Editorial

Editorial It is never too early to prepare for war. Cynical apologists for labour movement in preparation for the full fury of the bourgeois assault. Marxists have different obligations. Our task is to delineate the dominant tendencies at work in society, to lay bare the contradictory development of capital and to put forward a strategy that advances the independent interests of the proletariat. The crisis has shattered norms and institutions established by capitalism during the post-war boom. The disintegration of a carefully nurtured world monetary system and the collapse of time-honoured trade agreements demonstrate the inability of capital to master its contradictions, as the crisis of profitability forces the ruthless logic of competition upon every capitalist. A Marxist analysis of capital accumulation shows that competition leads inexorably towards war. The outstanding feature of the capitalist world economy is that it cannot raise profitability sufficiently to maintain accumulation within the confines of the nation state. Capital - whether British, German or Japanese — is forced to appropriate extra profits from abroad in order to continue its expansion.

increasing rivalries between imperialist powers result from the attempts of each national capital to restore profitable production at the expense of its competitors. Leading to further attacks on the profit opportunities of other nations, the intensification of these rivalries can have only a bloody There is every sign that the bourgeoisie knows what is at stake. International cartel agreements and diplomatic arrangements are desperate steps to avert a trade war. But these measures can only modify the tendencies towards protectionism. West Germany's attempts to help its less fortunate brethren 'in return for the renunciation of trade protectionist measures by its European Community partners' provide nothing more than a truce in a conflict that grows more frenzied day by day. ' Paper agreements cannot overcome the laws of capitalist competition: the strongest and most efficient capitals cannot afford to take a charitable view towards their competitors. Survival demands the destruction of competi- Imperialist rivalries have unleashed a wave of reaction throughout the advanced capitalist world. 'Buy American', 'Buy French', 'Buy British' shout the ruling classes as they advance their interests with the rhetoric of nationalism. " Until now the bourgeoisie has been successful in drawing the working class under the national flag. Calls for import controls signify the strength of bourgeois politics in the labour movement. Sections of the British working class look to the British state to defend their interests— to defend British industry. Recently members of Britain's biggest union, the Transport and General Workers (TGWU), have mounted a campaign to prevent Japanese trucks from being imported into this country. The TGWU district secretary for Bridgewater and Taunton stated: 'We had a special district meeting to consider this further threat to jobs posed by the Japanese. We decided to set an example and refuse to handle them in any way....

By making our position absolutely clear at this earliest possible stage we hope to stop them doing the same with trucks as they have done with cars — selling them at the expense of British workers' jobs.'

This nationalist response to the crisis illustrates the ideological disarray of the working class movement. The prevalent bourgeois view of the crisis leads to the acceptance of a bourgeois The analysis of the crisis contained in this issue of Revolutionary Communist Papers provides a materialist explanation of the working class response to the recession; it gives the political basis for combatting bourgeois views in labour movement. This is a task that is long overdue. Every day the labour ideologists of the bourgeoisie seek to win the working class to a capitalist strategy. In a popular guise, economic nationalism is presented as the way out for the working class. The Left Alternative Strategy of the Labour left and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) is advanced as a socialist solution and import controls are put forward as a workers' answer to unemployment. The CPGB even attempts to argue that import controls are truly internationalist. After admitting that controls on the import of textiles will 'save domestic jobs at the expense of foreign workers', CPGB ideologue Bob Rowthorn cynically argues: 'On this question the left has a clear internationalist duty. The exploitation of the Third World has provided much of the material wealth upon which western industrialisation and prosperity is based.

These countries desperately need export markets in the West, and it would be hypocrisy to sympathise with their plight whilst keeping their products out of our markets. In the long-run Britain should move from producing labour intensive products, which the Third World can produce cheaply, into high rechnology areas in which we have an advantage.' 5 18 May 1978, pl. See Financial Times, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) opposes the establishment of a cartel among plastics producers as such an arrangement would force it to share the losses of its competitors. ICI is therefore committed to free trade —free trade in the plastics industries means the destruction of the less efficient producers. Mr John Harvey-Jones, deputy chairman of ICI noted: 'I am determined that as far as we can we should try to operate in a normal, economically disciplined way. If two more years show that no producer will go to the wall, because no government will let it, then we must face up to the fact that the market economy does not work.

But we must try everything else first.' Financial Times, 18 May 1978, p5 At the national conference of the post office workers union (UPW) Chancellor Dennis Healey declared: If everybody uses the money they get [from the recent Government tax cuts, Ed] to buy goods made in Britain, then that money will create jobs. If they use it to buy goods made in other countries they will not create jobs in Britain but in Japan, Germany, France and Italy. Our slogan this year has got to be: Buy British, sell British and make British best.' He naturally went on in the best British tradition to ask the unions to 'show common sense in pay bargaining'. The Times, 22 May 1978, pl. The Times. 12 May 1978, p22 "The Alternative Economic Strategy Part 3: 5 Bob Rowthorn, Import Controls', Comment, 13 May 1978, pl59.

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A hundred years ago bourgeois apologists justified colonial trade in the same way: Jamaicans had a natural advantage in producing rum and bananas and Britain had an advantage in producing manufactured goods. The people of Africa and Asia will be glad when they are told that in "the long-run' they can have Britain's declining industries thanks to their 'cheap contained in the journal reformists can peddle vulgar bourgeois theory in the language of Marxism. As a result of the past defeats of the working class there has been a major regression in proletarian theory.

The major reformist ideology of the labour movement is State Socialism. State socialists serve to reconcile the working class to capitalism by fostering the illusion that the bourgeois state can be the central instrument for defending the interests of the working class. They aim not to smash the bourgeois state, but to use it to abolish capitalism gradually by reforms.

The increased intervention of the state in the economy necessitated by capital accumulation is seen by state socialists as proof of the possibility of abolishing the anarchy of production through state reforms. Hilferding, one of the leading revisionists of the Second International, provided a more coherent formulation of state socialism than its contemporary exponents. Arguing that blind competition can be overcome by an 'organised capitalism', he stated 'In fact organised capitalism is essentially the replacement of the capitalist principle of free competition by the socialist principle of planned production. This planned economy... offers the possibility of conscious direction by society, which means nothing less than the direction by the only organisation of society which is conscious and possesses the power of coercion — the state.' " Two years later this 'organised capitalism' gave way to the Great Depression which culminated in the Second Imperialist World War. This experience has still not been consciously assimilated by the workers' movement: since the Second World War there has been no revolutionary alternative to state socialism in the European labour movement. As our analysis shows the post-war boom and the development of the capitalist 'mixed economy' has further reinforced the view that the bourgeois state can encroach on capitalist interests.

The Left Alternative Strategy is the state socialist strategy for Britain today. It looks to the state to regenerate British industry, to increase the purchasing power of the working class, and to control exports of capital and the import of commodities. The Left Alternative Strategy tries to reconcile the interests of the working class with those of capital by means of a programme for reviving the British economy that emphasises a redistribution of wealth and social reforms; it is nothing more than a utopian version of the Social Contract.

The weight of these ideas among trade union activists means that even the most militant sections of the working class cannot combat the Social Contract.

Many on the left have deluded themselves with the belief that the Social Contract can be fought by trade union militancy.? Our analysis of the experience of working class struggle over the last four years shows that it is impossible to fight the Social Contract without challenging reformism. At this stage the struggle for the political independence of the working class — its emancipation from the ideological influence of other classes — is of paramount importance.

The Left seeks to oppose the wage control embodied in the Social Contract with free collective bargaining. Although revolutionary communists support the demand for free collective bargaining, this demandein itself does not provide a way forward for the working class. The central issue is the identification of the labour movement with the British state.

As long as the working class accepts responsibility for solving the capitalist crisis, free collective bargaining will mean that it succumbs to capitalist rationality.

The trade unions' loyalty to the Labour Party ensures that wage claims will be moderated in the interest of the nation. Transport and General Workers Union leader Moss Evans qualifies his calls for an end to wage restraint: 'We have never believed that wages in isolation are responsible for the problems of inflation. If we return to free collective bargaining unfettered by norms or percentages, then we have always recognised the need for responsibility', " It is this recognition of "responsibility' that provides the ideological basis for a Our analysis shows that opposition to the Social Contract is continuously undermined by reformism. Reformism accepts the premises of a social contract if not the precise terms of the present one. The absence of any serious opposition to the Social Contract is reflected politically in the absence of any alternative to the Labour Party. Even the most uncompromising critics of the Social Contract retain some faith in the Labour Party- they plead with the Government to abide conference decisions and manifesto commitments, they seek to shift it leftwards and they demand that the Labour left's RCP No 3 provides the basis for an political orientation. In today's conditions revolutionaries must directly challenge the Labour Party. When every struggle of the working class is undermined by its commitment to maintain a Labour Government in office, fraternal criticisms, just like denunciations, are insufficent. The struggle against reformism cannot be carried out simply on the level of ideas — it must take on a clear organisational form: the class struggle requires an organisation that gives shape to the independent interests of the working class. This is the only route to winning advanced workers to a class conscious understanding of the The analysis of the crisis and the assessment of the class struggle in the past decade begin a discussion of vital importance for the future development of the workers' movement.

A debate on this experience is long overdue. The Revolutionary Communist Tendency welcomes serious contributions on the issues raised in this journal. Discussion and clarification will be vital if the battle lines for the struggles ahead are to be The work of the RCT has undergone a major expansion this year. We believe that we have achieved important gains in terms of programmatic elaboration. The inability of the socalled Trotskyist movement to develop revolutionary theory in the post-war period has serious implications. A central lesson of this experience is the need for an uncompromising struggle for a revolutionary programme adequate to today's conditions. For the RCT the development of proletarian science is the only way in which the struggles of the labour movement can be assimilated into a conscious experience for the class as a whole. Our work on reformism will be further developed with the publication of a propaganda pamphlet on the Labour Party. This pamphlet will outline a position based on a Marxist analysis of reformism in the post-war period. The next issue of RCP will initiate a discussion on the bourgeois state — a question whose importance cannot be overestimated.

An understanding of the changing forms of state intervention, the 'welfare state' and revisionist theories of the state is crucial for the coming struggles of the working class.

In parallel with the political development of the RCT To publish grows the problem of financial constraints.

Marxist theory, to arm the working class ideologically — this is more urgent than ever before. Next year we plan to launch a new venture — the publication of a regular review. The aim of this review is to provide up to date analyses of important questions facing the working class. Unlike the newspapers of the radical left it will not simply describe strikes and issue lists of abstract demands; it will undertake a Marxist analysis of 2

the period. For the RCT, this review will provide a means of training a revolutionary vanguard in the working class. We ask our readers to help us realise these plans: contribute generously to our fund drive and take out a subscription to the journal. The political importance of the last issue of RCP has been vividly confirmed by recent events. British imperialism is forced to intensify its repression of the Irish people in order to maintain capitalist relations in Ireland. The recent wave of arrests of Republican sympathisers, the attempts to shut down Republican News and the military assault on a Belfast football supporters club tescify to the determination of imperialism to solve the Irish problem with armed force.

The British left maintains its wall of silence on Ireland.

The radical left still feeds off the staple of anti-Nazism. Page after page of the radical left press tells us that the National Front is really venomous. In order to clinch the argument pages are filled with pictures of NF leaders in uniforms bearing tascist insignia. Little is said and less is done about the fact that 300 Irish prisoners of war are held naked in solitary confinement in the H-Block at Long Kesh. The systematic brutalisation of these prisoners is an issue the left chooses to ignore. As we argued in the last issue of RCP, the building of an anti-imperialist movement against Britain's domination of Ireland is of direct importance to the defence of the independent interests of the working class in this country. To that end we urge all our readers to attend the demonstration called in support of Irish political prisoners. This demonstration will be The recently established Irish caucus of the RCT will carry out anti-imperialist work in the labour movement. Those interested in participating in the work of establishing the basis for an anti-imperialist movement around the two demands 'Self Determination for the Irish People' and 'Troops Out The RCT will be holding a dayschool in London on 5 August 1978. The aim of this dayschool is to provide our readers with a forum for thoroughly clarifying the issues raised in RCP Nos. 2 and 3. Those who want to participate in this important discussion should write for further informa- Finally readers who have begun to appreciate the importance of building a revolutionary organisation on the basis of Marxism and would like more information about the activities of the RCT should write to the address provided.

31 May 1978 • If you want further information about the Revolutionary Communist Tendency and its activities please write to: Revolutionary Communist Tendency BM RCT, London WCIV 6XX.

£2000 FUND DRIVE

To produce and distribute our propaganda regularly we must have financial support from our readers. We need 2000 for new publications and equipment. Please help › raise this money by taking up the following offe 1. Donate £10 or more to receive four issues of Revolutionary Communist Papers plus all Revolutionary Communist Pamphlets published in the next 2. Donary co or mone to meive she serine of the next 12 months We ask all those who support our work to give us regula donations, whatever the amount, and send them to BM RCT London WCIV 6XX • R Hilferding, Organisierter Kapitalismus — Die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie in der Republik (Organised Capitalism — The Tasks of Social Democracy in the Republic), Speech at 1927 Congress of the SPD in Kiel, reprint, van Eversdijck, s'Graven- 7 The radical left organisations, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) the International Marxist Group (IMG) etc are unable even to understand the political character of the working class response to the Social Contract. Thus in an interview of Bob Wright, the unsuccessful Broad Left candidate for the AUEW presidential election, the IMG interviewer asked about the Leyland toolmakers strike: 'Don't you think that the failure to support this action against the Social Contract has weakened the general fight against it?' Wright replied: 'I only wish it were true that the toolmakers fought the Social Contract. The statement they made at the beginning was: We are not opposing the Social Contract. We are not opposing Government policy.' See Socialist Challenge, 11 May 1978. It took Wright to explain to the IMG that the Leyland toolmakers strike had nothing to do with challenging the Social Contract.

8 Evening Standard, 17 April 1978.

Capitalist Offensive and the Working Class The Recession: