Why workers won't buy the AES

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WHY didn't the Alternative Economic Strategy convince working class voters?

Certainly it didn't. If Labour's plan for jobs had won their confidence, no amount of media attacks and diversions could have produced the big swing away from Labour that actually took place.

Not too much weight can be put on opinion poll figures, but they confirm this conclusion.

The first reason for working class voters not to believe Labour's promises was the record of the 1974-9 Labour government. Unemployment was 600,000 in 1974, 1½ million in 1979 - even though the 1974 manifesto contained much the same promises as 1983's.

So talk of tried and tested' policies rang hollow. Yet the national leaflet 'What Labour offers you", read:

"We'll invest in Industry, Transport, Housing, New Tech. nology.

It's a tried and tested way to create new jobs and reduce the dole bill.

With jobs again, people can buy things again. To produce them, industry takes on even more people.

We'll also help the economy to grow by spending more on Pensions, Education, Health, Child Benefits. demand. Price controls must be sham under capitalism. The only possible exception is war economy conditions, when price controls go together with tight state regulation overall, including wage controls and rationing.

Import controls, at 'best', are a way to export unemployment rather than fight it. But it is doubtful that they would even do that.

Foreign trade takes 30% of Britain's national income. In a crisis-stricken capitalist world, Britain could not impose sweeping new import controls without other countries replying in kind.

The net result would be a decline in trade, and a worsening of the slump in heavily trade dependent countries - like Britain.

Labour's plan claimed that capitalism would work better for everyone — bosses and workers alike - if only the government took a few simple measures. But the plan would not work in capitalist terms - that's why the hard-headed capitalists oppose it! And it proposed nothing to go beyond capitalism. material did all about Party 10ca of capital'. The Islington Labour Parties, for example, mass-distributed a special issue of their paper Islington Voice which declared:

'Under the Tories funds are being invested overseas, at the rate of £1,700 million year. A Labour government will keep those funds in Britain.

By setting up a National Investment Bank and by putting pressure on the big banks, we will get that money invested.

Planning and new public enterprise will channel the investment to where it's needed the most.

We will also control the way that firms use the money through growth plans agreed with workers and management.

The problem of nationalism arises again: if investment by British capital is a Good Thing, why shouldn't other countries have the benefit of it as well as Britain?

Aside from that, some questions are begged. How will the Labour government enforce these controls? What if the big banks are not swayed by mere 'pressure' trom a Labour government? What if management doesn't 'agree' the 'growth plans'?

More fundamentally: can capital be controlled by labour without ceasing to be capital? Capital is not machines and equipment: it is the accumulated profits of past exploitation, constantly seeking to expand as fast as possible through new exploitation and new profits.

The means of production and distribution are forms of capital only so long as they serve the purpose of profit-making. If they are owned and controlled by the working class — and that is the only way that the economy can really be planned and decent jobs for all secured - then they are no longer 'capital'.

The economy can be democratically, planned, or run for profit - but not both simultaneously.

Moreover, not even the 'control of capital' was put in terms of class struggle - workers' power against the power of the bosses and bankers.

Almost every voter I spoke to while canvassing who gave a positive reason for voting Labour said something to the effect that s/he regarded Labour as the party of the working class.

Yet neither the official leaflet nor the more left wing local material even used the words 'working class' or 'class No wonder convincing.