'LABOUR TAKE THE POWER' 'LABOUR TAKE THE POWER' Ambiguity isn't revolutionary

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Paper of Socialist Student in NOS lesue 2 Decomber Jnmunry 83 84 1011 IE FOR THE Paper of Socialist Students in NOLS. 1 postage from Andy Bennett, c/o DSU, IN HIS polemic against Fergus Ennis (SO, February 16), Chris Knight explains some general notions about transitional demands quite well. But he does not answer Ennis's , specific objections to the slogan 'Labour Take the Power' "All transitional demands" Chris argues, "are 'ambiguous. and have got to be. They are initially accepted by workers who believe that they can be implemented within the system... The transition to the opposite meaning of the slogans - their revolutionary sense - ... is accomplished in the course of the practical struggle for power"

This is half true. A slogan like the sliding scale of hours (work-sharing without loss of pay) can be seen by masses of workers as an immediate answer to economic problems, while Marxists see it as leading towards a revolutionary struggle for workers' control over the economy.

In that sense there is "ambiguity'. But the 'ambiguity' is about where the demand leads, not what it is.

Start struggle

The tactic consists of Marxists saying to other workers: we can agree on this immediate demand. We think an extended struggle for it is likely to escalate into a fight for workers' control; lock-outs; factory occupations; clashes with the police; workers' defence squads... Maybe you don't. But let's start a struggle and let the further perspectives be decided by experience.

The point of a transitional demand is not to find a form of words which can embrace a multitude of meanings, from reformist to revolutionary. On the contrary: it is to channel Martin Thomas contributes to the debate on Labour Briefing's new slogan, 'Labour Take the Power'.

vague aspirations (like: 'we want jobs') into more precise paths of class struggle.

Its virtue is its ability to help make working class aims more precise.

Open-ended

'Open-ended' would be better description than 'ambiguous' But 'Labour Take the Power' is ambiguous rather than open-ended. What it leaves open is not its sequel, but its own meaning.

The idea of transitional demands is to break down our full socialist programme into a linked chain of partial demands which can be closely geared into concrete struggles.

The 'Labour Take the Power' approach is the opposite of this. Instead of providing gears and levers to make limited, vaguelyformulated struggles more precise, more far-reaching, and more victorious, it provides a catch-all phrase to link limited struggles with revolutionary objectives.. by using the same words for them.

The link it establishes between day-to-day Labour Party routine, and revolutionary battles for power, is not a practical one: it is a purely verbal one, simply a matter of using the same form of words to cover two different things.

It does not help to transform the labour movement; on the contrary, it sanctifies its present routine, casting a false revolutionary glow over it.

Compare the slogan which Socialist Organiser has used recently, for a workers' government: a government accountable to the labour movement, taking decisive measures against capitalist power and privilege.

The slogan is open-ended: many workers may think that such a government is possible in a reformist framework. But in immediate terms the slogan can help us turn the vague aspiration, 'not another Labour government like the last one', into precise action.

It can help us give more precise, far-reaching aims to the fight for Labour Party democracy.

The slogan does not presuppose a Marxist education for the workers it is addressed to: but it can help develop a revolutionary struggle to the extent that we are adequate in agitating for the precise measures to be taken against capitalist power and privilege.

The workers' government' slogan is a lever to help transform the labour movement to make Labour capable of 'taking the power'. 'Labour Take the Power' has no such dimension.

The implicit assumption behind 'Labour Take the Power' is that the Labour Party is a sort of massive 'government surplus stores' ', equipped with all the machinery for a working class seizure of power - only the leaders choose not to use it.

Comforting

In reality the problem of reformism is much more profound: the present structures of the Labour Party are suited to election campaigns, not revolutionary uprisings!

In a situation where the Labour Party had far more participation in its structures, and a far stronger spirit of self-assertion among the rank and file, a slogan' like 'Labour Take the Power' might be relevant: it might map a concrete step forward in struggle for the labour movement. Right now it can only breed the comforting illusion that the routine process of trying to get Labour into office is at least a limited form of socialist revolution.

Sober

When Fergus Ennis emphasised the need for a sober assessment of the Left's setbacks, he was not sneering at Briefing. He was warning that we must not deceive ourselves by overestimating the significance of resolutions or positions won in small meetings.

The practical test of this whole debate is the experience in local government. Chris Knight protests that 'comrades like Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight" are "with us" on the key points, and must not be equated with "our real internal opponents" like Kinnock.

Stuart Marshall Clarke (SO 167) complains that Ennis's criticisms of the local government Left do not take account House, New Elvet, Durham of the "objective conditions" facing them.

Yes, Ken Livingstone (for example) is not to be equated with Kinnock, and, yes, he has faced difficult objective conditions.

But none of that, in my view, justifies his opposition to the tube workers' pay claim in 1981; his climbdown over cheap fares; his links with those slavish apologists of Islamic reaction, the WRP; his 'Popular Front' methods of defending the GLC; his capitulation to the Tories over the Harrods bombing; or his failure unequivocally to back Liverpool council today.

"London's ours'?

Too many Labour left-wingers have been drawn in Livingstone's wake by deference to the 'power' supposedly associated with his and similar offices. And for all Chris Knight's protestations, I'm not sure he is free of the confusion himself.

It was the same Chris Knight, after all, who had a hand in Briefing headlines like 'London's Ours!" and "Fortress Islington"

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