07.04.2010

The road to working class revolution

Nick Rogers raises criticisms and identifies omissions in the amended Draft programme proposed by the CPGB leadership

The Provisional Central Committee has performed an important service for the working class movement by producing an updated version of the draft programme of the CPGB.^[1] A programme is an important tool for guiding communists and working class militants in the struggle to overthrow capitalism. It also allows the working class to hold the leadership of the Communist Party to account in the sense of exposing any break with the political principles and strategic direction set out in the programme.

The current draft is an edited version of the original published in 1995. The basic structure and much of the content of the draft remains unaltered. Important sections on Europe and the environment have been added and some other extensive revisions have been made.  The pages of the Weekly Worker have been thrown open to debate on the contents of the Draft programme. A number of non-members of the CPGB have taken up the offer. As a member of the CPGB I want to highlight areas of disagreement.

Much of the draft is excellent. However, in my view, it also contains significant omissions and weaknesses. In summary these are:
(a) a failure to discuss the capitalist neoliberal offensive of the last 30 years;
(b) a minimum programme that leaves out a number of important policy areas, and in some of its demands displays a lack of militancy;
(c) a section on working class revolution that does not highlight the independent role of the working class and omits the international context; and
(d) draft party rules that conflict in part with the programmatic discussion of party organisation.

Neoliberalism

It is important that the working class understands the nature of the system that exploits and oppresses it in order to appreciate the tasks that lie ahead in the struggle to replace that system. The sections ‘Our epoch’ and ‘Capitalism in Britain’ serve this purpose.

However, there is no discussion of the global anti-working class offensive of the capitalist class of the last 30 years. ‘Capitalism in Britain’ does talk about the British version of the phenomenon: “Though it was most spectacularly carried through using the carrot of home ownership and share buying, the erosion of the social democratic settlement, beginning in the late 1970s, testified to the diminishing strength of British imperialism … all manner of authoritarian measures were enacted - laws against trade union activity, laws limiting free speech, laws curbing demonstrations. The reversal of the social democratic settlement proves yet again that reforms workers gain under capitalism are liable to be lost, given new conditions” (section 2.1).

This is a rather parochial contextualisation of a strategic direction for the world capitalist class. The “diminishing strength of British imperialism” cannot be an accurate explanation for neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism reflects a number of capitalist objectives. One aspect is an attempt by United States imperialism from the 1970s onwards to free itself from the constraints of the post-World War II international economic architecture by floating the dollar and unleashing the power of US financial institutions on the world - an arrangement Peter Gowan dubbed the “dollar-wall street regime”.^[2] In this guise neoliberalism has allowed the US to use the dominance of the dollar to set global exchange rates and interest rates that suit the interests of US capitalists and the projection of US imperial power. It has also allowed all the major imperialist powers to force open the markets of weaker capitalist countries with devastating effects at different times across regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia.

A second objective of neoliberalism is simply to discipline the working class. This aspect has been adopted to varying degrees by all capitalist ruling classes. Three decades of the “social democratic settlement” (itself a global phenomenon) culminated in an upsurge of working class militancy at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s. The 1970s were also a period of economic crisis for the ‘Keynesian’ precepts that had guided capitalist economic policy-makers with the appearance of a combination of stagnating or declining economic growth and high inflation rates (stagflation). Something had to give. In the absence of a principled Communist Party providing the leadership that would have enabled the working class to establish its political hegemony, the capitalist class provided a solution.

The Draft programme mentions the Thatcherite legal assault on trade union and civil rights. The principal component of the offensive globally was the decision to abandon the post-war commitment to full employment. In fact economic policy was readjusted to mandate a ‘non-inflationary’ level of unemployment - the ‘reserve army of labour’ was to be recreated.

The Draft programme is wrong to suggest that “unemployment is an inevitable by-product of capitalism” (section 3.6). Unemployment - and the concomitant fear of the employed that someone else will take your job - is central to the ability of capitalists to control workers and hold down wages and conditions.

State industries were privatised primarily as a means of subjecting the most organised sections of the working class to ‘market discipline’. The strongest hold-outs of the working class militancy were subjected to the strictest market discipline of all - they were forced to the wall. The British coal mining industry is the starkest example, but industries in many countries was shifted in part or wholly to centres of non-unionised, lower-wage production, whether in eastern Europe, the southern states of the US, or the Far East.

Was this a sign of weakness for either imperialism or capitalism? Hardly. For the capitalist class the terms of the class struggle with the working class have turned decisively in favour of employers and ruling elites. Trade union membership has fallen around the globe. The number of days lost to strikes has collapsed compared to 1970s levels. Social democratic and bourgeois workers’ parties have capitulated to the prevailing ruling class strategy, sometimes taking the initiative in pushing through privatisations and reductions in working class conditions. Crucially, wage rates have either stagnated (as in the United States) or risen more slowly than in the post-war years, allowing profits to take a larger proportion of the social product.

The Draft programme does make the following observation: “Workers suffer relative pauperisation. Compared with capital, wages tend to shrink ... During periods of stagnation and crisis, through unemployment, wage cuts, intensification of labour, longer hours, temporary contracts, etc, capitalism assaults the existing cultural level of the masses - meagre and impoverished though it is. Hard-won wage rates, trade union rights and legal restrictions imposed on exploitation are damned as heresy by the high representatives of the dollar, euro, pound and yen” (section 1.2).

However, the programme does not place these developments in the context of the changed strategic direction of the capitalist class. After all, these were not generally the experiences of the working class in the three decades of social democracy. Even in the poorest countries of the third world, most governments strengthened labour rights and subsidised basic commodities. That era is now over.

A third objective of neoliberalism has been to expand the space for capitalist profit-making. This has been achieved geographically by overthrowing non-capitalist states or encouraging them to enter the global capitalist market. Within existing capitalist countries state industries have been sold off; ‘market mechanisms’ and contracting-out have been introduced in sectors such as health and education, where the full withdrawal of the state is politically tricky.

This has a bearing on what this version of the Draft programme characterises as capitalist ‘decline’ (section 1, preface). Neoliberalism has allowed the capitalist class to offset (or roll back) many of the features associated with ‘decline’. Concessions to the organised working class (politically, socially and industrially) radically weakened. State micro-management of particular economic sectors has been substantially reduced. The emphasis on macro-management has changed, with genuine moves to focus on ‘inflation targeting’ via independent (ie, partly privatised) central banks rather than on growth and jobs.

The reversal of ‘decline’ is partial and contradictory: privatisation has often required the state to set up tight regulation of the privatised monopolies; the most dynamic parts of the world economy, in China and east Asia, have the greatest degree of state control (and ownership); in the US, Reagan and Bush junior have run deficit economic regimes; government social expenditure as a proportion of GNP generally has not declined.

However, we should resist ascribing capitalist economic growth over the period since 1945 to the “arms economy”. This is a lazy analysis. The concept of “military Keynesianism” (section 1.3) simply does not stand up to serious examination. The military component of government expenditure is just not very effective at delivering a Keynesian economic boost. It is capital-intensive and, therefore, will create far fewer jobs than expenditure on sectors such as health, education and house-building, which in all the advanced capitalist countries are much larger than the military sector.

The military sector in the US (and to some extent in Britain) has been a way for the state to help US (and British) capitalists preserve a technological advantage. But German and Japanese capitalists, in the absence of a sizeable military-industrial complex, have not done too badly in the technology stakes.

The renewed confidence of the capitalist class enables us to understand the response to the financial crisis of 2008. Keynesian-style rescue packages were a viable option precisely because the existing organisations of the working class had been defeated during the preceding period. It was calculated that government intervention would not strengthen the working class industrially or lead to demands for increased social expenditure.

Now, the fact that the financial institutions were bailed out to the tune of billions is being set up as an excuse to launch an even more determined assault on the surviving institutions of the social democratic settlement and on working class wages and conditions - especially in the public sector. Unless the working class fights back, this will see a new, even more vicious phase of neoliberalism.

A fightback is objectively possible. The working class is larger and more international than ever. New communication technologies and relatively cheap transport make building an international workers’ movement more feasible than ever.

The Draft programme can play a crucial role in building a renewed sense of working class combativeness and pointing towards the ultimate solution of seizing state power. But only if it starts with an understanding that a fightback is necessary.

Minimum programme

The section entitled ‘Immediate demands’ reflects the strengths of the Draft programme as a whole. In particular, a resolute determination to avoid the trap of economism. Economic and social demands are represented here, but the section correctly leads with a strengthened series of demands around democracy and politics (these were not presented in anything like as comprehensive and cohesive a manner in the 1995 Draft programme). Democratic demands are the key to transforming the class struggle over the division of the social product into a contest for the political leadership of society.

That said, economic and social demands are important, reflecting the fact that we are fighting against the economic exploitation and social oppression of workers. Some of the economic demands strike me as excessively modest. A maximum five-day week and seven-hour day with six weeks’ holiday leave a year (section 3.4) simply extend the best of existing conditions achieved by many workers to the whole working class. The 35-hour week is already a statutory right in France - even if weakened by Sarkozy.

Only the suggestion that those in “dangerous or particularly demanding” occupations (section 3.4) should work shorter hours and a “maximum six-hour working day for all nursing mothers” (section 3.11), point to the possibility for rapidly reducing working hours that are opened up by advances in technology.

Similarly, “a minimum net wage to reflect the value of unskilled labour-power” (also section 3.4) is a strange formulation to use in a communist programme. I presume this refers to the ‘exchange value’ of labour-power: ie, the irreducible minimum (taking account of specific historic and social norms) that is required to reproduce the worker and his or her family (or one worker and one child, as this section stipulates).

The demand that workers be paid the equivalent of the ‘use value’ of their labour-power would mean that workers received in full the new value they added to the commodities they produced. Exploitation would be ended at a stroke. This is what Paul Cockshott proposes.^[3] As I explain later, this raises problems of its own.

In the simplest version of class relations set out by Marx the exchange value of labour-power is the amount that capitalists already pay their workers. In this model no legal intervention is required because capitalists as a class have an interest in ensuring a supply of workers into the future. In reality, there are many circumstances in which individual capitalists are quite happy if they can get away with it to pay below the value of labour-power and damn the social consequences. For many capitalists short-term profit will trump long-term class interests.

A statutory minimum wage seeks to force all capitalists to meet minimum standards. In this sense it can serve the collective interests of capitalists as a whole. The Draft programme needs to go beyond such a conception of the minimum wage to talk about what workers need to lead rich and fulfilling lives - to start moving beyond the constraints of capitalism.

Neither do the provisions for maternity pay seem excessively generous - a total of nine months’ paid leave, of which three months must be taken before the birth of the child (section 3.11). Many current maternity arrangements allow for up to a year off work, although few, if any, would pay full wages, as the programme insists, for all this period.

Fully-paid paternity leave of six months is a big advance on what is currently available (also section 3.11).

A state pension set at the level of the minimum wage (section 3.13) does not address the struggles being fought over the ‘deferred wages’ of the working class. Retirement would continue to condemn many workers to a sharp drop in their living standards. That is why occupational pensions are a major bone of contention in the neoliberal attempt to reduce the costs of employing workers. The Draft programme is silent on this.

I have suggested a state income-related pension that ensures everyone on up to, say, twice average earnings receives at least 80% of what they received when employed.^[4]

I think what the Draft programme has to say about education policy is generally pretty good. We need to discuss what role is envisaged for religious and private schools (section 3.12). Should not attendance in public education be compulsory for all children?

There are several areas of policy not covered by the ‘Immediate demands’ which feature prominently in working class struggles. Health and housing stand out.

On health, we should map out a vision of an integrated health service focused on prevention, tackling the causes of ill-health that reduce the comparative life expectancy of the poorest in our society. This would probably be a health service organised around clinics incorporating dental and optician services, as well as the more traditional GP and nursing services.

A health service devoted to serving the whole population would need to be integrated with a pharmaceutical industry serving human need rather than profit.

Housing is a curious omission, given the role the Draft programme ascribes to the housing policy of the Thatcher government in facilitating the launch of neoliberalism in Britain. A socialist housing policy would need to challenge the conception of housing as an investment tool rather than a basic human requirement.

On racism, the Draft programme has only the following to say in the section on ‘Migrant workers’: “The capitalist state in Britain now has an official ideology of anti-racism. That in no way contradicts the national chauvinist consensus which champions British imperialism’s interest against foreign rivals and sets worker against worker” (section 3.5).

Is the Draft programme suggesting that racism (as opposed to national chauvinism) is dead in Britain today? That winning a degree of legal protection (after struggles led predominantly by the workers’ movement) against racial discrimination by employers and landlords is the end of the story?

There are laws supposedly outlawing discrimination against women and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The Draft programme correctly takes up the struggles against these oppressions. It should take up racism also. The poorer employment opportunities for black and Asian people and the disproportionate use of police stop-and-search powers demonstrate that racism remains a live working class issue. The “political economy of the working class” (section 1.4) also encompasses the struggle against social oppression.

Revolution

The ‘Immediate demands’ section has a dual role. As we have seen, it sets out demands designed to inform the struggles of the working class within capitalism. But the section also serves as the programme that a victorious working class would put into effect immediately after taking power.

As the preface to the Draft programme puts it, these are “the immediate political, social and economic measures required for winning the battle for democracy and ensuring that the market and the principle of capitalist profit is subordinated to the principle of human need. Such a minimum programme is, admittedly, technically feasible under capitalism. However, it can only be fully realised through the working class taking power - not only in Britain, but on a continental European scale.”

There is a tension between these two roles that the Draft programme does not fully resolve. For instance, the section on militia (3.10) correctly identifies the opposition of communists to a standing army and our support for the armed people, but shies away from explicitly raising the demand for a people’s militia on the ground that it “will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state”. It then goes on to call for the workers to seize every opportunity to arm themselves, raises demands for soldiers’ councils, the election of officers and the right of people to bear arms and defend themselves as if these can be voluntarily achieved under the current social system. The demand for the abolition of the standing army is not raised.

Yet in the section on the ‘Character of the revolution’ the following principle is stated: “The existing armed forces and the police will be disbanded. In their place there will be a people’s militia that will embody the right of everyone to bear arms”  (section 4.2).

Surely we do not only raise demands in the here and now that we predict the capitalist class will concede? How many of our other demands will be willingly conceded by the capitalist class? What is the point of articulating demands if they do not take the struggle of the working class beyond the constraints of the capitalist order?

Our immediate demands should raise everything that is necessary for the working class to lead a truly human existence - given the current level of productive potential - and the full set of democratic changes that are necessary for the working class to rule. A standing army under the control of the capitalist class is incompatible with a genuine democracy. That understanding should be central to our propaganda and political activity and should be part of the minimum programme.

While the immediate demands should be a bald statement of what is necessary (even if not achievable under capitalism), the programme should certainly indicate the difficulties that face the working class in implementing it. The obvious place to discuss these issues is in section 4 on the working class revolution. Currently, this section is not as vividly written as it could be.

We are talking about a process of working class revolution that will emancipate humanity from exploitation and oppression. More than half the section is composed of an in-depth discussion of the balance of class forces and the need to play off conflicting sections of the bourgeoisie and attempt to align with the middle class. Fair enough - although what we are actually talking about here is the everyday politics of manoeuvring within a capitalist society, not just the politics of revolution - but what about the liberating steps that the working class will need to take to free itself from the dictatorship of capital?

It is here that we ought to be talking about the role of councils of action (section 3.9), which finds itself marooned amongst the immediate demands. And it is here that we ought to discuss the need for the working class to arm itself and to intervene amongst the rank and file in the army. I do not notice us raising either of these as immediate demands or taking steps to implement them. Both councils of action and arming the working class are strategic and tactical questions that come onto our agenda as circumstances develop and as the working class begins to take action on its own behalf. By contrast, we place our immediate demands before the working class and before society at every opportunity.

Similarly, the section on the working class constitution is fairly lifeless. I have argued^[5] for “a single popular assembly composed of delegates who are elected and recallable at any time” serving as the “supreme power in the state” (section 4.2). I believe in directly elected delegates, as opposed to hierarchical structures of lower committees electing higher committees. Hierarchical structures over time tend to dilute democratic accountability. Although how we would reconcile recallable delegates and election by proportional representation is a conundrum that the PCC has still not answered.

However, working class revolution will create a multitude of democratic forms at all levels of society. The rule of the working class involves the self-rule of workers in their workplaces and their localities and a ferment of experimentation with new political forms that will inform the nature and structure of the working class state. The Draft programme barely hints at this.

In this context, the suggestion that there will be a constitutional provision that will allow only “revolutionary” parties to contest for power misses the point and positively damages our cause. We should not draft a programme that effectively informs all the bourgeois parties (Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Green, SNP etc) that they will be proscribed by the new revolutionary order. Acts against revolutionary legality should be resisted - whenever possible by tackling the individuals or groups directly responsible for attempts at ‘counterrevolution’. The presumption should be that we will allow the fullest possible degree of political freedom. Certainly greater than that countenanced by the capitalist ruling class. It is the working class who should be allowed to determine who does and who does not act in their interests. Limitations on working class democracy to purportedly prevent the restoration of capitalist rule are the route to political degeneration and ultimate defeat.

The discussion of economic policy in the ‘Immediate demands’ and ‘Character of the revolution’ sections also suffers from the tension between demands made of the capitalist state and a programme to be implemented by the working class. It would obviously be ludicrous to call for the capitalist state to implement a socialist economic policy. Until the “battle for democracy” has been won, measures of nationalisation or state intervention can at best be palliatives against the worst effects of the capitalist economic system. The capitalist state will always use them to bolster the position of the class it serves - just as it will also use privatisation to the same end.

Yet the Draft programme offers little clarity on this distinction. The ‘Immediate demands’ talk about certain measures of nationalisation (land, banks, financial services and basic infrastructure) that “serve the interests of the workers”, while condemning “wholesale nationalisation” in the context of globalised production as “objectively reactionary” (section 3.7).

Later the ‘Immediate demands’ urge “encouragement for the formation of producers’ cooperatives through the provision of scientific and technical advice, research facilities, administrative machinery, grants for capital improvements, etc” (section 3.18). Almost identical to the ‘Lassallean’ demand for state aid to cooperative societies that Marx condemned in his Critique of the Gotha programme - although in this case they apply primarily to farmers and the petty bourgeoisie.

In this draft, the global context of economic policy-making (or any other aspect of the seizure of power by the working class) does not feature in the discussion of revolution. The 1995 Draft programme argued that “the full socialisation of production in Britain is dependent on and can only proceed in line with the completion of the world revolution”. Now, “the full socialisation of production is dependent on and can only proceed in line with the withering away of skill monopolies of the middle class and hence the division of labour” (section 4.3).

The abolition of the division of labour is a prerequisite for the withering away of the state and the building of communism. To make it a prerequisite for building a fully socialist economy is entirely utopian and puts the cart before the horse. It is rather the socialisation of production that will begin to break down the division of labour. The Draft programme sets out some of the measures that will move society in this direction: eg, “managers to be elected and rotated through short terms of office”, and “all important decisions relating to production, hiring and firing, etc must be ratified by workers’ committees” (section 4.3). A socialist education policy will also have an important role.

Perhaps the problem begins with the definition of socialism provided by the Draft programme. It states that, “Socialism is not a mode of production. It is the transition from capitalism to communism. Socialism is communism which emerges from capitalist society. It begins as capitalism with a workers’ state.” Shortly afterwards it says “in general socialism is defined as the rule of the working class” (section 5, preface).

I think we have a difference of opinion over theory if we assert that, as soon as the workers have taken political power, socialism begins. It is true that socialism is a transitional phase. That it is a class state. That nationalisation in and of itself is not the same thing as socialism. But the “rule of the working class” must involve some modicum of rule over the economy and society. Otherwise it is meaningless. Simply placing an equals sign between workers’ political power and socialism is not correct. Otherwise, we are left with the nonsense of suggesting that the two months of Paris commune were socialism. Or that socialism began in Russia in October 1917.

What of Marx’s distributional principle for the “lower stage of communism” - ie, socialism: ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their work’? That is not the distributional principle of a capitalist economy in which surplus value is still being extracted. Only when economic exploitation is ended can we really talk of a socialist economy.

Paul Cockshott, however, is wrong to suggest that exploitation can be legislated away. His proposal that all workers should legally receive the full value of their labour-power encounters a number of problems. First, this cannot be calculated on the basis of individual workers or individual enterprises, but only across the whole of society (and globally for that matter). Second, the whole of the value of production cannot be distributed for consumption. There is a need to make provision for all sorts of collective needs and to invest in future production. Third, no capitalist enterprise could continue to operate without extracting surplus value. To abolish exploitation without recognising that this would involve the abolition of capitalism - and without making prior provision for running the economy on an entirely non-capitalist basis - would be economically disastrous.

Something of the same caveat applies to the proposal in the Draft programme that limited liability be abolished (section 4.3). This would effectively chop off at the knees any remaining capitalist sector. Such a legal provision is simply incompatible with anything other than a pretty much fully socialised economy.

What the discussion of socialism in the Draft programme leaves out is any conception that the working class might have something to say about how economic affairs are to be conducted. The flowering of democratic forms that the rule of the working class will usher in will challenge very directly the norms of capitalist-run enterprises. It simply is not realistic to expect workers to accept that “full socialisation” has to wait a generation or two for the “division of labour” to be overcome. The direct action of the working class (rather than legal provisions in a socialist constitution) will determine the speed of moves towards a socialist economy.

Also, the success of making a world revolution. The new draft now does not incorporate any discussion of international context in the section on the ‘Character of the revolution’. Yet we cannot talk about ‘socialism’ until the working class has established its rule decisively on a world scale and has begun to apply its “political economy” to the dynamics of the world economy.

The new section on Europe quite correctly makes democratic demands of the European Union. However, neither in the ‘Immediate demands’ section nor later, when discussing revolution and socialism, is the relationship explored between actions taken in Britain, in Europe or globally. The vast bulk of the minimum programme is clearly referencing Britain. It is true that this is a programme for the Communist Party of Great Britain, but, given our commitment to internationalism (and our call for a Communist Party of the European Union), you would think at least the more theoretical sections would take account of a broader geographic context.

Even as part of the minimum programme we should be posing demands - democratic and economic - that address international inequalities and the depredations of capitalism on a global scale. And the discussion of revolution and the transition to communism needs to at least acknowledge the challenges involved in building a harmonious and evenly developed global economy.

Communist Party

The section on the Communist Party is very good at explaining the role of the Communist Party in its relationship with the working class. It also integrates national and international tasks very coherently - in contrast to earlier sections.

The paragraphs on leadership are a big improvement on the 1995 draft, presenting a much more rounded view of the relationship between communist leaders and the members of the party: “We seek to demystify and democratise leadership through open debate, regular elections, recallability and actively promoting the aim of making all members into potential leaders ...” (section 6.3.6).

The draft rules, on the other hand, have not been substantially amended since 1995. The tone of some of the clauses suggest a military formation obligated “to fulfil tasks assigned to them by the party”, whether nationally or by their cell secretary (articles 4 and 6). No conception that the relationship between party leaders and members is one where consent and a degree of negotiation might be involved. Nor that the activities of the cell might be collectively agreed. Or that the cell secretary might take instruction from the members of the cell.

This is simply not how our organisation currently functions and it would not be desirable to introduce an officer-squaddy relationship at any time in the future.

Neither do the draft rules establish much in the way of accountability between the central committee and the rest of the party. It is to be elected at the party congress only every two or three years. In between congresses the CC is the highest decision-making body. It has the power to dissolve and re-establish any party body or publication. On a two-thirds vote it can co-opt new members (article 17). It decides on the suspension or expulsion of party members (article 20), and the expulsion of members of its own body (article 21).

With rules like these how exactly are “regular elections” and “recallability” to be achieved? How are minority factions supposed to organise to become majorities?

Some kind of broadly representative national committee that met regularly to review the decisions of the CC might be able to perform this role - similar to the role regular aggregates of members currently play in our organisation. Annual congresses would be more democratic.

However, before we devote much effort to amend the rules, perhaps we should clarify their status. The draft programme informs us that “there are no ready-made blueprints for communist organisation” (section 6.3.7) and that the party organisation “evolves and constantly changes”. This rather begs the question whether we need draft rules at all when we are not in a position to put them into practice.

Nevertheless, the principles upon which we build the Communist Party are of concern for the whole working class and - like the Draft programme itself - colour the struggle of the working class for human emancipation.

Notes

1. www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1002562
2. P Gowan The global gamble: Washington’s Faustian bid for world dominance London 1999.
3. P Cockshott, ‘Less radical than clause four’ Weekly Worker March 18.
4. I discussed weaknesses in the original Draft programme and proposed some amendments in ‘A vital task’ Weekly Worker November 23 2006.
5. N Rogers, ‘For democratic, republican self-government’ Weekly Worker January 25 2007.