Labour Party.
The Labour Party - Which Way? 4 League for Socialist Action Pamphlet, 1975.
The Labour Party has caused great confusion on the left in Britain. The result has been either to enter the party and soften your politics or stay outside and denounce it from the sidelines.
Some people seem to think the Labour Party can actually implement socialism - through Parliament - while others believe its really just another capitalist party. It is partly because of these confusions that no socialist group has been able to really grow among working people and challenge the pro-capitalist leaders of the Labour movement.
This pamphlet, however, is firmly based in the method which revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky used to analyse the party and help revolutionary socialists understand it. It looks at the dereading for all socialists. Written six years ago, it is more meaningful than ever today. The Limehouse plotting, the battle for democracy and accountability, is all predicted in this important analysis of the velopment of the Labour Party, its origins and its class base.
UNDERSTANDING The break of the unions with the Liberals, it explains, showed an increase in workers' political understanding: that we need our own party to fight for our interests against the Tories and the Liberais, the parties of the ruling rich.
Thus Labour is quite different from, for instance, the Democratic Party in the USA, a straight ruling class outfit with workers' support, but which workers did not found nor have any control over.
The Labour Party, however, has another side. Its leadership, like that of the unions on which it is based, is committed to the capitalist system. capitalism more "humane".
But capitalism rests entirly on VALIx the exploitation and oppression ot working people. bour leaders who defend capitalThey want to make cushy lifestyle, inevitably attack workers interests.
LABORE A Socialists should seek to turn Labour Party into a fighting party.
Thus the Laism, which also guarantees them a DEMOCRACY Whenever policy in our interests is adopted by the party as a whole, these leaders just ignore it.
This makes the issue of rank-and-file control over the party and unions so important. It's why ding those sticking with Labour -are so opposed to democratic control of the movement.
This pamphlet explains all these things with almost uncanny foresight precisely because it applies the Marxist approach.
It lays out the strategy flowing from these conclusions: socialists work in the ranks of the party to involve all levels of the party in campaigning for demands which defend and advance workers' interests, for Black rights, for women's rights, for solidarity with people in struggle in Ireland, in Central America and other countries.
CONSCIOUSNESS This will not only assist those struggles, but will also raise the political consciousness of the ranks of the workers and show them the unwillingness of today's "leaders" to champion all struggles for freedom and equality.
It is out of these developments that masses of workers will be drawn to a revolutionary perspective and organisation. state: it's a workers state. In the lons run, the workers are the ruling class Because of these facts, education. health and social services in these countries are far superior to those in Moreover. their cur rent aims include expanding governmen: sociai wellare tatner than towng back the frontiers of the state" like the British government. Also, unemployment and inflation are very low But as the Soviet culers did push the working class out of political power. ite country is best described as a degenerates workers state. What is required is a political revolution in which workers take political power in line with their basic EXAMPLE rolana - wnieh was delormed by sta• linism from the beginning - is an instructive example. For instance, the demands oi tne workers there are, trom the out set, far more advanced than any demands raised by unions here seeking to defend their interests.
This is because the nature of Poland as a workers state means the workers struggle begins on a higher level. They are not still at the stage of fighting to limit their expolitation at the hands of the They' ve already abolished that.
Their basic demands are aimed at ending bureaucratic rule. for ful political rights and for, as their leader Lech Walesa put it, "control over economic decisions at every level"
It is of course no surprise that Benn is unable to accept that the state would use anving orner unan democrane mean. by which to remove him or any government which sets out to represent workers 1 hose who argue that socialism can be attained through Parliamentary reform 1smore. lor instance. une roener-e• coup which overthrew Allende's democratically elected government in Chile.
But for the workers' movement as a whole the lesson must be learned. Any attempt to remove the powertul tamilles who sponge off the labour of others will meet bloody resistance MASS MOBILISATION That is why Socialist Action argues that the detence of a workers' govern ment or of any gains for working people can come ony tmouga tae mass moou isation of workers themselves.
Winning elections is a tine obiective But this should never replace the winning of workers to mass struggle and defence of their own interests.
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YOUR AVA PARTY SOCIALISM