of course is insufficient, because recruitment should also be to a programme. This one-sided recruitment has compounded the problems in the party.

The enormous increase in the price of gold against paper money indicates the working through of the law of value. In the last analysis only gold can serve as money under capitalism, because only gold embodies value, necessary labour time, in sufficient concentration to serve as a universal equivalent in the process of exchange. In this period capitalist trade staggers on on the basis of paper currencies separated from gold and floating each day against each other.

The fourfold increase in the price of oil, at the beginning of this year, forced on Western capitalists by the combination of the erosion of the value of paper money and the offensive of the oppressed Arab masses, reflected through the Arab nationalist leaders, poses the capitalist world with an insoluble problem. Every non-oil producing country will be massively in deficit to the oil-producers, in Britain to the tune of £4,000m. This poses the prospect of state bankruptcies on a large scale with Britain bankrupt now apart from crippling loans which make the situation worse. Since oil is a basic raw material in manufacturing industry as well as a fuel the capitalist class is caught in this dilemma: do they slash consumption of oil in order to balance imports with exports – but cut off raw material from which the exports are manufactured? Or do they print more paper money to pay the bill, recognising that as inflation accelerates oil prices will rise simultaneously? In other words there is no solution by peaceful means. The only possible way out for the bourgeoisie is to step up the exploitation of the working class and extract more surplus value from their labour. As Trotsky wrote in The First Five Years of The Communist International, this is not a simple question:

Each measure to which capitalism is constrained in order to make a step forward in restoring equilibrium, each and all of this acquires a decisive significance for the social equilibrium, tends more and more to undermine it, and ever more powerfully impels the working class to struggle. The first task in achieving equilibrium is to set the productive apparatus in order, but to do so it is indispensible to accumulate capital. But to make accumulation possible it is necessary to raise productivity of labour. How? Through an augmented and intensified exploitation of the working class . . . To re-establish world economy on capitalist foundations it is indispensible to dispose again of a world equivalent – the gold standard. Without it capitalist economy cannot exist, inasmuch as there cannot be any production while prices dance their dance of death, increasing 100 percent in the course of a single month as happened in Germany, contingent on the fluctuations of the German currency.

In this passage, Trotsky then goes on to bring in the other major contradiction of capitalist relations which now works through as a material force in the class struggle – the contradiction between the use-value of a commodity (its usefulness to the consumer) and its value (the amount of necessary labour time required to reproduce the commodity).

Trotsky points out:

A capitalist is not interested in production. For he is being lured from afar by speculation, which tempts him by much greater profits than can be gained from slowly developing industry.

When we see today the role of the banks and finance houses in bringing about the bankruptcy of major firms such as Court Line and Ferranti we see the beginning of a relentless move by finance capital to pull away all support from firms which make an inadequate return on their capital – rate of profit. Warnings have been given by spokesmen in the food industry that the return on capital is insufficient, after replacement of plant and equipment and raw materials at inflated prices, to give a basis for continued business. This makes it clear that the working class are facing not only a crisis of unemployment as these firms go to the wall, but a real danger that production of commodities essential for life will be disrupted by the anarchic workings of capitalism. These material forces dictate the need for a programme which will involve the class in struggles through which it can be brought into conflict with the real face of capitalism as a vital stage in the preparation of the working class for taking power, in a situation when:

. . . every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state. (Transitional Programme)

The world inflationary crisis therefore hits the capitalist class in the form of the falling rate of profit which then reflects through the stock markets, and through the rise in interest rates as banks attempt to compensate for the rate of inflation, which poses liquidity problems for major firms and drives the smaller to the wall. Within this situation is the drive to slump exacerbated by the inability of capitalism to expand into new markets. The influence exercised over the capitalist class by the banks which now have the power of commercial life and death in their hands becomes more clear daily. The working class as Trotsky points out in the Transitional Programme confronts a prospect of company bankruptcies bringing mass unemployment and accelerating uncontrolled inflation which slashes the value of wages. To quote Trotsky from the article referred to earlier:

On the basis of this economic depression the bourgeoisie will be compelled to exert stronger and stronger pressures upon the working class. This is already to be seen in the cutting of wages which has started in the full-blooded capitalist countries . . . This leads to great struggles over wages. Our task is to extend these struggles, by basing ourselves on a clear understanding of the economic situation.

Or from the Transitional Programme dealing with these questions:

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilisation can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick.

The relationships between the working class and the ruling class are shattered within each nation as a result of the sharpening drive of the capitalist class for exploitation. This is met by its opposite, the defensive struggle of the working class for wages. On an international scale relationships are disrupted between ruling classes, and the crisis asserts its international character.

Thus although in every country it is clear that preparations for dictatorship must be made by the bourgeoisie if the working class is to be held back and driven to increased exploitation, there is not an even or a mechanical relationship between economic and political crisis. For example the requirements of the bourgeoisie in Greece were to combat inflation running at a higher level than anywhere in Europe: yet the international movement of the working class reflecting through the Greek working class in the Cyprus struggle toppled the Greek military junta and intensified the contradictions posed for the Greek capitalists. Likewise in Portugal the struggles of the Portuguese workers against the Caetano dictatorship connected with the struggles of the Angolan workers and peasants to produce the contradictory movement which removed the fascists from power. In both these countries of course renewed dictatorship is posed continuously, but this requires the right balance of class forces – it does not flow automatically from the development of the economic situation.

As I have said in the first section of this statement I think the party has underrated the class questions posed in the military suppression of the working class in Britain, and through a mechanical conception of the direct relationship between the economic crisis and politics has put forward some wrong positions – military coups, etc. in a defeatist manner. Let us be clear on the question. Marxism does not start from the conception that economics alone furnishes the key to political development. As Engels wrote:

According to the materialist conception of history the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that position into a meaningless abstract, senseless phrase.

Trotsky also spoke against formal, mechanical connections between economic and political developments of the crisis. In the article ‘The Economic Crisis and the Tasks of the Communist International’ already quoted, he wrote:

It might be asked whether the great struggles over wages, a classic example of which is the miners’ strike in England will automatically lead to the world revolution, to the final civil war and the struggle for the conquest of political power. However it is not Marxist to pose the question in such a way. We have no automatic guarantees of development . . . In general, there is no automatic dependence of the proletarian revolutionary movement upon a crisis. There is only a dialectical interaction. It is essential to understand this.

In such pamphlets as Through What Stage Are We Passing? Trotsky explains the contradiction between the advanced stage of the development of the crisis of capitalism and the backwardness of the working class organisations in Britain. This is contrary to mechanical relationships starting only from the economic base. To quote once more from ‘The Economic Crisis’:

Economic development is thus not an automatic process. The issue is not restricted solely to the productive foundations of society. Upon these foundations there live and work human beings.

Therefore in putting forward an economic perspective, I have attempted to do so in the opposite way to that put forward of late by the party. Although I consider the party to be basically correct on the fundamental nature of the epoch, as one of wars and revolutions, the party has in my view departed from the detailed Marxist economic and political analysis which must take into account the movement of both classes in society – as I set out to show in my introduction to this statement. Correctness on the strategic task for the epoch – the need to prepare the working class politically to take state power – does not necessarily ensure a correct approach to the daily developments of the struggle of the masses. As Trotsky says in the Transitional Programme:

The achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics.

I believe that the method of economic analysis employed by the party obscures these important questions. As a result the party has an over-estimation of the strength of the bourgeoisie in this period and a corresponding underestimation of the strength of the working class which despite its treacherous leaderships is on the move leftwards. At the same time the party in its practice abandons the characterisation of this period in the Transitional Programme as;

A pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organisation

and therefore abandons what is the strategic task of such a period – again from the Transitional Programme:

Overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard.

This in my view led the party into propagandizing a maximum programme on the basis that the revolutionary situation has grown so sharp that any other programme does not apply. It leads to the conclusion (rationalisation) that the working class has broken from reformism and Stalinism. The mechanical link between economics and politics, which has become central to the party’s theoretical position over the recent period, is in essence the abandonment of the basic conception of the Transitional Programme in which Trotsky says:

It is necessary to help the masses in the process of their daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of revolution.

Instead of this approach, we have pre-dominating the sectarian conception condemned by Trotsky that ‘revolutionary events inevitably push the workers towards us. This passive expectancy, under a cover of idealistic messianism, has nothing in common with Marxism.’ Trotsky insisted that ‘to grow more rapidly during the period of flux, during the preparatory period, one must know how to find points of contact in the consciousness of wide circles of workers.’ (Situation in the Labour Movement, c. 1934)

According to the Party Election Manifesto, which put forward a full maximum programme of socialism, and the Workers Press over the last year, the working class has already reached the stage of the ‘Socialist Programme of Revolution’.

The election manifesto produced by our party for the recent election is the antithesis of the Transitional Programme – it is a maximum programme of revolution. To quote:

The Workers Revolutionary Party is the only party fighting this election on a socialist programme. We say the right to a decent standard of living for millions of workers and their families can only be defended by nationalising the banks, the land and basic industry without compensation and under workers’ control. Nothing short of that.

And further on:

In this situation nationalisation of basic industry without compensation and under workers’ control does not arise as some far off, abstract question. It is immediate. An historic imperative.

When the manifesto lists the points of programme nationalisation is posed first rather than being preceded by a series of demands transitional to it. This shows in each case that the demands are just part of a maximum programme of socialism – providing no bridge with the demands and struggles of the working class today. Trotsky in the Transitional Programme takes up Social Democracy on this basis:

Classical Social Democracy functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its programme into two parts independent of each other: the minimum programme which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum programme which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the maximum and the minimum programmes no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy had no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying.

There is no doubt that the concept of a bridge (which came under heavy attack at the CC when I raised these questions) is the heart of the Transitional Programme. The key section says the following:

It is necessary . . . to find a bridge . . . This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.

The bridge, of course, is not simply demands, but is a method resolving itself in the practice of the party. The thread of sectarianism which runs through all aspects of the work of the party is itself the antithesis of the bridge. It is not sufficient, as the Workers Press has done since these questions were raised on the CC, to throw a few transitional demands in here and there as if this represented a return to the Transitional Programme.

The only conclusion which can be drawn from the election manifesto is that we do not need ‘the bridge between the present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution’, because the working class has already reached the maturity necessary to accept a maximum programme – the social revolution. The line of the party implies that the gap, between the present levels of consciousness of the masses and the ripeness of capitalism for revolution, has already been closed, consequently, there is no need for a bridge (the Transitional Programme) but simply a propaganda machine armed with a maximum ultimatist programme, waiting for the working class to make the ‘leap’, and assume the leadership. Real life is, however, more complex than this.

A key section of the Transitional Programme is the concept of workers’ control which is wrongly posed by the party. Workers’ control, as Lenin and Trotsky explained over and over again, is essentially control exercised by workers over a private owner, the control or supervision by an elected committee of workers over the decisions of an employer. Once the demand for nationalisation is raised we should not then talk of workers having control over a state manager but that such a committee would exercise direct workers’ management. Workers’ control is a stage transitional to workers’ management.

Trotsky – Transitional Programme:
The working out of even the most elementary economic plan – from the point of view of the exploited, and not the exploiters – is impossible without workers control, that is without penetration of the workers’ eyes into all open and concealed springs of the capitalist economy. Committees representing individual business enterprises should meet at conference and choose corresponding committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions and finally of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalised industry when the hour for that eventuality strikes.

Lenin is very clear on this question. Writing in 1917 and 1918 he said the following: (it should be remembered that the first nationalisations apart from the banks and land under Soviet rule dated from June 1918, one year after workers’ control was established.)

Vol. 24: . . . the proletariat and the peasantry established, on their own initiative . . . workers’ control over the factories, and the 8 hour day has been introduced and wages have been increased, production is being maintained, and workers’ control over the distribution of food . . . (p. 29, April 1917)

. . . the only way to avert disaster is to establish effective workers’ control over the production and distribution of goods . . . Workers’ control, which the capitalists in a number of cases have already accepted, should . . . be developed into full regulation of the production and distribution of goods by the workers . . . (pp. 513-514, May 1917)

Vol. 25: The main idea . . . is to indicate the conditions for actual control over the capitalists and production in contrast to the empty phrases about control used by the bourgeoisie . . . to prevent the actual preservation of capitalist profits, to tear off the veil of commercial secrecy, to give the workers a majority in the control agencies . . .

We Pravda people are said to be deviating from Marxism to syndicalism (because we support this policy). What we do suggest is workers’ control which should develop into complete regulation of production and distribution by the workers, into nationwide organisation etc. . . . Is commercial secrecy to be left intact? Yes or no? Are the workers to be enabled to exercise control? Yes or no? . . . Not regulation of and control over workers by the capitalist class, but vice versa . . . (pp. 44-45, July 1917)

In reply to compromisers’ demagogy about seizing 100 per cent of capitalist profits, Lenin replies:

Isn’t it too much to try to break the resistance of the capitalist? Shouldn’t we rather try to expose before the labour unions . . . the fantastic profits made by the capitalists? Shouldn’t we try to abolish commercial secrecy? Isn’t it too much for us to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . shouldn’t we rather try to expose embezzlement and misappropriation? (pp. 65-66, June 1917)

Vol. 26: . . . it may even be possible, by means of workers’ control, over the capitalists, to make all resistance impossible. The important thing will not even be the confiscation of the capitalists’ property, but countrywide, all-embracing, workers’ control over the capitalists and their possible supporters. Confiscation alone leads nowhere, as it does not contain the element or organisation, or accounting . . . (p. 107, October 1917)

Draft Resolution on Workers’ Control, first day after Bolsheviks take power:

Item 5 . . . The decisions of the elected representatives of the workers . . . are binding upon the owners of the enterprises . . . (p. 264, October 1917)

Lenin at Third Congress of Soviets:

The transition to confiscation of the factories after workers’ control had been introduced was . . . very easy. (p. 467, January 1918)

Same Speech:

In introducing workers’ control, we knew that it would take much time before it spread to the whole of Russia, but we wanted to show that we recognise only one road – changes from below, we wanted the workers themselves, from below, to draw up the new, basic economic principles.

Vol. 27: Until workers’ control has become a fact, until the advanced workers have organised and carried out a victorious and ruthless crusade against the violators of this control, or against those who are careless in matters of control, it will be impossible to pass from the first step, from workers’ control, to the second step towards socialism, to pass on to workers’ regulation of production.
(pp. 254-255, April 1918)

We have to expropriate them (the trusts). That is not where the hitch lies . . . I told every workers’ delegation with which I had to deal when they came to me and complained that their factory was at a standstill:

You would like to be confiscated? Very well, we have blank forms for a decree ready. They can be signed in a minute. But tell us, have you learned how to take over production and have you calculated what you will produce? Do you know the connection between what you are producing and the international market? Whereupon it turns out that they have not learnt this yet . . .
(p. 297, April 1918)

Trotsky is equally clear, take this section from Workers Control of Production:

The workers need control not for platonic purposes, but in order to exert practical influence upon the production and commercial operations of the employers. This cannot, however, be attained unless the control, in one form or another, within such and such limits, is transformed into direct management. In a developed country, workers’ control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory, the bank, commercial enterprises and so forth.

These quotations make clear the difference between workers’ control and workers’ management. It is important that we do not confuse the two. If we substitute workers’ control for what should be workers’ management we are unable to understand and develop those movements towards workers’ control which are transitional to workers’ management. Full workers’ control of course can only be achieved in a pre-revolutionary situation and constitutes, under those conditions, dual power at factory and then at national level. Prior to this the demand for workers’ control, carefully used, educates the advanced layers and tests out the class itself. Trotsky again from Workers Control of Production:

Under the influence of crisis, unemployment, and the predatory manipulations of the capitalists, the working class in its majority may turn out to be ready for the abolition of business secrecy and for control over banks, commerce, and production before it has come to understand the necessity of the revolutionary conquest of power.

Trotsky goes on to take up how this demand should be advanced:

However, it (workers’ control) must be approached correctly, Advanced without the necessary preparation, as a bureaucratic command, the slogan of workers’ control may not only prove to be a blank shot, but even more, may compromise the party in the eyes of the working masses by undermining confidence in it even amongst those who today vote for it. Before officially raising this very crucial slogan the situation must be well ready and the ground well prepared.

What is shown clearly from these quotations is that not only does the party pose the demand wrongly, but it is not a demand which should be tacked on mechanically to point a programme without a proper political assessment. The wrong position of the party on workers’ control again is part of the sectarian position of the party and results from the departure from the Transitional Programme.

In his fight to defend Bolshevism against Stalinism, Trotsky had to contend not only with right-wing deviations from Leninism but also ultra-left ones. The most important of these was the Stalinist theory of social fascism. Between the Congresses of the Comintern of 1928 and early 1934, the Stalinists designated social democracy as social fascism, and social democratic and trade union leaders as social fascists. In Germany this theory cleared the road for Hitler, by dividing the working class. The Fourth International was born out of the lessons surrounding that massive defeat.

It now appears to me that a very dangerous form of sectarianism which has similar outward features to social fascism is developing inside the Workers Revolutionary Party. For some time now almost the entire leadership of the trade unions and the Labour Party have been designated as ‘corporatists’. I cannot accept this. The Corporate State is the incorporation of the working class into the state which necessarily involves the destruction of all independent organisations of the working class – in other words fascism.

A corporatist is therefore an advocate of corporatism. What the trade union bureaucracy is involved in is class collaboration. This of course opens the door to the corporate state, but there is a vast difference between opening the door to fascism and being an advocate of it. We are not of course just talking about words here. The corporate state was introduced into Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Chile. In each case all organisations of the working class were smashed. The party is clear about this. In article after article it is spelled out – yet still the trade union leaders are called corporatist.

The statement of the International Committee published in Workers Press December 29th, 1972, speaks of the ‘destruction of their (i.e. the workers’) organisations and the drive towards the corporate state’. Portugal under Salazar and Caetano has been correctly described as a corporate state: ‘Like his predecessor Salazar who destroyed the trade unions in Portugal and set up a corporate state.’ (Workers Press, October 3rd, 1972). Spain has also been correctly called a corporate state, like Portugal modelled on the ideals of Mussolini: ‘The cardinal feature of Franco’s fascism is corporatism.’ (Workers Press, August 14th, 1973). And again on Portugal: ‘Portugal is a totalitarian country. All the workers’ trade unions were destroyed from 1933 onwards by the Salazar dictatorship. They were replaced by vertical unions integrated with the machinery of the corporate state’ (Workers Press, September 20th, 1973). The same article speaks of a fascist regime in Portugal thereby equating fascism with corporatism.

Tom Kemp’s recent article on Vichy France (Workers Press, October 21st, 1974) says that under Vichy ‘trade unions were abolished and with them the right to strike . . . Vichy’s social and industrial policy can be summed up in one word: “corporatism”.’ Kemp then goes on to say that ‘employers (in Vichy France) knew about class struggle and saw in corporatism a way of waging it because it stripped workers of any means of defence. This was the meaning of the Chartre du Travail, the labour charter, which established official syndicates to replace free trade unions . . . ’

A similar definition of corporatism was offered by Stephen Johns when he wrote in Workers Press, September 22nd, 1973, that the ‘Tory Government and the employing class cannot rest until every single union is smashed and every single worker is a prisoner of the corporate state with no independence to protect basic democratic rights and living standards.’

These examples show that in the estimation of the leadership the corporate state is a fascist state and that in order to establish such a state the trade unions must first be destroyed. More than this. Even the most reactionary elements of the reformist bureaucracy become victims of the corporate state. And this even though they might seek an accommodation with the corporate state, as they did in the early days of Hitler’s rule. The German trade union leaders marched with the Nazis on Hitler’s ‘May Day’ – and the next day they were thrown into prisons and their unions wound up. If this had not happened then the Stalinists would have been shown to be correct on the question of social fascism.

Now let us go back to the other side of this issue and state cases where Workers Press has specifically designated trade union and Labour leaders as not simply ‘tending towards’ the corporate state, but actually desiring indeed preferring the corporate state. On September 8th, 1972, Stephen Johns wrote in Workers Press, under the headline ‘The TUC heads for the Corporate State’, that at the TUC Congress ‘a whole section of the trade union movement has virtually declared itself for the corporate state.’ He concludes his article thus: ‘Brighton 1972 was not the year of the left but the year of the new corporate state TUC . . .’ Yet the corporate state is fascism, the total destruction of the trade unions, the TUC included.

Alex Mitchell then wrote on September 29th, 1972, that the TUC had ‘entered still deeper into Heath’s plan for constructing the corporate state’. This begs the question not only of whether the TUC leaders are corporatists, but also the nature of the Tory Party and whether it is capable of establishing the corporate state with or without the TUC.

In my view the establishment of the corporate state in Britain requires a mass fascist party that smashes the trade unions by physical terror, as they did in Italy and Germany. I do not see Heath as the possible leader of such a movement.

But this is not all. We read in Workers Press that the TUC leaders actually favour the corporate state: ‘Obviously men like Victor Feather . . . are fully persuaded that corporate state control of the economy, where unions lose their independent role, is a good thing.’ And just to put things in their correct historical setting, an article carried in Workers Press on November 2nd, 1972, on the 50th anniversary of the fascist march on Rome, described to perfection corporatism and what it does to unions: ‘within three years the unions were crushed, the workers’ organisations driven underground and the fascist state was fully operative’. Yet two days later Stephen Johns wrote that ‘the essence of the corporate state (the British version?) is control over wages and the unions by the ruling class and these are now the two main planks of the Tory offensive.’

So in Britain the fascist corporate state will not destroy the unions, simply control them by collaboration with their corporatist leaders. Is this what we should be telling the working class? If it is true the corporate state is just the control of wages, then the corporate state can be introduced peacefully, by an act of Parliament. This became the position of the party with the passing of the counter inflation act of the spring 1973.

On February 20th, 1973, Workers Press said ‘Tory Pay Board is Corporatism’ and that ‘corporatist controls over pay will be introduced into Britain by reformist leaders giving the Pay Board acceptance and credence . . .’ On February 27th, Workers Press said ‘Pay Code Law is Corporate State.’ On March 3rd Roy Bull wrote that ‘corporatism would make Jones’ life easier by ironing out many of the clashes he now has to deal with.’ But in Germany all the Joneses were crushed and imprisoned. Yet again on March 5th we have ‘The TUC chiefs are co-operating in the abolition of fundamental trade union rights . . . secretly they welcome the corporate state in order to deal with any revolutionary mass movement that the crisis engenders.’

We give nothing to the reformists in saying they are not corporatists. Trotsky did not make any concessions when he answered Stalinist claims that the Social Democrats were social fascists. We have to get this right, in order that our party has clarity on the role of the reformist trade union leaders. We must distinguish, as Trotsky did, between a reformist, whose treachery opens the door to fascism, and fascism itself. This important difference has been obliterated in the concept of corporatism.

The party leadership have declared that the party has never said that the reformist leaders actually support the corporate state, saying simply that they ‘tend towards’ it. Yet on May 9th, Roy Bull wrote under the headline ‘Feather Boosts the Corporate State’, that Feather had ‘opened a campaign in favour of the corporate state.’ And moreover, in doing so, he had enunciated ‘the principle of the German Labour Front under fascism.’ Is this ‘tending towards’? Or is Feather a fascist?

From this we can see why the party leadership set out to make a semantic distinction between ‘corporatist’ and ‘corporatism’. Were they to admit the obvious, that a corporatist is an advocate of corporatism, they would admit that when the Workers Press calls a trade union leader a corporatist they are calling him a fascist. It is just as logical to argue that a Communist is not an advocate of Communism, a fascist only tends towards fascism, a social democrat does not advocate social democracy etc., etc.

The leadership are forced to make this impossible distinction not, of course, because they support social fascism, but from the extreme sectarian position of the party of which ‘corporatism’ is one aspect. It crept in two years ago unannounced and undisclosed, and represents a major danger in terms of the isolation of our cadres and the liquidation of our trade union work.

The ‘corporatist’ position distorts the party’s understanding of social democracy and therefore undermines the effective fight against social democracy which is central to the struggles of the working class. Central to Trotsky’s analysis of social democracy was his assertion, confirmed by events, that social democracy and fascism were antagonistic political systems. One is based on the existence of an independent workers movement – the other on its destruction. He says in The Turn of the Communist International:

No matter how true it is that the social democracy prepared the blossoming of fascism by its whole policy, it is no less true that fascism comes forward as a deadly threat primarily to that same social democracy, all of whose magnificence is inextricably bound up with parliamentary-democratic-pacifist forms and methods of government.

And in What Next?:

Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard, but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice, it is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organisations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three quarters of a century by the social democrats and the trade unions. The social democracy has prepared all the contradictions necessary for the triumph of fascism. But by this fact it has also prepared the stage for its own liquidation. It is absolutely correct to place on the social democrats the responsibility for emergency legislation of Bruning as well as for the impending danger of fascist savagery. It is absolute balderdash to identify social democracy with fascism.

And in Are There No Limits to the Fall?

The perspicacious leaders of the Comintern took note of ‘parliamentary forms’, but they forgot about the political and economic organisations of the proletariat. Not by a single word do they recall that the Social Democracy can neither live nor breathe – that is, can neither exploit democracy nor betray the workers – without leaning on the political and trade union organisations of the working class. Thus it is precisely along this line that the irreconcilable contradiction between social democracy and fascism takes place, precisely along this line does there open up the necessary and unbridgeable stage of the policies of the united front with the Social Democracy. Its attempt to leap over this stage cost the Comintern its head.

I think the material above establishes the party’s wrong position on this question. It is a position which in my view must be corrected with great urgency, but which cannot be separated from the other questions I am raising in this statement.

In the debate on the CC on this question the following quotation was produced from Trotsky’s Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay:

By transforming the trade unions into organs of the state, fascism invents nothing new, it merely draws to their ultimate conclusion the tendencies inherent in imperialism.

This was selected to show that Trotsky was a supporter of the ‘corporatist’ theory but it does nothing of the sort. Firstly the quotation says nothing about the Trade Union leaders being drawn into the service of fascism, which is the theory of the party leadership. Secondly Trotsky says the following in the same book:

Monopoly capitalism is less and less willing to reconcile itself to the independence of the trade unions. It demands of the reformist bureaucracy and the labour aristocracy who pick up the crumbs from its banqueting table that they become transformed into its political police before the eyes of the working class. If that is not achieved the labour bureaucracy is driven away and replaced by the fascists . . . all the efforts of the labour aristocracy in the service of imperialism cannot in the long run save them from destruction.

Since I have raised differences within the party the charge has been consistently levelled that I have gone ‘soft on reformism’. This is not only false, it is a diversion.

My differences with the leadership are not about whether social democracy and Stalinism are counter-revolutionary – they indisputably are. This Labour Government will seek by every means available to it to betray those workers who voted it into office. Our task is to warn continuously of this. Social Democracy is the principle agency of the ruling class within the working class. There are no differences on this score and anyone who seeks to introduce artificial differences on this question is diverting the discussion and doing the party a disservice.

What is at issue between myself and the leadership is the way in which the party should combat social democracy, and whether the methods at present used were those advocated and developed under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. It seems to me that the party has deviated from this path, as shown for instance in the theory of corporatism, which says that under pressure from the ruling class the bureaucracy becomes transformed into an instrument for introducing and administering the corporate state. This is a revision of the Marxist analysis of bureaucracy from the ultra-left. Pabloism, on the other hand, which says that bureaucracy can be forced under pressure from the masses to a revolutionary position, revises Trotsky from the opportunist right. Both of these theories are wrong. As I said in the previous section, social democracy will open the door to the corporate state, but this is different from being part of it. Both these theories in different ways help to protect the bureaucracy, which can only be fought effectively and defeated by a revolutionary party with a correct theory and a correct programme.

By overestimating the extent to which the working class as a class has broken from social democracy, we prevent the party from making the intervention necessary to break them in practice from reformism. By seeing no difference between the right and the left in the Labour Party, the party is unable to exploit the divisions within it to further expose reformism. Trotsky points out in the Transitional Programme that the party has to intervene in the ‘inner struggles’ within reformist organisations. This was the essence of the ‘Make the Left MPs fight’ campaign waged by the SLL which was a powerful campaign in the trade unions and did intervene in such a way. Today, by failing to adopt this method and tactic developed by Trotsky, we repeatedly let the reformists off the hook. We should be campaigning on issues where the maximum possible conflict is generated between the reformist bureaucracy which is defending its own privileges by serving capitalism, and the mass movement of the working class. We must build a leadership in the factories based on an implacable struggle against bureaucracy to carry this out.

Today’s position has not always been the party’s position on reformism, and I would find complete agreement with the points made by Cliff Slaughter on the Labour Party in 1972 in the pamphlet Why a Labour Government: A Reply to Some Centrist Critics, where he writes the following:

In Britain, the working class took a step in 1906, welcomed by Lenin, to form their own parliamentary party to represent trade union interests. This Labour Party is not simply a bourgeois imposition on the working class. It expressed a profound development towards political independence of the working class, and it has been necessary for the ruling class to devote gigantic resources to the corruption of its leaders.

This corruption has had dire consequences for the working class, but it will not throw away its three quarters of a century of experience of these betrayals on the basis of a series of impressions such as those which motivate the IMG petty bourgeois.

For the working class to move from the Labour Party is a dialectical change, proceeding on the basis of definite internal contradictions within reformism, and not a process of individuals reflecting on the need for change; that is the petty bourgeois impressionists idea of how history changes (as Tariq Ali’s immortal words put it in his recent book: ‘Marxism (!) maintains that consciousness determines history’)!

The working class will fight capitalism, i.e. fight the Tory government and its attacks with every weapon at its disposal, and in the first place the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Such a position, seeing the Labour Party as a weapon in the hands of the working class – even though an imperfect one – would today be considered as ‘soft on social democracy’.

Aside from my differences on the question of the Manifesto, which I have discussed earlier in this statement, there are other aspects of the election campaign to which I wish to refer. The party took the decision to stand candidates and did so in 10 constituencies. I carried through this decision and fought for the campaign in Swindon on the line laid down by the central leadership. It became increasingly obvious, as this policy was taken into practice, that standing candidates in this particular election was wrong.

The standing of candidates in an election is clearly a question of tactics, and not one of principle. Lenin in Left Wing Communism fights against abstentionism from parliamentary elections, but at no point insists that the new Communist Party must stand candidates. For Trotsky also it was a tactical question, to be determined by the actual development of the working class, and, centrally, the development of the party. This means in my view that the party would require a definite base in the working class where it stood candidates. It should have the capability of winning support of important sections of the labour movement to our candidates. The party should be seen by advanced workers as a serious contender. If these conditions are not met then the campaign does not rise above the level of a propaganda intervention.

The party has of course every right to stand candidates as and when it decides to do so, but this step should be fully and freely discussed in the movement, taking all these factors into account, and not imposed from above as a binding principle. It is wrong for the leadership to argue, as it has, that the transformation of the League into the Party turned the standing of candidates from a tactic into a principle. (At the same time important trade union elections have gone unchallenged).

In this election neither the constituencies nor the candidates were properly discussed in the party, let alone the question of standing or not standing candidates. The campaign was not based on a proper analysis of the stage of development of the party or the movement of the working class who were moving to the left and clearly were going to vote strongly for a Labour government, hoping that such a government would protect their standard of living. The role of the party therefore had to be to warn that the opposite would be the case. The Labour Government would be caught in the crisis of the system and would come into conflict with the working class as the defender of capitalism. The question of leadership of the working class under these conditions through the party stood central to this election, and had to be the cornerstone of the party’s intervention.

The most effective way for the party to fulfil this role was not by standing candidates and concentrating the entire national and regional resources of the party in 10 towns, but to launch a national campaign with public meetings, factory gate meetings, leafleting and canvassing while the party programme was tuned towards the election, giving workers a perspective, and posing the question of leadership to the working class. This could have strengthened the work in all areas, brought in important recruits, and provided the opportunity to break in to new areas of work. In the event the campaign resulted in ineffective lopsided work, and over-stretched the branches in the areas involved, turning the political work into a quantitative question.

The election campaign opened with the announcement, again after no discussion in the party, of a campaign for 3,000 new members in 10 days. This seemed to me to be a panic move, and impossible to achieve. I think this decision was an attempt at an organisational answer to what is a highly political question – the decline of the party’s forces. This decline is due in my view to the sectarian positions and wrong conceptions which I take up in this discussion document, and there is no answer simply in recruiting campaigns.

In order to attempt to achieve figures in the recruiting campaign the basis of recruitment had to be revised. Members were now recruited after a few minutes discussion, with no idea of the politics involved, to a section of the Fourth International. The vast majority of these recruits will never come into the party, and the impact on the branches in trying to bring them in under impossible conditions will be considerable. Thus the ‘drive outwards’ which is so vital to the party and which could have been so powerful in different circumstances, became a drive towards liquidationism. It will be said of course that in making these points I am opposed to rapid recruitment and to building the party. I am not. I simply think that membership of our party requires a minimum agreement on the programme and perspectives of the movement and some degree of involvement in some aspect of the work of the party. This would include sufficient political agreement to vote for our own candidate where we were standing, which was not the case with the majority ‘recruited’ during the campaign.

I was very much opposed to the constitutional changes decided upon by the Special Conference. I accept the changes of course as unchallengeable once Conference had taken the decision. But they still have to be examined against the trends in the party which I have outlined above.

I opposed the changes on the CC before they came to Conference because I think the 10 day rule and circulation of written material to members was a good one, and the right to appear direct and in person to Conference on the question of expulsion was an important right. I could not accept, as was claimed by the leadership, that we had a Menshevik constitution – 15 years with a Menshevik constitution is a long time. My view was that these changes were a preparation for a period in which the contradictions in the party must emerge, and they would then provide an organisational answer to the political questions involved.

As I have said in previous sections the thread running throughout this critique is the thread of sectarianism. It paralyses the work in the trade unions, it makes an effective fight against reformism impossible. It leads us towards wrong interventions in elections and to crash recruitment programmes, to impossible targets, and above all, through the combination of all these factors, it threatens the Workers Revolutionary Party with liquidation. As Trotsky wrote in the Transitional Programme in the section on sectarians:

At their base (the sectarians) lies a refusal to struggle for partial and transitional demands, i.e. for the elementary interests and needs of the working masses, as they are today. Preparing for revolution means to the sectarians convincing themselves of the superiority of socialism . . . They remain indifferent to the inner struggles within reformist organisations – as if one could win the masses without intervening in their daily strife! They refuse to draw a distinction between bourgeois democracy and fascism – as if the masses could help but feel the difference on every hand! . . . However sectarian influences are to be found also in our own ranks and display a ruinous influence on the work of the individual sections . . . A correct policy regarding trade unions is a basic condition for adherence to the Fourth International. He who does not seek and does not find the road to the masses is not a fighter but a dead weight to the party. A programme is formulated not for the editorial board or for the leaders of discussion clubs but for the revolutionary action of millions.

I think this passage must stand as a warning to the party of the consequences which could result from a failure to break from the wrong positions of the party and its dangerous trends towards sectarianism. It is for this reason that I place this motion before this conference. I am asking delegates to support it on the basis that, following a full discussion in the party on the points I have raised, a special conference be convened in order to concretise the programme, taking the method of Trotsky’s Transitional Programme into the living practice of the party.

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