It is obvious that if we are to wage the class struggle successfully, we need correct strategy and tactics; and that correct strategy and tactics depends on understanding what is really happening in the world and why. The opportunists in the Trade Unions – both “left” and “right” – work to damage our fight back and protect the capitalist system, and the ruling class, by covering up the nature of the capitalist crisis.
The most dangerous of the opportunists are the revisionist “Communist” Party of Great Britain (CPGB). They are “revisionist” because they have revised the fundamental truths of Marxism-Leninism. They cover up the real degenerate nature of the capitalist system and deny the revolutionary task of the working class to destroy the capitalist state and establish its own political power. They are the most dangerous enemy within the working class movement because at the same time as doing this, they hide behind borrowed phrases of Marx and Lenin and portray themselves as the most “class conscious” section of the working class.
When the CPGB was a revolutionary party over 25 years ago, it correctly armed the working class with an understanding that the periodic crises of capitalism are real crises. The crises of capitalism inevitably occur because of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system. Under capitalism crises can no more be avoided than can a human being escape eventual death. In a boom period capitalist monopolies expand production in competition with other monopolies. This competition inevitably leads to overproduction, too many goods on the market. It is not that the working people do not want the goods they just can’t afford them. Profits drop and the boom turns into a slump as each capitalist is forced to cut production and increase the productivity of each worker – increase the rate of exploitation. Factories are shut down, others are rationalised, workers are thrown on the scrap heap, real wages are cut through inflation and through increased taxation. As the capitalist state prints money it borrows heavily and taxes the people in order to raise funds to bailout the monopolies. This is all to bolster up the sick capitalist system, and to protect the profits of the parasites. The inevitable crises, lead equally inevitably to an all out attack by the capitalists and their state on the working class, to increase the rate of exploitation, and to attempt to force the working classes to pay for the bosses crisis.
Is this not what is happening today? Of course it is. Has the leopard changed its spots? Of course not! Take British Leyland for example. British Leyland was in crisis. It was losing the international battle of the car giants. It could not even raise the capital to re-equip the production lines. The capitalist state stepped in. It appointed a fascist South African – Edwardes – to take charge. It raised the capital needed, £2,090 million, by printing money, (thus boosting inflation) borrowing and by taxing the working class. It is “solving” the problem of overproduction – Edwardes states that production capacity of British Leyland is 1,000,000 cars, but Leyland can only sell 819,000 – by closing factories such as the Speke plant, and rationalising others. It is boosting profits by holding down wages through the Labour Government’s 5% limit, while prices rise more, and, through demanding increased productivity per worker. The problems of Leyland are being solved by an all out attack on the working class. This is not just happening in Leyland. Leyland is just one example of how the capitalist crisis is being temporarily “solved” at our expense throughout the capitalist system.
Such crises, and the consequent attacks on the working class were inevitable in the capitalist system and will only be eliminated through the seizure of political power – state power – by the working class, and through the exercising of that power to destroy the capitalist system and construct socialism. Only state planning in the interest of the working class can reduce and finally eliminate’ the influence of the “economic laws” of capitalism. That is why in Socialist China production constantly expands. There is no inflation. Prices are the same now, and in some cases less than in 1950. Wages are increased on a planned basis. There is no unemployment. The “right to work” is guaranteed in the constitution. Services such as health and education improve every year, and serve the people.
In the 1930’s the CPGB understood this. It was a revolutionary party. Today it has degenerated. It is an out-an-out reformist party. It is an opportunist party, which serves the ruling class by diverting class struggle into harmless channels. Today it says that crises can be avoided if only the government would follow different policies – so called “left” policies. Its “counter-crisis programme” proposes “nationalisation of the big firms” as a first step; like at Leyland perhaps! Thus they portray nationalisation as “socialism”, and divert Leyland workers and others from struggling against state monopoly capitalist Leyland just as they struggled against private capitalist Leyland. They say the state should print more money to pay higher wages, and hide the fact that this is how the state creates inflation to boost profits and cut real wages. They even call for higher interest to be paid to overseas investors! This is nothing but an attempt to boost the profits of U.S. imperialism. Where will the extra interest, the extra profit, come from? The greater exploitation of the working class of course, but they don’t say that bit. Through such bourgeois garbage they attempt to prettify the parasitic imperialist system in which we live and to paint a rosy picture of how well the workers could live under capitalism “if only” capitalism was reformed through more enlightened management following “left” policies. Such reformist attempts to divert the working class from revolutionary struggle were rightly condemned by the CPGB of the thirties. Today it is their own programme.
The opportunism of the Labour Government and their open supporters in the Trade Unions takes a different form. They openly say that there is indeed a crisis. They openly set out to restore the profitability of capitalism – both state capitalism and private capitalism – by calling upon the working class to swallow “one more bitter pill”: whilst each year they see “light at the end of the tunnel”. Every year they promise “jam tomorrow”, and paint a picture of having “full-blooded socialism” – after the next election of course. Such cynical lies attempt to cover up the fact that they do everything in their power to save capitalism today – at the expense of the working class. Whilst saying that the crisis, with wage cuts and unemployment, is inevitable, they also say that there is nothing we can do about it, and call on the working class to give up struggle and lie down, while the bosses ride roughshed over us to patch up their crumbling system.
Both these views – that of the CPGB and the Labour Party leadership – must be rejected. We can stop exploitation and oppression. We can stop crisis, inflation and unemployment. We can stop it by overthrowing the capitalist state by socialist revolution, and by introducing socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. And we must fight back now to build up our strength – not by pleading for “changes of policy”; but by fighting class against class, by militant mass action. We must openly state “We will not pay for the bosses crisis”. We must fight wage cuts through such Swindles as the social contract. We must fight factory shut downs, rationalisation programmes and speed up. We must fight hospital closures, and cuts in health, education, and social services. And we must fight with our eyes open, knowing that the final solution can only be the socialist revolution.
But to fight the ruling class, means that we must also root out their agents in the working class movement. Within the Trade Unions that means waging an all out struggle against opportunists of all kinds in the course of fighting the bosses. The opportunists are in the front rank in the ruling class’s defence. We cannot tight the bosses effectively unless we combine this with an unrelenting struggle against opportunism and so turn the unions into fighting class organisations.