["The MacDonalds inherited from Puritanism not its revolutionary…]

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"The MacDonalds inherited from Puritanism not its revolutionary strength, but its religious prejudices. From the Owenites they received not their communistic fervour but their Utopian hostility to the class struggle. From the past political history of Britain the Fabians borrowed only the mental dependence of the proletariat on the bourgeoisie. History turned its nether parts to these gentlemen; and the writings that they read there became HAGEE+ HOSENBALI In an exuberant display of complete ignorance, falsification and Tory politics, Cabinet minister Shirley Williams last week launched a broadside on behalf of the organised right wing within the Labour Party against "Trotskyist" "infiltrators"

Williams, who, as Education Secretary is eagerly supervising the frontal onslaught on teaching jobs and educational standards unleashed by Healey's budgets, dragged up motheaten and hoary arguments long ago discredited in the eyes of militants to back up her view that "Trotskyists" should be hounded out of the Labour Party, though the only group she refers to - the International Socialists (now terming themselves the Socialist Workers Party) - are not only not Trotskyists, but not even in the NOTHING LEARNED It is hardly surprising Williams is unable to grasp this, since her thinking on the nature of the Labour Party is more or less exactly the same as that of the Fabians whose arguments Trotsky himself so ably demolished over 50 years ago.

The Fabians (of which Society Williams was for four years General Secretary) have plainly learned nothing and forgotten nothing in half a century of drawing-room "socialism' Williams claims for example, with the same blinkered vision as Ramsay MacDonald claimed in the 1920s, that "The Labour Party has • proud record in respect of widening the rights and liberties of individuals" '. She uses this as a prelude to a section on "free speech"

Yet even while she speaks, the Labour Government of which she is • part, is attempting to deport former CIA agent Philip Agee •hose "crime" was exposing the actions of those paid enemies of the Porking class: to do so they use the ammigration Act, broadened out by the Tories after it was introduced by the previous Wilson Government ad which embodies a brutal attack the rights and liberties of mullions of people throughout the world: and at the same time the man deporting Agee - Home Secretary Meriyn Rees - has only recently returned from a tour of katy in Northern Ireland where he Don his spurs as a supervisor of the british military repression of the trish people.

CONTEMPT

Meanwhile in Britain those поиску enough to be thought appones of the IRA and others asides are subject to a complete nolatica their rights under Labour's somalled "Prevention of These attacks, together with the AtE: spending cuts. which == hard-won rights of i=m darilies. are clear a20fe = it= Labor: Governrights the oppressed - and concern to protect only the "rights" of the British capitalist class.

The rights and liberties Williams claims to protect are therefore very restricted and specialised. At the same time the other main plank of her platform is not socialism in any form, but "democracy" - meaning Parliamentary democracy.

In the closing paragraphs of her speech, Williams makes it clear that this stands above socialism in her eyes:

"Do you accept that, if the cause of socialism (as you define it) and the cause of democracy should come into conflict, you will stand by democracy?"

No Tory could ask for any more. Any consistent Tory will defend the 'liberty' of the "individual" understanding that to mean the "liberty" of the employer to exploit the worker, alongside the "liberty" of the worker either to be exploited or to starve.

Every Tory would join with Williams in her (unvoiced but obvious) belief that this "freedom" under bourgeois democracy can legitimately be enforced by the employers through the use of the police and the army whenever necessary to repress the exploited.

And that any attempt by the worker to end this exploitation by confronting the police and the army is "a threat to freedom"

At the same time every Tory, whether consistent or not, can only rub his hands in glee at the total bondage of the Labour Party, the only mass party of the British working class to the Parliamentary system - a system glorified by Williams.

Trotsky pointed out in 1925 the absurd abuse of the word "democracy' when used to refer to the capitalist state:

•.. the 'democratic' state of British • capital has a stil more super-class character for him (MacDonaid). True the present state, administered by landowners, bankers, shipowners and mining magnates is not "complete" democracy. Certain imperfections still PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report) remain in it.

"Democracy" and, for example (!!) an industrial system not administered by the people are two incompatible conceptions.

In other words, you have democracy, only a little damaged; the wealth created by the people belongs not to the people but to an insignificant minority of the people.

Perhaps this is accidental? No, bourgeois democracy is a system of institutions and measures by the aid of which the needs and demands of the working masses, reaching ever higher, are neutralised, distorted, rendered innocuous, or are simply stultified.

He lies who says that in Britain, France; the United States and other democracies private ownership is maintained by the will of the people. No one ever asked the people about it."

Indeed the only time the Labour Party ever approached asking the workers about a full programme of nationalisation - in the immediate post-war election - they swept to office with a massive majority.

"CONSENT"

But for Williams the right people to ask about nationalisation are not the propertyless majority - but the minority of capitalists and bankers.

If they cannot be persuaded to give up the spoils of their exploitation peacefully, says Williams, we must give up any idea of nationalisation:

"It is vitally important that people consent to these changes, that they accept the changes, Whether they like them or not, are the result of the workings of a free democratic process through the agency of a sovereign government."

The actual readiness of the capitalist class to "consent" to such changes can be guaged from the downfall of the democraticallin elected Allende government Chile, smashed by a right wing coup.

Parliamentary norms were set aside indefinitely by the capitalists while the real business of smashing the workers movement took precedence. While reformists everywhere urge workers to respect the "rules" of bourgeois democracy, they are most often broken by the employers.

STRUGGLES The reformist view is even more absurd when we realise that we would not have Shirley Williams talking to us at all if workers had not dared long ago to wage lengthy, bitter and often violent struggles against the employers in order to secure the right to build trade unions and to secure the vote for Parliament.

Every reform, every concession won since the Industrial Revolution is the product not of capitalists' generosity but of harsh head-on conflict with the employer and his state machine. their programme."

One can imagine the horror in the minds of the pioneers of the labour movement if they had foreseen 150 years later workers would be saddled with the likes of Williams as their representatives!

Williams preserves a tactful silence also on the complete failure of so-called "democratic" socialism ever to successfully defend democracy against determined attack by the employers.

In Italy in 1922; in Germany in 1933; in Spain in 1939; and in Chile in 1973, workers were crushed under the heel of fascist reaction after years of bankrupt Parliamentary manoeuvres by Social Democratic Parties.

In not one country has a social-democratic party even protected against fascist agression, let alore achieved socialism!

This of course is directly beccuse of ite fact that such "saialists"

Trotsky the use of violence in defence of the working class.

Williams in her final series of questions to hound out 'infiltrators" demands:

"Do you share our belief that our socialist objectives must be achieved by the method of demoThis attempt to tie the hands of the workers in advance of any struggle is the surest guarantee that no concessions will be made to the working class. Force is not however an end in itself: like democracy it is a means to an end:

"It is absolutely unchallenged that the aim of socialism is to eliminate force, first of all in its most crude and bloody forms, and afterwards in other concealed forms. But we are discussing not the character and morals of the future Communist society, but the concrete ways and means of the struggle with capitalistic force. When fascists disorganise strikes, capture the editorial staff of a newspaper or a cashbox, injure or kill workers" representatives, while the police encircle the burglars with a ring of inviolability, only the most corrupted hypocrite could counsel the workers not to answer with blow for blow under the pretext that in the Communist society there will not be room for force"

Trotsky, Where Is Britain Going?

A little later Trotsky amplifies the point:

"In deciding the question of revolutionary force the parliamentary democratic principle is not in the least accepted as the highest example by us. Not humanity for democracy, but democracy as one of the auxiliary instruments on the road of humanity's derelopment. Where bourgeois democracy converted into an obstacle it must be pulled down.

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democracy, Trotsky was not of COurSe advocating bureaucratic dictatorship. Only_ the cramped intellect of the Fabian Shirley Williams could confuse Trotsky's argument here, and his life long struggle against Stalinism with support for the political regimes of the USSR, China and Eastern Europe.

"PROBLEMS"

Huge 9 merit? Surprisingly, - no.

In curiOuS fashion deficiencies of his approach tend i cancel each other out, and mal especially the second section of tl book - dealing with the peric after 1943 - well worth reading.

Claudin writes essential political history and deals main with the relationship betwer Soviet foreign policy and the cri of the official Communist mov

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