Date: Thu, 4 Jul 96 09:09:17 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: Re: Labor Party and our actions concerning it.



> 
> On the Labor Party
> 
>    Jim Miller writes, then I write, then Jim writes, then I write etc. etc...
> 
> >   I disagree that the Labor Party "consists of thousands of proletarians."
> >How does Mike determine what the party consists of? 
> 
>     I determine what the party consists of by meeting and talking with the
> members.  The LP is not a club of labor bureaucrats.  As I said before, it is
> a party of workers.  It is being mislead by bureaucrats.
> 

Of course it is a party which consists of workers.
But it is controlled by labor bureaucrats.

These bureaucrats owe their existence to negotiation between capital and 
labour. Abolish capital, and there's no need for labor bureaucrats. So
while a party controlled by labor bureaucrats rejects some aspects of
capitalism, it will always accept capitalism as a whole. So a labor party
is structurally unable to become a tool for abolishing capitalism.

Not only can a Labor party not bring socialism, I believe that in the
current age of capitalist crisis, it cannot even bring reforms, whatever
policies are passed at conference.

In fact, not only can it not bring reforms, the experience of Labor in
power in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France etc, shows that the reformists
in power in the context of economic crisis attack the reforms that have
already been brought in.

In contrast to this rather gloomy scenario, the recent strikes in Italy,
France + Germany, and also the GM strike, show that the working class 
can win victories. But large scale victories using the methods of class
struggle can only happen if at least a significant minority of workers
reject the notion that the system has to be propped up, since if we are
going to prop up a sick system, we cannot have the reforms we want.

> >If membership is
> >meant, how is membership determined?
> 
>     I am not totaly sure what is meant by this question.  Membership, to my
> knowledge, is determined by one's commitment to help the party grow.
> 
<cut>
> 
>     There were about 1.5 thousand delegates at the convention.  All these
> delegates represented more workers. 

True.

> These delegates represented around 1 or 2 million workers.

False.

They represented the people that voted for them as delegates, and the
people that would have voted for them if they'd been at the meeting.
Say, an average of 25 people each. In addition, there will be thousands
who would have liked to be represented by a delegate but weren't. So
the convention represented roughly 25 * 1500 * 2 = 75,000 people.

The reason I say this, is that I've seen what this bureaucratic counting
method leads to. When the Labour Left around Tony Benn managed to win
a whole series of constitutional reforms in the Labour Party in the early
1980's, because they had won significant sections of the block vote, they 
started spouting rubbish along the lines of "we have 5,000,000 people
voting for socialism". Rubbish. They DID have a significant number of 
active supporters - say, 200,000. But they DID NOT have the support 
of even the majority of the membership of their own union branches, who
in fact were rapidly moving to the right. The crazier self delusions 
involved them saying things like the Labour Party constitution had become
"a transmission belt for the demands of the working class".

Ulitmately, the series of bitter defeats in the class struggle imposed
themselves on the Labour Party. The bureaucracy moved right, since it was
under less and less pressure from below. We had Foot, Kinnock, Smith and
now Blair. Each one ws so bad we thought it could not get worse - until
the next one came along. Because the Bennites didn't look to the class
struggle itself, they couldn't understand what was happening. Most dropped
out of active politics altogether. Those that didn't moved rightwards at
a positively alarming rate.

The Labour Party in effect became the precise opposite of what the Bennites
wanted it to become : it became a "a transmission belt for the demands of the
ruling class".

Adam.


Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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