The 35hr-week Fraud

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ШНУ WE ARE RESIGNInG ROM THE UNG The massive unemployment figures cause much concern to the trade union leaders. They find difficulty justifying their high salaries and privileged positions, while at the same time forcing their members to The crisis of the world imperialist system and the offensive of the world working class puts to the test all organisations claiming to be revolutionary, and strikingly confirms Trotsky's prognosis that "the world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat."

This crisis of leadership is not limited to the continuing betrayais of the social-democratic and Stalin1st bureaucracies, nowever; it nas never been so thoroughly represented in the ranks of those organisations claiming to be Trotskyist.

SLANDERS

• The degenerating and shrunken International Committee of Gerry Healy is resorting to the vilest slanders concerning George Novack and Joseph Hansen to hold together its fragments, whilst the Newline carries articles on the Middle East almost completely uncritical of the Arab Nationalist forces, ana ignores completely the tasks of the permanent revolution in these states.

The positions of the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (OCI) and the "Leninist-Trotskyist' faction of the Usec on events taking place in the Portuguese revolution, particularly those taking place around the newspaper Republica last year show clearly the degeneration of these organisations.. supporting "press freedom' against the development of seizures by workers and the formation of workers' commissions in this sector). accept the effects slump.

The left"-sounding call for a thirty five hour working week has been used to try. and win back members' confidence.

This slogan, echoed in the Right At the same time the "United" Secretariat and its British section, the IMG, refuse to come to grips with the central problems facing the international and British working class. The "backwardness" of the British working class and its "acceptance" of the pay policy and other measures of the Wilson and then Callaghan government, 1s the excuse used to "delay" the fight for principled leadership in the working class, and to ignore such vital leads as the forthcoming conference on Trade Union Democracy (which has been totally ignored by Red Weekly to date, despite a lengthy article on the subject taken almost verbatim from Socialist Press).

For the IMG the resolution of the crisis of leadership wil be achieved by the diverse elements making up their "class struggle leftwing" containing Stalinists, Tribunites, militant workers, Institute of Workers Control, NAC, TOM, etc., etc.

As Comrades Strawson and Hyde correctly pointed out in their resignation document (see Socialist Press number 25) this standing aside for the 'lefts' is a direct legacy of a political heritage which for the past twenty years has been putting forward forces other than Irotskyists to resolve the crisis of leadership "just for the moment" - this is the heritage of Pabloism.

For the IMG the method of Trotsky in the Transitional ProTamine, representing twenty years of Bolshevik method and development, is reduced solely to propaganda for the "new mass vanguard" - those forces "broken" with the bureaucracy already — thus evading supported the working class of Europe in the fight for the legal eight hour day.

Union leaders today can also be heard to refer to the great benefits that the thirty-five hour week will bring, It must be said clearly, however, that the plans of Jones and Co. have nothing to do with the defence of jobs or the struggle for socialism.

REACTIONARY

In fact, in the hands of the union bureaucrats, the thirty-five hour demand has taken on a reactionary and anti-working class character.

In the way that they pose it, it is not in contradiction with their calls for import controls or workers' "participation' in capitalist management.

The link between the policy and the bureaucrats' Iole as labour agents of the ruling class is clear from remarks by Jones to the Times newspaper in July. He said that he saw the whole question as "part and parcel of negotiations on efficiency.

Fearing working class anger over jobs, he advised bosses that.

"it would be folly not to think ahead about the damage that persistent technological and structural unemployment would do to industrial relations."

It is clear from this that Jones is only concerned that anger against rising unemployment should not threaten his cringing collaboration with the capitalist class.

the real fight in the mass organisations of the working class to break the reformist illusions of even. the most advanced trade union militants.

The Workers Socialist League has grasped this fight; it has not eternally waited for the "balance of forces" to change as has the IMG, but has heeded Trotsky's advice that the relationship of forces is something that has to be changed, not capitulated to.

Similarly the WSL has not excused itself from a principled fight in the mass organisations of ine class on the grounds that the class is "backward"

"BACKWARD"

The IMG's view that the class is "backward" is based on an analysis that views the working class in isolation; it neither sees the relationship of the bureaucracy to this "backwardness" nor does it see how to fight this.

"The mentality of the class of the proletariat is backward, but the mentality is not such a substance as the factories, the mines, the railroads, but is more mobile and under the blows of the objective crisis, the millions of unemployed, it can change rapidly."

"Our tasks don't depend on the mentality of the workers. The task is to develop the mentality of the workers."

Trotsky, Discussions on the Transitional Programme, May 19th 1938.

The means of fighting the "backwardness" is to wage a struggle in the class against the 'parasitic bureaucracy; it is this struggle which has earnt the SL the special hatred of the bureaucracy.

LIMITED

The "Trotskyist Opposition" of the IMG has offered limited (but nonetheless formally correct) criticisms of the USFI majority (IMT) as applied to China, Vietnam Cuba and the "class struggle leftwing", , but they they fail absolutely to locate these in the history and political trajectory of the Usti (and before that, the ISEC) and draw the correct conclusions from them.

The only conclusion which can be drawn from these criticisms is that the USFI represents a centrist current, vacillating between a revolutionary and a reformist analysis of the bureaucracy and perspective;

and that necessitates an open and principled fight in the working class for Trotskyist politics. is the order of the day.

If giving the unemployed their *chance' of a job means in this way more wage cuts and speed-up for the employed, then Jones' thirty-five hour week policy can only divide the working class.

With other reformist schemes like 'overtime bans' and 'early retirement' it puts blame for the crisis on the working class.

It is typical of the many calls to and their European counterparts do not wish to fight for jobs; they simply wish that unemployment could be spread evenly throughout the working class - a permanent system of short-time working to preserve "industrial relations' For Jones, the working class should not fight for jobs as a right. It must package itself in such a way that it is a saleable commodity to the capitalists.

MARXIST Marxists reject this cowardly approach. The capitalist crisis and the drive for profits inevitably produces and requires a pool of unemployed labour as a standing warning to employed workers who wish to struggle for better wages and conditions.

Any concession on this score simply prepares the ground for defeat and demoralisation in the working class. Our policy to mobilise the working class in defence of jobs is that of work To continue, as the «Trotskyist Opposition" do, to argue with the membership of the IMG from the inside is like "fighting for atheism in the Vatican" - the only way members of the USFI and IMG will be won to a Trotskyist party and politics is by posing the question concretely of which organisation is equipped to fight for those politics inside the working class.

To put this simply, accepting the "democratic centralism" of the IMG (which is no democratic centralism at all) would put a brake on political development, gagging us from making a critical assessment of the role of the USFI in the an organisation which puts virtually no resources : into developing a cadre to intervene in the mass organisations of the class armed even with the IMG's 'action programme" on a day to day basis, virtually no regular trade union commissions nationally or locally, (even in a purely organisational sense) instead concentrating on "key conjunctural issues" which are quietly dropped after a few frantic months.

This tragic misdirection of resources together with the principled struggle for the "permanent short-cut" to the leadership of the working class, sees the IMG standing on the backs of • "left" bureaucrats and centrists issuing vague and general calls to action to the workers and amazed when the workers pay no attention. responsibility. On this basis the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers ...The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week.

SOCIALIST

This demand, which Trotsky called "the system of work in a socialist society" is the only one which starts from the defence of working class interests and poses a way forward for workers out of the crisis.

It is only in the context of this approach that the thirty-five hour week can have any serious meaning.

The policy of work-sharing on full pay poses the question of who should control society.

It is linked to the struggle for a workers plan of public works to benefit society.

The bureaucracy, which seeks al best to reform' but not abolish capitalism, is quite incapable ol accepting this demand.

ANSWER

The only answer that can be given to trade union leaders whc use the demand for thirty-five hours to duck the fight for jobs is that they should lead thei members nationally in strike action and occupations for thirty-five hours on full pay.

In this way their utter lack of principle and their concern fol profits before members' jobs will be exposed.

USFI leader Mandel: USFI is a "centrist current".

For several years we hav witnessed the IMG's "turn to th class" , and it's a box office disaster the masses just are not interestec Armed with the action programm and other centrist compromise from the USPI, the IMG lin pours grease on the slope out c the political swamp of the petit bourgeois milieu and send comrades sliding back down flour dering and demoralised.

The only way out of this viciou circle is for comrades to grasp th nature of the USFI and its "actio programme" (which Trotsky unlike most leading IMG member remained perfectly clear on):

"We can call it a programme a action, but for us, for our strategi conception, it is a transitional pre gramme - it is a help to the masse in overcoming inherited idea methods, and forms and of adap ing themselves to the exigencies a the situation.

(Leon Trotsky, March METHOD The Workers Socialist League: the only organisation in Britai fighting for such programn and method, deepening it an taking it forward to provide leade ship in the living struggles the working class, and to resol the crisis of leadership of that class For the Workers Socialist Leagur For the reconstruction of th Fourth Internationa Ian Kaye - Hu Eddie Kent - Sheffiel

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the working class to make 'sacri- fices' in this period. Jones, the TUC

class struggle in front of the workers' movement. lo remain in