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From Socialist Worker, No. 103, 4 January 1969, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
1968 WAS A MOMENTOUS year, but we must be careful in analysing the prospects it has opened up.
The May uprising in France has shown the revolutionary potential of the working class in the advanced capitalist societies.
Events in Poland then Czechoslovakia revealed the rumblings of working-class opposition in the state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe.
The heroic National Liberation Front of South Vietnam have undermined the will of the mightiest power the world has ever known.
And recently strikes in Italy have again underlined the potential for revolutionary activity in Western Europe.
But these tremendous developments must not beguile us into thinking that the end of capitalism is at hand.
The strength of the system is revealed most of all on the national economic level in Britain. The confrontations between the government and the labour movement which many expected have not really materialised.
The government uses the language of ‘the national interest’, ‘not rocking the boat’ and ‘pulling ones weight’ not to crush the organised working class but to get the orthodox trade union leaders to discipline their own members.
The overall hesitation of the ruling class was reflected in the half-hearted proposals of the Donovan Report on the unions. What is required, if it can possibly be achieved, is for the trade unions to castrate themselves. An open attack on the unions would force a break which Wilson would prefer to avoid.
The attack has occurred on two fronts. On the one hand there is Barbara Castle peddling the government’s 3½ per cent norm for wage rises. On the other, there are the employers who say ‘We’ll give you the rises you want in return for productivity deals.’
So far the strategy has worked well. Profits have risen – their growth rate is now back at the level reached at the last peak in the. third and fourth quarters of 1964.
Dividends are up – so for that matter are prices and taxes on consumers. The fact is that British capitalism has improved itself, at the expense of the British working class.
This shows itself not only in frozen wage increases or once-and-for-all increases obtained in sacrifices of years of hard-won industrial rights and protections.
It is also seen in the massive rise in prices, the savage attacks on welfare expenditure and the perpetual sacrifice of groups who are least able to organise, such as the old age pensioners. (After all what do old age pensioners export!)
The school building programme has been pegged at £119m. Taking price rises into account this is a slashing cut in an area where need, especially in working class areas, has become acute.
Council rents soar. Taxation is increasingly regressive – it takes from the poor to give to the rich.
Different sectors of the working class have been hit differentially, and some, by giving up more of their protective positions, have been able to maintain their wage increases just above that of prices.
But the quality of life, both present and future, has been drastically attacked. This will reveal itself as the deterioration of the education, health and welfare services absorb the effects of conscious government policy.
It will also be seen as groups of workers least able to help themselves are increasingly made to pay for the rationalisation of British capitalism. It is already seen in the deterioration of working conditions of vast numbers of workers covered by ‘productivity’ deals.
Only a social democratic government such as the Labour government trading on deep loyalties in the working class could have got away with such attacks without provoking class warfare.
A so-called socialist government has taken steps to revamp British capitalism. It has redefined socialism to mean increased production, economic growth and technological revolution as ends in themselves.
With this approach (clearly that of capitalism and nothing to do with the historic struggle for socialism as the emancipation of the working, class) the only threat which worries the Labour government is that of the working class itself.
As Wilson put it at the Labour Party conference last year: ‘Production, productivity, exports – everything we have achieved at so great a cost – can be imperilled by ill-considered industrial action whose effect can only be to put the employment of so many of our people at risk.’
What increased productivity really means is reduced labour costs so that the share of profits in the national cake can be increased. In reality it means harder work in the shape of speed-up or flexibility, or reduction in fringe benefits and deterioration of conditions.
The labour movement has paid for the modernisation of capital. Britain’s competitive position has improved – we can now undercut foreign workers in some spheres, leading to their employers trying to increase their exploitation.
The underlying economic situation for British capitalism is slowly improving though it still faces huge obstacles. In particular the poverty of technological education is likely to lead to acute shortages of certain types of skilled labour.
Yet all that the capitalist Labour government has achieved is repeatedly threatened by the world financial situation. Increased rationality of individual capitalist countries leads to cut-throat competition between them.
The position of sterling as a reserve currency makes it vulnerable to every irrationality in the world capitalist system.
In this situation sections of the ruling class are prone to panic. A panic over the May events in France (now referred to on the BBC as ‘the May riots’), a panic over the Vietnam demonstration in October, and only a couple of weeks ago, The Times’s own special brand of hysteria with the call for a national government.
The most alarming form this panic has taken so far has been the cold-blooded attempt by Enoch Powell to exploit racialism as a means of building a right-wing base for himself inside and to the right of the Tory Party.
As yet the ruling class has seen fit to repudiate such racialist phrase-mongering (after a period of hesitation of course) but for the first time since the Nazis we have a clear indication of what the ruling class will resort to if sufficiently rattled.
Wilson has done the dirty work of undermining, the traditional defences of the working class, and now the Tories are screaming for the right to follow it up with direct attacks on the trade unions.
The Labour government, sensitive to the slightest criticism from the right, is itself threatening attacks on the right to strike to appease the employers and the international moneylenders.
The very nature of the attack on the working class has perpetuated the fragmentation of the class. It has not been experienced as an attack on the class as a whole.
This has had political consequences of vital significance for revolutionaries. There has been a massive erosion of organisational support for the Labour Party but the need has not been felt for a total alternative – and where there has been such a need there has been no alternative available.
For the class as a whole there are stirrings of disaffection but the connections are not being made – between one group of workers and another, between the industrial struggle and the tenants’ struggle, between the war in Vietnam and the war in Britain.
There is, in short, a vacuum on the Left.
What this calls for is patient political propaganda. The real lesson of the May events in France is how such momentous movement of the class can occur in a situation of low levels of political awareness – both before and after.
What is needed as a step in the direction of building a revolutionary party is unity on the Left in Britain. The call which the International Socialists put out last April for unity must be pursued wherever possible.
The Left in Britain is small, it is isolated, it too is fragmented. If the class should move in Britain as it did in France well and good. But our ability to be able to help and influence such a development will depend on what we build before and during such a movement.
Capitalism will not crumble because one day the system stops working, nor because a self-proclaimed leadership shouts boo to it and exposes everyone (themselves excluded) as traitors and finks.
Socialism will be the self-conscious liberation of the working class,, when the organised working class overthrows the capitalist system.
We must view our work in this light and an important step in this direction can be a regrouping of the marxist Left in this country.
In this respect the past year gives us room for cautious optimism.
While British capitalism is in the process of reorganisation many opportunities are opened up. We must be sure we do not spurn them.
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Last updated: 22 October 2020