11.05.1995

After the clause

New Labour turns to liberalism. The left must turn from Labourism

TONY BLAIR’S success in ditching the old clause four is historic. It marks a defining moment in British politics. The Labour Party now constitutionally espouses what it calls a “thriving private sector” and the “enterprise of the market”. In plain English - capitalism.

As an unintended consequence there exists a wide space on the left, which can and must be filled by a Communist Party. Though some committee room sectarians will flinch, that means uniting all Marxists, all revolutionary socialists, all genuine working class partisans in the task of reforging the CPGB. Labour’s dramatic shift to the right is our opportunity for rapprochement and making communism a mass force. Society might still be moving to the right, but capitalism is drifting towards a new general crisis. Popular discontent is already palpable.

Under such conditions the attempt to reinsert Fabianism into Labour’s constitution is a diversion. There is, in fact, no reason to raise the dead clause four from its grave. True, from Arthur Scargill to Alan Simpson, from Tony Benn to Ken Coates, the Labour left say that it gave Labour a socialist soul - but clearly to be a left Labourite is to misunderstand the history of the Labour Party.

With or without reference to clause four, every Labour government has ensured that the working class continues to be exploited. If by some fluke Blair had lost the vote at Central Hall, Westminster on April 29 and still won the next general election, his government would do just what MacDonald, Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan did - manage capitalism.

Clause four was never intended to guide the practice of Labour in office. It was a sop, not an aim. The pledge to “secure for the workers by hand and brain the full fruits of their industry” through “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange” was invented as an antidote to Bolshevism. Despite being a far cry from genuine socialism - that is, the first phase of communism bought about by the self-liberating activity of the working class - the promise of a radically altered system kept militant workers within the orbit of Labourism. That is what it was intended to do and that is what can now be changed.

British working class politics have long been as primitive as they were paradoxical. The classic country of capitalism, the land upon which Marx based his celebrated Das Capital, was the last of the important countries in Europe to produce a mass workers’ party. And when finally our class did bring forth its own party from the “bowels of the TUC”, it was a sorry, half-formed and misshapen creature.

In continental Europe Marxism stood intellectually triumphant over anarchism and utopian socialism. Marxism had become the natural ideology of the working class. The mass social democratic parties of Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Russia were led by disciples of Marx and Engels. Their revolutionary programmes were based on foundations laid by the Communist Manifesto.

The British Labour Party began life in 1906 explicitly rejecting the class war and socialism. Our woolly-minded and parochial trade union bureaucrats boasted that we British were above such foreign things. As a result their Labour Party was a trade union version of the old Liberal Party. Nevertheless it did represent a definite step forward. For example, if the unions in politically backward USA made such a move today, communists would almost certainly welcome it, not least because it could be used to facilitate the argument for what is really needed: ie, a Communist Party.

Only after the October 1917 revolution in Russia did Labour’s grandees decide to present their party under the red flag. Workers had been embittered by the horrors of World War I and inspired by the young Soviet Republic. To delay communism Labour transformed itself. From a loose federation in 1918 it became a cohesive, national party with individual members who were subject to central discipline. To make that palatable to the rank and file the arcane platitudes of liberalism were discarded. What replaced them though was not scientific socialism, but clause four Labourism.

Labourism by its nature is eclectic, unscientific and empirical. Labourism proposed to work for socialism through the existing institutions, not against them. The capitalist state machine, monarch and all, was not to be smashed. It was to be perfected. Labour’s ‘socialist’ Britain would be ruled over by some hereditary descendent of William the Bastard. And if clause four is taken at face value, the economy would operate along Proudonist lines. Private property was not to be abolished. It was to be nationalised (universalised). Wage labour was to continue, only the full value of the workers’ output would return to them. In other words Labour’s programme was for a monarchical, state capitalist Britain - theirs always was a national socialism.

Despite Labourism falling well short of the aspirations of many, it was seen as full of potential. That is why Lenin urged the newly formed CPGB to seek affiliation to the Labour Party and work for the election of a Labour government. Here was a party that had just adopted socialism, albeit of a typically British philistine variety, and had not yet been tested in office. To overcome the socialist illusions the mass of workers had in Labour it had to be actively exposed.

If Labour let the communists affiliate, that would be good - they would openly publish and fight for their views within its mass membership. If on the other hand Labour refused to let the communists enter, that would be good too - Labour’s commitment to socialism would be revealed for what it was: a cynical sham. Each way the tactic of affiliation allowed the communists to win.

The same goes for the related tactic of supporting a Labour government. We would put Labour into office not because it represents some lesser evil. A Labour government had to be supported like the rope supports the hanged man. Communists would not passively wait for Labour’s inevitable shortcomings, inadequacies and downright betrayals to teach the workers. That by itself would lead to nothing but demoralisation, abstention and a swing to an alternative capitalist party. Communists would on the contrary do everything they could through the practical school of class struggle to shift the loyalties of the workers to the CPGB and prepare them for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, no matter who was occupying No10 Downing Street.

Since the early 1920s there have been seven Labour governments. Unfortunately, due to the liquidation of our CPGB under various prostituted cliques and opportunist leaderships, Labourism was not positively exposed. Nevertheless through its own nauseating anti-working class conduct Labourism exposed itself negatively. No one seriously has socialist illusions in the Labour Party any more (excepting perhaps, for its own narrow reasons, the pro-Labour left). Indeed the vast mass of the population have no understanding of the concept of socialism, let alone a burning desire to fight for it. Blinkered by the narrow parameters of capitalist politics, Labour is merely viewed as a lesser evil when compared with the Tories: ie, the role the Liberal Party played in the 19th century. Hence, though Lenin’s tactics as regards Labour might apply at some point in the future, they are definitely not appropriate at this moment in time.

Blair has brought Labour’s ideology more into line with its practice. Despite his claims this supposed moderniser’s “social-ism” has nothing to do with Victorian ethical socialism. Firebrands like Edward Carpenter, John Bruce Glasier and Robert Blatchford preached against capitalism and prophesied the coming of a New Jerusalem. Blair’s New Labour will be a pro-capitalist SDP Mark II. Blair’s Victorian values are those of a conventional liberal politician in the mould of William Ewart Gladstone.

That is why Blair and his cronies in the shadow cabinet make no pledges to spend beyond what capitalism considers it can afford. And that in turn explains why he speaks of Margaret Thatcher’s “admirable qualities” in Murdoch’s Sunday Times, courts big business, promises to retain the anti-union laws and champions a market system which for millions means unemployment, pauperisation, speed-ups and mortgage debt.

The argument around clause four was strangely tangential. For Blair it was actually about ensuring Labour’s victory at the next general election. He wanted to make Labour a thoroughly respectable alternative in the eyes of the establishment and its media. He was determined to prove that capitalism would be safe in the hands of the Blairgeoisie. Rewriting clause four was a high risk strategy. But it paid off handsomely. Using the ‘take it or leave it’ referendum - a device perfected by dictators and autocrats from Napoleon Bonaparte to Adolf Hitler - Blair won by a landslide. The postal ballot in the constituencies, the former bastions of Bennism, gave him 87%. The vast majority of Labour members and trade union affiliates want rid of the Tories. Anything, they believe, must be better than Major and his bloodsuckers. So they enthusiastically voted not so much for Blair’s new clause four, but for a Blair government. Result - the trade union barons were put in their place, big business was impressed, Paddy Ashdown is now a potential partner and the left was humiliated.

What of the ‘Defend clause four - defend socialism’ campaign? Two things are immediately apparent. One, it had nothing to do with the practical needs of the working class nor socialism. Two, it was a defence of Fabianism by activists who for the sake of their self-image, for the sake of their leftwing credentials, require an excuse for staying in, or continuing to support, Blair’s party.

Having for years dully limited itself to the politics of ‘Tories out, out, out’, the pro-Labour left has been completely thrown off balance by Blair who promises to make the slogan a reality. Not surprisingly, given the period, the further to the right he pushes the party, the more success it scores in election and opinion polls alike. Tied organically to Labourism, falsely equating Labour’s interests with those of the working class, the pro-Labour left pathetically tells Blair that his rightism endangers Labour’s chances at the forthcoming general election. Apparently he should try their leftism instead. Like some quack doctor the pro-Labour left can only sell its own patented remedy.

Showing the effect bourgeois society exerts through Labourism, everything in the workers’ movement lacking firm political principle was pulled to the right by the futile attempt to save the clause drafted by Sydney Webb and Arthur Henderson over three-quarters of a century ago. In 1991 the Socialist Workers Party cheered the death of ‘state capitalism’ in Russia. Having forgotten something and learnt nothing, in 1995, citing the Blair danger, it dutifully rallied to the side of Fabian state capitalism.

Also taking up Labour’s lost reformist cause in the name of a lesser-of-two-evils “pro-socialist elements against pro-capitalist elements” were the epigones of Stalin and Trotsky. For a deserving Joseph Vissarionovich - the Morning Star, New Communist Party, Communist Action Group, etc. For a less deserving Lev Davidovich - Workers Power, Sparticist League, Militant Labour, etc. To all these groups - nationalisation - ie, property relations - is the essence of socialism; not the power of the working class - ie, social relations. The pharaohs of Egypt and the emperors of Rome must have been “pro-socialist elements” in their time, given how much state land they farmed and how many state slaves they exploited.

The demise of the old clause four plunges the whole of the motley pro-Labour left into crisis. Those who joined to further the Bennite project in the 1980s find themselves in the 1990s members of a party Shirley Williams again admires. Those who argue that Labour is the only realistic vehicle for socialist change are now flatly contradicted by its constitutional aims and values. Those who say ‘Vote Labour, but ...’ will have to admit that they are after all calling for a pro-capitalist vote.

Labour’s new clause four demands a break with illusions and excuses. These times require honesty and courage. Let us unite, not in defence of Fabianism. Together we can provide a real revolutionary alternative to capitalism.

Jack Conrad