Nothing changes unless we make them change

Why is it so many people who belong to the left cling to the Labour Party, notwithstanding all their disappointments and disillusionments. Change does not just happen, and it certainly doesn’t just come because one day Jeremy Corbyn might be prime minister at the head of a left-wing Labour government. It comes when people fight for it. And that is why we with our few hundred members determined and a steadfast monthly journal, are still optimistic and confident than all the Left with their resolutions and intrigues masking their self- doubts and internal dilemmas. There is only one possible way in which we and the Left can come together: for them to come to us. The left-wingers consistently fall into the trap of portraying the Labour Party as in some way less capitalist than the Tories. This lesser-evilism strengthens the misconception that the private sector alone constitutes the capitalist enemy, and that the state sector is not really capitalist at all, a myth which many class-conscious workers have long seen through. For the Left, why successive Labour governments have not introduced socialism has nothing to do with the nature of the Labour Party itself. They never say, for instance, that the Labour Party is a capitalist party, or that it does not want to introduce socialism, or that its policies are not socialist, merely that the leaders subvert the rank and file and mislead the grass roots. To argue that there is no alternative to the Labour Party means that there is not the slightest chance, of bringing into being an alternative mass socialist party.

By contrast, the Socialist Party hold that so-called workers organisations like the Labour Party are capitalist to their very core and its members are not surprise at being ’deceived’ and ‘betrayed’ when the Labour Party is in office. We have understood that that the only thing the working class can rely on is its own strength in class struggle and are thus never ’disappointed’ by the Labour Party since we never had any illusions about it in the first place. The left-wing such as the SWP and SPEW, never cease to claim how the working class has been ‘let down’ by the Labour Party, thus such a standpoint confuses by arguing the fact that the Labour Party is in itself not an integral part of the capitalism’s power politics. At the core of socialism lies the question of the necessity of the capture of the state machine by the working class to establish socialism, and the Labour Party has never ever accepted this task. The left gives legitimacy to the view that the working class is better served by the Labour Party than by, say, the Tories and that socialism could, given a bit more determination from the Labour leadership, come about through the kind of reformist measures associated with the Labour Party. Only by breaking loose from labourism can the working class come to rely not on reformist means to advance their interests, but solely on their own class struggles and a genuine socialist party to wage war on the political field. For genuine socialists, the prospect of the Labour Party’s collapse as a mass organisation is to be welcomed.  

There are those who endeavor to portray the Labour Party as containing a socialist membership ready at any time to burst free from the trammels of its leadership and today Jeremy Corbyn is being cited as the party-leader who will act as the catalyst for this. For those who have seen through the role of the Labour Party, however, such affairs are of no concern – let the party tear itself to pieces, with its internecine strife, it is not up to socialists to prescribe remedies to ailing capitalist parties. On the contrary, they should be demoralised as much as possible; all the Labour Party’s contradictions should be used for the sole purpose of exacerbating them, and exposing its capitalist nature to the masses, so as to accelerate its demise, not give it a new lease of life as the Left would have us do.

Obviously there are many in the Labour Party who are sincere workers seeking solutions to the social problems they face and the individual members of the Socialist Party will engage with individual Labour Party members on a particular issue or issues that come up in the daily class struggle we all face together but no degree of cooperation with individual members absolves The Socialist Party from its duty to expose the Labour Party’s class nature. By working in the unions, for instance, with Labour Party members, is not conceding that this party, is in fact a workers’ party. A party’s class nature is determined not by who its members are, or who votes for it, but by its political line, i.e. whose interests it actually serves. Just because many workers still vote for the Labour Party when it promises their version of a ‘socialism’, that does not mean that it is a workers’ party any more than the Liberal Party was at the end of the last century when most working-class electors voted for it. (Those that declare that the Labour Party is ‘the party of the working class’ and that ‘there is no alternative to it.’ Now face the situation, electorally, a major part of the working class which do not vote but now do so for Scottish or Welsh nationalists.) The Labour Party’s political line is to contain working class opposition within the increasingly narrow bounds prescribed by capitalist class rule. The Labour Party is thus prolonging capitalist class rule - it is a capitalist, not a workers’ party. Thus, though its mass base may include some working class elements, its class nature remains capitalist. The Socialist Party is very clear in our standpoint towards the Labour Party. It is a product of capitalism and has been tied to capitalism from its inception. It is consequently dominated by pro-capitalist careerists and intellectuals despite a few exceptions.

The Socialist Party has never opposed trade-union action as ‘reformist’. Far from it; right from the start in its original manifesto the SPGB declared that it was in agreement with “working-class action on the industrial field when based on a clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism and the class struggle necessarily resulting therefrom”, but that it was opposed to “all activities of unions in support of capitalism or tending to sidetrack workers from the only path that can lead to their emancipation”. In our view trade-union action is necessary under capitalism, but is limited by being of an essentially defensive nature. To overcome this limitation the workers need to organise themselves into a socialist political party aiming solely at the capture of political power to establish socialism (i.e. the so-called maximum programme).

We need the deepest possible roots in the new protest movements and the working class. And this requires that we educate, organise and agitate to the best of our ability and resources. Our roots in the socialist tradition and this tradition speaks emphatically on every issue. Socialism will abolish the landlord class, the capitalist class, and the working-class. That is revolution; that the working-class, by its actions, will one day abolish class distinctions. Defeats experienced by the working class movement, however, have led to despair and cynicism, to the feeling that the real world will never change. It is no surprise that many workers and activists grasp at straws when the likes of Jeremy Corbyn gains some popularity. But that is not enough in itself. The dominant idea still prevails that the dream of socialism is impossible to achieve so we must settle for compromise and concessions. The only way to combat this reformism is by education in Marxism. People have to be taught the

basic principles of the Marxist analysis of how society has developed and can be changed, to learn the lessons of past working class struggles, how we can understand the modern world, and way the capitalist economy works on behalf of the owning class. People need continually to deepen their understanding of these matters, so that they can cope with all the arguments thrown against them. Some of us are not usually able to put across those ideas themselves in an effective manner and we may well be overawed by some academic putting across opposing ideas. Sometimes we simply do not possess the confidence to put across socialist ideas outside the confines of comrades and friends.  Two things are usually necessary to give this confidence: reading articles and books, and an opportunity to discuss the ideas in a non-intimidating atmosphere, where we are not going to be attacked for getting something wrong. In this way our own organisation may attract a substantial measure of support and to hold out a genuine promise of further growth.