Friday, December 21, 2012

Why we stand

The Socialist Party is standing a candidate (Danny Lambert) in the Brixton Hill by-election and so will the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which was set-up in 2010 "to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to appear on the ballot paper in elections as something distinctly opposed to the establishment parties and their pro-austerity agenda... At the same time, TUSC exists to aid those fighting the long-term battle that is necessary, in the trade unions in particular, to re-establish independent working class political representation." according to their web-site. Certainly the Socialist Party supports people opposing attempts to lower our standards of living and efforts to weaken our defensive organisations such as the trade unions. So why are we standing against the TUSC in this by-election? It is because we take issue with their "long-term battle", to seek a "socialist" society that they wrongly define as the nationalisation of the major companies and banks.

The TUSC was a spin-off from groups which had taken part in the No2EU coalition that fought the June 2009 European elections. In addition to a number of trade unionists involved in their personal capacity, not as official union representatives, the other prominent participants in TUSC are Trotskyist groups which include the Socialist Party of England and Wales (the TUSC candidate is a member of that particular orgainisation), Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Resistance, Solidarity [with Sheridan] and a variety of assorted independent "socialists". The divisions between SPEW and the SWP led to the collapse of the Socialist Alliance, yet an earlier attempt at Left unity. The Socialist Party is fully aware of  the constant in-fighting within the TUSC between factions for party-partisan dominance. We witnessed similar within Respect that led to the expulsion of the SWP.

Regardless of this by-election, workers will still fight even within the straight-jacket of anti-union laws, to protect wages and working conditions and people will join together to resist benefit and welfare cuts. Members of the Socialist Party(GB) engage in the struggle to stop cuts to their jobs, to their kids schools closing, to their university courses fees rising, to their hospitals shutting, as individuals and as local community members but we don't parachute in as an organisation to create and control such resistance - we do not offer ourselves up as the leaders of it. We do not seek to lead such struggles but limit ourselves to urging workers to organise any particular struggle in a democratic way under the control of those directly involved. Workers do not need any advice or leadership from socialists when it comes to struggling to defend their own interests within capitalism. They do it all by themselves all the time. However, such struggles have their limits within capitalism: they cannot go beyond the law of value, and the combined forces of the capitalists and the state can almost always defeat them if so determined. Workers who realise this tend to become socialists. As they become socialists, they see the necessity for going beyond such day-to-day struggles (these unavoidable and incessant guerilla battles, as Marx put it) and for the need for a political party aimed solely for socialism. This political party must not advocate reforms, not because it is against reforms (how on earth could a working class party be against reforms in the working class interest?), but because it wants to build support for socialism, and not for reforms.

We don't support TUSC (who some wags have re-named the Trotskyists United Supporters Club) because they are reformists. Either genuinely because they mistakenly believe that the minimum wage can be tripled, pensions doubled and a massive public works programme for paid from increased taxes on profits implemented under capitalism. Or because they are practising the Machiavellian Trotskyist tactic of "transitional demands", of trying to lead workers in reformist struggles which they (but not the workers) know are unachievable in the hope that when these reforms are not achieved the workers will turn to them who as a vanguard will lead them in an assault on the state, overthrow it and set up state capitalism. They are officers looking for infantry. The Socialist Party tell the workers the truth: that capitalism can never be made to work in their interest and that the only way out is the establishment of socialism as a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, production solely and directly for use and distribution on the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". The TUSC position is that workers generally will not become socialists all by themselves, but will, at times, engage in struggle to protect their own interests. Therefore, socialists should organise into political parties that also engage in these struggles with the view of leading the workers to victory, in the first instance, and into support for the party in the second. As the party builds up such support, it will then be in a position to seize power on behalf of the working class and put in place "socialist" (state capitalist) measures.

Many of the trade-unionists in TUSC were supporters of Old Labour and seek a return to it. What's the point of forming a Labour Party Mk.2? It would fail just as the previous and existing Labour Party did, and for the same reason. Seeking support on the basis of reforms to capitalism, if it gets elected it will have no mandate for socialism and so will have no alternative but to run capitalism. But capitalism can run only as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits. It can never be made to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers. In the end instead of Labour-style parties changing capitalism, capitalism changes them so they eventually end as simple managers of capitalism. That's one of the mistakes the workers movement made in the 20th century. We don't want this to be repeated in the 21st. We think working men and woman are wise enough to know what to do to defend there position within capitalism. The point is such things do not get to the root to the root of the problem, and this the socialist party should explain and demonstrate so that workers choose to join us in the abolition of wage-labour.

The TUSC has the following policy: “Bringing privatised public services and utilities back into public ownership under democratic control.” This is a typical illusion of the left-wing of capitalism that services or industries owned and run by the government or local councils are supposedly “owned by the public”. The Left should remind themselves of all the workers in the nationalised coal, steel and railway industries who had to go on strike in the past in an attempt to protect their living standards, and of the thousands of these workers who were eventually sacked, just as would have happened under private ownership. That is the way capitalism works, whether it is run privately or by the state.

The Socialist Party is accused of splitting the vote but we require little lecture on political unity from adherents of Trotskyism who are well deserving of the title 57 Varieties, having mostly been created out of splits of splits of splits. Equally, we counter that if the TUSC are for socialism why are they not supporting the party that strives for socialism and nothing less.

Follow the election at our election blog

1 comment:

Mondialiste said...

We're not standing against them. They are standing against us.