Fighting the Lib-lab Coalition

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In last week's Socialist Press we printed Labour manifesto put out in the Kensington Ward of Newham NorthSocialist Press supports this manifesto which puts Socialist Press: Why are you standing as a Labour candidate in this election? John Plant: As the manifesto makes clear it's a continuation of the fight over the last few years against the right wing policies of the Labour leadership. Locally this took the form of the struggle against Prentice of course. But I've always tried to make it clear that this was a fight on policies and leadership rather than against just one Iraitor.

The same fight was reflected in our opposition to the disciplinary action taken by the local Labour Council group against those councillors who opposed the cuts.

It seems to me absolutely necessary that having fought against the policies of the present leadership you must ollow that through in proposing alternative policy and programme. And if those șolicies win support you dearly have to fight for them *herever they'll have an impact.

SP: Is there any -=ng seen as Ju _ cour candidate • supporters of Heale!. Benn and hem?

JP: There won' :: rision on beh :..l: members of ::: branch or •.: have heard ..te consistently askan-Healey ....ient years.

manitesto Te 0ge cur danger of st another along with Callaghan, the rest of t be any alf of the the Labour the GMC me argue against the asino? 10 - soddo in forward policies for independent working class action, and places squarely before voters the need for socialist policies against the betrayals of the present right wing coalitionist Labour leadership.

One of the candidates in Kensington Ward, John Plant. has written to Socialist Press and other labour movement PHOTO: Chris Dai Prentice policies and immigration policies that the coalition deal imposes on the labour movement.

In the course of canvassing we've often had to point out to disillusioned Labour voters that we're fighting for new policies and new leadership.

We're not standing on the basis of support for the present leadership or its policies.

This leadership has of course stayed silent on the fact that we were right ages ago about Prentice. This applies equally to the Tribune group, the vast majority of whom signed appeals from the Parliamentary Labour Party pleading on Prentice's behalf Scared stiff We 'on't co th ( ghan-Hi aler.

publications offering to be interviewed to publicise the policies on which the election campaign is being run.

Socialist Press believes that the questions raised by the campaign go well beyond the confines of one East London ward or constituency. The following interview by Mark Hyde was conducted on Thursday April 17.

Tribune.

They've always ducked out of the fight for leadership -they're scared stiff of a serious fight.

SP: The programme printed in Socialist Press last week contains quite specific demands which are quite different from the official manifesto for the area. Why is this?

JP: Our demands are directed at quite clear concrete problems that occur in this area and at the same time highlights the betrayals of the present leaders.

If elected on this programme we will have a very solid basis to conduct the fight for socialist policies in front of the working class.

The importance of a clear programme is best shown up in contrast with the one produced in nearby Wall End ward, which just ends by saying 'Join the fight for socialist policies' but nowhere states what these 'socialist policies' are. If elected we will be able to say that the workers in our ward have given a mandate for a clear SP: If the voters do elect you what problems will it solve? JP: By itself, electing councillors won't solve anything. What we intend to do is lay the basis for a real fight for socialist policies in this area. The policies we put forward can't in the end be carried through by Council resolutions-they will all depend on the active organisation of the working Plaistow Hospital-threatened with closure under the cuts-for example can't be kept open by a local authority but a local authority that. was seriously concerned about the welfare of workers in the area would obviously have to organise mass support among trade unionists and housewives.

In just the same way the fight against all social service cuts will bring us into conflict with the national government.

The last time there was serious conflict between a local authority and central government was over the Tc ry Housing Finance Act.

Mobilisation

Clay Cross was the central example and the fight there had an enormous impact in the labour movement.

But such fights can only be won through the independent political mobilisation of the working class. That's why our programme can only be based on the action of the working class in the area-for example when we call for the creation of committees of trade unionists and housewives to determine the necessary public services programmes and when we demand labour movement defence against the fascists.

Even if a Labour Council wanted to restore and defend living standards of the workers it employs this would bring us headlong against the government and union leaders and require the mobilisation of the working class against wage control and for linking pay to prices.

John Plant held by the Ratepayers. What kind of area is it?

JP: Yes, it has been held by them for the last three terms of the Council. One of the reasons is the steady decline in interest in the Labour Party under the right wing It was not until the Prentice fight that ward membership actually reached double figures.

The ward 1s mainly residential with few workplaces, except for shops. It has a high immigrant population which is continuing to grow steadily. The workers are divided about evenly between central London office workers and industrial workers.

There's a council estate in the ward but also a high proportion of owneroccupiers-which in turn means attention is given to long-term problems. We're confident of serious response to our programme. SP: Obviously there's national swing against Labour now-because of the leadership's betrayals. Is there a serious chance of kicking out the Ratepayers at a time like this?

JP: Yes, I'm convinced there is. We've already recruited new members in response to our manifesto and the reaction during canvassing has been very good.

Our policies against racialism and fascism will win support-the Sikh community has already asked us to address a meeting in their temple.

The fight against Prentice has anyway established the idea that Labour candidates in this arpa are ottan alad against the cuts, both in the jobs of our members and in the services they provide.

Secondly, the campaign can link up with the struggle for decent wages for council employees, including a sliding scale of wages to keep their conditions up to the cost of living, as determined by the workers themselves.

Thirdly, as a way to take up the issue of housing. From this candidature, and on the council itself, it will be possible to campaign for the freezing of rents and the public ownership of property, as indicated in our manifesto.

We would also aim to expand the public works department and to requisition empty property and bring it into immediate use.

SP: Other groups, such as Socialist Unity and the Socialist Workers Party, have stood candidates in some areas claiming to offer a socialist alternative. What's your opinion of that?

JP: None of these groups put forward a serious programme that can be the basis of a fight in the working class. They remain silent on the central questions of leadership and the coalition and just engage in vague talk about 'socialist alternatives' In fact Socialist Unity is so unprincipled that it was ready to support the so-called West Indian Block in Lambeth-the only problem was that the WIB preferred the Liberals!

SP: Have you been attacked for bringing national issues into a local election?

JP: Yes. The right-wing and their left' friends are making every effort to exclude politics from local elections.

Their local propaganda material contains absolutely no reference to the history of the fight against Prentice or to the policies necessary to fight social service cuts and other attacks on the working class.

Some right wing Labour Party members have refused to canvass on the basis of the manifesto put out in our ward, but the effect of this has been more than outweighed by the new support we have acquired.

The local problems we address in our programme are only local instances of national questions.

Public service cuts, hospital closures, rent increases and so on don't result from specific conditions existing in Newham. They all arise out of the general capitalist crisis It would obviously ^= quite wrong to state a port: in any different terms.

The crisis today cant me solved by utopian 0is. schemes. The local struge.= has to be directed towaris sweeping general solutiors The whole point :: campaign on the strect are doorsteps is 10 se = depth of the wist i s need tor programmes.::..::: new leaders.

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Eugene Delacroix, 'Liberty Leading the People' (1830) symbol of the French Revolution The founding of the Communist League and he publication of the Communist Manifesto mere the twin results of Marx and Engels' success in defeating the utopian communists in the League of the Just, and raied on scientific comnunism.

= League of the Just • i secret society founded :== in 1836, whose inspir- was largely drawn from = = ch equalitaran comsuch as Babeut and the reformist t. ers of Louis Blanc and I: iron, the other major t..s current at the time, t: stague of the Just recogr:. the necessity of violent e...on to overthrow the *-inis state and establish t= :.:atorship of the prol*ever, one point where LE:: was to take issue with was on their concepnat a conspiratorial society would take power through a = * organised coup.

Hasi this, Marx argued =e dictatorship of the = at could only be shed by a mass mobilis:: the working class, -he leadership of an : League's philosophy on the idea that -us inequities of the -= ary social system -= cured by sharing equally amongst the Indignation Fi not analyse the ==:: ÷ at work in society .. .::se the sources of I = requalities of wealth.

did they analyse =: :::a from a historical tai.:.: or demonstrate t: -seria: necessity for the m=.: ot capitalism.

..e neOres were rooted E sierator at the hardship * :* =y-bourgeoisie and ts i ire class, rather than Ie: understanding of "Tha: mattered little: for he time being 'equality'. 'brotherhood' and "justice' helped them to surmount every theoretical obstacle".

While the League of the Just grew and spread its ideas through workers' associations 'choral societies' and 'athletic societies' in Germany and elsewhere in Europe (the description chosen depended on the legal conditions in the particular country), Marx and Engels were developing a very different communism, based not on vague notions of "justice' and "brotherhood', but on historical materialism.

The publication of German Ideology in 1845-€ marked the full development ot historical materialism as a theory which could both explain history, as more than ä series of more-or-less accidental' events and, by using this historical analysis, expl ain why and how capitalism would be superceded by classless society.

Scientific

B iore the founding of the Communist League. Marx and Engeis were working in Brussels, from where they spread their theory of scientific communism through their paper Deutscher Brusseler Zeitung and within the German workers' society which they founded They maintained contact with the League of the Just, attending their meetings to discuss propaganda and tactics, and circulating documents amongst their members in order to counterpose their own theories to those of the "primitive communists' Merciless criticism They particularly directed their polemics against Weitling, a leading German communist. whose only contrittion to establishing a theoretical base to his propaganda was by tracing communism back to primitive Christianity.

Marx describes his Man donnihar his object in intervening in the League of the Just as being:

'to subject to merciless criticism in a series of pamphlets the medley of English and French socialism or communism and German philosophy which then formed the secret teaching of the League, and replace it by the only tenable theoretical foundation, namely scientific insight into the economic structure of bourgeois society; and, finally, to explain in popular form that our task was not that of trying to bring any kind of utopian system into being but was that of consciously participating in a historical revolutionary process by which society was being transformed before our eyes' As Marx and Engels explain in section 3 of the Manifesto, the primitive communists voiced the demands of a small and undeveloped proletariat, in the early period of capitalist development.

Although the! forward demands. and Nor. ers, their ewn laci standing matched th development of the class, and they were to failure.

Materialism

Marx and Engels point out that it was the development of capitalism and the polarisation between bourgeoisie and proletariat that created the conditions for their own 'discovery of histori materialism. and the wider acceptance of scientific socialism over the theories of primitive communism.

By the Spring of 1847, the majority of the leading SOCIALIS. SF FRESS. members of the League of the Just, in particular those in London, had come to recog nise the inadequacies of the primitive communism, and Josef Moll, one of their most prominent members, was dispatched to Brussels to invite Marx and Engels to join the organisation.

Marx and Engels, having satisfied themselves that their old criticisms of the League were no longer applicable agreed Mari accepted ... 0 he ethode and undemocratic "ructure should be changed cut. more importantly. he rejected squantarian unism, and accepted Marx's historical materialist analysis of bourgeois society and the necessity and inevitability of proletarian revolution.

Marx and Engels were interested in the League because of its strength in the German working-class, which they hoped they could use as * base tor their political actilities In the summer of 184the League's structure was overhauled to wipe out the old conspiratorial and undemocratic relics, its name was changed to 'Communist League', and it was converted into a society with a clear statement of aims. Its first article declared:

'The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old, bourgeois society based on class antagonisms and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property' At the Second Congress of the Communist League, in vovember 1847, Marx and Engels were commissioned to draw up a Manifesto which they had completed by the outbreak of the February Revolution in Paris.

Upsurge

The founding of the Communist League and the completion of the Manifesto coincided with the mass revolutionary upsurge which swept through Europe in 1848.

The Manifesto which Engels describes as the 'the detailed theoretical and practical programme of the Party' was therefore essential to equip the members of the League, especially in CLIB jacobins bEJ Germany where they were strongest, with a programme to fight tor in their participation in the 1848 revolutions.

The first section of the pamphlet explains the theoretical basis of the programme: the analysis of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the inevitability of the proletariat's complete victory.

The authors look at capitalism and the struggles of the working-class from a historical standpoint: they examine the development of the bourgeoisie as a revolutionar: ass in conflict with feudism.

The old leudal system of production could not satist! the needs created by the exransion ot world markets This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navieased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.' New social order As the bourgeoisie became economically dominant, through their control of the new means of production, they destroyed not only the old methods of production and exchange, but the old social and political order.

They overthrew the ruling aristocracy who had tried to preserve the feudal relations, both economic and social, and created their own social order based on principles more conducive to the sway of free competition and tree trade:

'the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society.

At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompLenin (centre) with other founders of the Russian Marxis: anied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class,'

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The control of the state was wrested from the hands of the feudal aristocracy, and taken over by the new ruling-class, the bourgeoisie.

The same process carries on in a different guise under capitalism: the economic system, based on private property and production for profit ceases to be revolutionary and becomes a fetter on economic development.

Engels Marx's analysis of the exact mechanism by which capitalism becomes prone to periodic and worsening crises and unable to develop further the productive forces, does not appear until the publication of Capital in 1867 In the Manifesto he merely states:

'The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.

"The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie İtself" is eu day 26 Apri, 1y.8 is... of the French National Assembly Not only must capitalism develop in such a way as to get deeper and deeper into conditions of economic and social crises, but it must also create the material and political conditions for its eventual overthrow.

Working class

Specifically it creates the industrial working class. It concentrates workers in large factories, strengthening them politically:

'But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, ano i lecis that strength more... Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades' Unions) against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots"

The development of capitalist production on an ever larger scale, pushes the small shopkeepers, the artisans and the peasantry out of the middle class and down to the level of the proletariat.

Although, on the one hand, this can swell the ranks of the working class, these elements can only be revolutionary to the extent that they become proletarians and identify their interests with the interests of the working class.

As long as they retain their status and consciousness as members of the bourgeoisie and refuse to follow the lead of the working class, they are not only conservative, but reactionary, since they • "try to roll back the wheel of Gravediggers The whole analysis of the class struggle which forms the basis for the revolutionary programme of communists is summed up best at the end of this first section of the Communist Manifesto:

«The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The develodment of Modern Industrv therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products.

"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable".

The rest of the pamphlet spells out the political programme of the Communist League, and distinguishes between communism and the many 'socialist' and 'communist theories prevalent at the time.

the authors are not content simply to differentiate between scientific socialism and these other ideas on an ideological level, but they also use the method of historical materialism to explain their class nature. and their inadequacies as programmes for the working class.

Of course, most of the movements they criticise have perished, but other movements have developed as a result of the same class For instance, although the reformism of Proudhon and Louis Blanc have little place in the modern workers' movement, some of the criticisms made of them (under "Conservative, or Bourgeois Socialism") could have been directed against the Social Democrats of the modern Labour Party and its European equivalents-a phenomenon which was not dreamt of in 1848:

"A part the bourdenisie is der irnue of redreco. ing social grievances, in order to secure the continued exis. tence of bourgeois society ... it requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie"

Immediate needs

The aim of the communists, their distinguishing feature, is "summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property"-in other words, social revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, since this is the only means by which the bourgeoisie can be persuaded to give up their property.

In order to mobilise the working class behind the Communist League, and prepare them for revolution, communists fight for the immediate needs of the working class, while at the same time taking the struggle forward to a higher stage:

«The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of that movement".

Republic

The Communist League had its strongest base in the German workers' movement and so it is in their programme for the German working class and through the pages of their Cologne-based naner No110 Rhoinionho Marx Zeitung that we can see how the League fought to concretise the very general programme put foward in the Manifesto.

On 31 March, 1848, the Communist League published The Demands of the Communist Party. It starts with the concluding words of the Manifesto: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" and expands the demands of the Manifesto, applying them to the particular conditions of a divided Germany, which had not experienced a bourgeois revolution.

The first demand, therefore, is that:

"The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible Republic"

By supporting the national democratic demands of the bourgeoisie, the Communist League were putting into practice the words of the movemont Manitesto:

'In German!. ICom munists) fight with the bour. geoisie whenever it acts in = revolutionary way. agains the absolute monarchy. the feuda squirearchy and the petty bourgeoisie"

But at the same time. thes demands must go tunre: drawing the class LT.= between bourgeoisie ar.: proletariat and calling Ic: measures which strengther the proletariat in its fig: against the bourgeoisie:

"3. Representatives of the people shall be paid, so that workers too, will be able to sit in the parliament of the German people.

4. The whole population shall be armed ...

5. The exercise of justice shall be free of charge ...

11. All means of transport. railways, canals, steamships. roads, stations, etc. shall be taken over by the state. They are to be transformed into state property and put at the free service of the needy".

With these demands the Communist League were putting into practice the general principle laid down in the Manifesto:

"(Communists) never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin"

The German Communist League's programme and the general principles lying behind it are still relevant today, although not for Germany (now one of the most advanced capitalist nations in the world), but for underdeveloped and colonial countries.

New conception:

They constitute ine basis of the theory of permaneni revolution which Marx, and later Trotsky were to build on and develop.

The Communist Manifesto is not just an historical document, of merely academic interest.

By synthesising the theory of scientific socialism with the practical application of the fight for socialist revolution, it laid the basis for the work of communists throughout the world.

Lenin sums up its achieve. ment:

"With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work outlines a new worid conception, consistent materialism. which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics. as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world historic revolutionary role of the proletariat-the creator of a new, communist society"

Ann Evans

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5OCL LIST RES. 33=34 The last ten minutes of Close Encounters must be some of the most breathtaking in the history of the cinema. The sheer technical brilliance of the effects has brought an extra dimension to the screen that dominates the film completely. To anyone not versed in the latest technical wizardry of the

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East for the forthcoming Council elections on May

ransforming that organisation into one

kitters of class struggle. S. = Engeis points out:

gation, railways exrended, he bourgeoisie developed, iner-