A new series revolutionarj party? 2. Reformism

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Statement of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, Monday October 27, 1980 From our first thinking moments in childhood, our immediate response to problems we confront is to seek to overcome them by reforming the conditions in which we live.

Whether it be the crying baby secking to pressurise adults into providing more food, warmth or affection; or shopfloor workers organising in trade unions to pressurise employers into paying more wages or improving working conditions, we tend spontancously to think simply in terms of seeking change within the existing order of things.

Developed as a political idcology, this approach is that of reformism-secking to win improvements in working class living standards through the existing forms of organisation and the Parhamentary system within the framework of capitalism.

Reformism remains the dominant political tendency within the British workers' movement.

This is not because reformists are able to offer workers a way to defend their independent class interests.

it is because reformist politics are a reflection of the ideology of the ruling class in capitalist socicty -and are therefore reinforced at every turn by the education system, the mass media, and every institution in the capitalist state.

In the eyes of the reformist leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions, the development towards "socialism" in the indefinite future can arise only from il cumulative process of reforms legislated through Parliament.

In the meantime and thus in practice at every critical moment-the reformist sees it as essential to preserve the capitalist system, and to make it profitable and cfficient in its exploitation of the working class, in the hopes that further reforms can be conceded in the future.

Of course many workers unwittingly embrace such ideas -having encountered no serious alternative position.

But the politics of reformism also provide an ideal cover for Labour leaders and trade union officials who seek only to preserve their own cosy, privileged positions.

Uneasy balance The union bureaucracy emerged from the strengthening of the trade union movement in the last century. As a layer of officials and administrators they have balanced -at first uncasily - between the growing power of the members they supposedly represent and the employers.

increasingly cut off and unaccountable to the union membership, this bureaucracy has in the course of decades increasingly become hardened into an elite, feeding off the strength of the labour movement while committed to containing that strength in order to preserve a truce between labour and capital.

They recognise that if the balance of forces were to be disrupted by the overthrow of the capitalist class, then their fat sarries, expense accounts and cushy lobs would come to an end.

Feeble protest

Their response to even frontal attacks on the unions and hard-won rights has therefore invariably been confined to the most feeble forms of protest and pressure politics.

Even the employers' direct legal onslaught on the power of the unions at the turn of the century was fought not by mobilising mass strike action in the working class but by the formation of a parliamentary party-the Labour Party-to pass laws to defend the unions.

The Labour politicians and Labour governments that have emerged since that point have carried forward the restricted reformist polities of the union bureaucracy-and thus struggled simply to "manage" capitalism and achieve piecemeal reforms through Parliament.

Yet the politics of reformism run time and again up against material barriers. The fact is that, for all the charade of Parliamentary democracy, real power in capitalist society resides not in the talk-shop of Westminster, but in the undemocratic board-rooms of the banks and industrial monopolies, in the military and police headquarters, in the High Court and the top echelons of the Civil Service.

While verbal battles in Parliament over this or that reform are tolerated by the ruling class, the capitalists will allow such play-acting only so long as their private property, profits and system of exploitation remain intact-as vicious military crackdowns in Chile, Turkey and Bolivia have helped to confirm.

Reformism offers workers no way whatsoever of confronting this obstacle and destroying the power of the state, resting as it does upon bodies of armed men used by the capitalist class to preserve its rule.

Socialism -which requires the nationalisation of banks and basic industry without compensation under workers' management cannot be achieved "peacefully" through legislation, but only by mobilising the full strength of the working class in mass action to break up the capitalist state machinery and instal a new, workers' state machine in its place.

Unattainable

But if socialism is unattainable by the politics of reformism, so, in this period of economic crisis, are reforms!

The Thatcher government, hell-bent on restoring the profitability of capitalist industry, is driven by the economic crisis to destroy jobs, social services, living standards and trade union rights.

And the most conscious Labour leaders are making it clear that they are not prepared to promise to restore the cuts even if reelected.

The profitability of British capitalism can only be restored by intensifying the exploitation of the working class.

Far from leaving leeway for new, reforms, this means stripping away the limited reforms won in past, more profitable, years.

Overthrow

For workers to defend these gains, or seek to improve their living standards, they must begin to look not to reforms within the capitalist system but towards the steps necessary to overthrow the system and establish socialist planned Such a revolutionary perspective is gaining in popularity amongst sections of workers driven to desperation by the allsided Tory offensive. But it will not win majority support spontaneously.

Revolutionary politics must be fought for and argued out in opposition to Labour and trade union leaders 'left' and right alike and this requires an organised struggle.

Only a revolutionary party committed to such a perspective can carry through this fight and thus lay the basis for the necessary struggle to defend the interests of the working class, We urge readers to join with the Workers Socialist League in this fight.