Bailing Out the System: Reformist Socialism in Western Europe, 1944-85 0906224306, 9780906224304

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Ian Birchall

Bailing out the system Reformist Socialism in Western Europe: 1944-1985

111

Bookmarks London, Chicago and Melbourne

BAILING OUT THE SYSTEM REFORMIST SOCIALISM IN WESTERN EUROPE 1944-1985 by Ian Birchall Published October 1986 by Bookmarks BRITAIN: 265 Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, London N4 2DE. USA: PO Box 16085, Chicago, IL 60616. AUSTRALIA: GPO Box 1473N, Melbourne 3001. ISBN 0 906224 30 6 Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd, Exeter Typeset by Kate Macpherson, Clevedon. Cover design by Peter Court.

Bookmarks is linked to an international grouping of socialist organisations: AUSTRALIA: International Socialists, GPO Box 1473N, Melbourne 3001. BELGIUM: Socialisme International, 9 rue Marexhe, 4400 Herstal, Liege. BRITAIN: Socialist Workers Party, PO Box 82, London E3. CANADA: International Socialists, PO Box 339, Station E, Toronto, Ontario. DENMARK: Internationale Socialister, Morten Borupsgade 18, kid, 8000 Arhus C. FRANCE: Socialisme International (correspondence to Yves Coleman, BP 407, Paris Cedex 05). IRELAND: Socialist Workers Movement, PO Box 1648, Dublin 8. NORWAY: Internasjonale Sosialister, Postboks 5370, Majorstua, 0304 Oslo 3. UNITED STATES: International Socialist Organization, PO Box 16085, Chicago, Illinois 60616. WEST GERMANY: Sozialistische Arbeiter Gruppe, Wolfgangstrasse 81, D-6000 Frankfurt 1.

Contents 5 6

Acknowledgements Abbreviations used in text

9 17

Part one: INTRODUCTION The long and winding road Daydream believers

29 36 48 60

Part two: 1944-1953: FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR What are we fighting for? Dancing in the streets? Meet the new boss Beneath the flag of democracy

73 79 90

Part three: 1953-1963: DRIFT TO THE RIGHT No more heroes No faith to lose The bitterest pill

103 119

Part four: 1963-1973: NEW OPENINGS ‘I want to be elected’ Riders on the storm

133 142 153 172 195 207

Part five: 1973-1985: THE CRISIS RETURNS Working for the clampdown Nowhere to run Stepping stones Time for truth Halfway to paradise? Ashes to ashes

223 232 244 251

Part six: CO-OPTING THE LEFT Friend or foe? Living in a nowhere land How to sell a contradiction Children of the revolution

260

Keep on keeping on

269 280 283

Notes Chronology Index

This book is published with the aid of the Bookmarks Publishing Co-operative. Many socialists have a few savings put aside, probably in a bank or savings bank. While it’s there, this money is being re-loaned by the bank to some business or other to further the aims of capitalism. We believe it is better loaned to a socialist venture to further the struggle for socialism. That’s how the co-operative works: in return for a loan, repayable at a month’s notice, members receive free copies of books published by Bookmarks, plus other advantages. The co-operative has about 130 members at the time this book is published, from as far apart as London and Australia, Canada and Norway. Like to know more? Write to the Bookmarks Publishing Co-operative, 265 Seven Sisters Road, London N4 2DE, England.

*

1

Acknowledgements I wrote this book as a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and its main ideas are not mine but those of the party. I of course take individual responsibility for any errors and for detailed formulations. However, I undoubtedly owe many detailed points to swp comrades with whom I have discussed the issues, informally or in meetings, and I have drawn on innumerable articles in Socialist Worker and Socialist Review, of which only some are acknowledged in footnotes. I also owe a debt to many European comrades whom I have met and learnt from over the past two decades. I am particularly grateful to Alex Callinicos, Norah Carlin, Tony Cliff, Pete Goodwin, Duncan Hallas, Pete Marsden, Alan Rogers and Steve (‘not in the afternoon’) Wright for searching criticisms of earlier drafts. Thanks to Danny Birchall for the index. I must also give thanks to the many members of the Labour Party whom I have worked with, or against, in various political contexts over the past twenty-five years, and who have helped me to understand better the nature of reformism. The first draft of this book was written during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, and I am especially grateful to Neil Kinnock mp, who confirmed my basic arguments by his conduct on every single day of that heroic struggle. Ian H Birchall February 1986

★

Ian Birchall’s previous publications include France: The struggle goes on (with Tony Cliff, London 1968), Workers Against the Monolith (London 1974), and The smallest mass party in the world (London 1981). He is senior lecturer in French at Middlesex Polytechnic in London.

Abbreviations used in text

CERES:

Centre for Socialist Studies, Research and Education (in French

CFDT:

Socialist Party) French Democratic Confederation of Labour

CGIL: CGT: CISL: CND: CP:

Italian Confederation of Labour General Confederation of Labour (France) Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Britain) Communist Party (of the country under discussion)

DC: DGB: EAM: EDA: EEC:

Christian Democracy (Italy) German Trade Union Confederation National Liberation Front (Greece) Union of the Democratic Left (Greece) European Economic Community; ‘Common Market’

ELAS:

People’s Liberation Army (Greece)

FDP: FGTB: FLN: FO: GNP: IRI: KKE: LCR:

Free Democratic Party (West Germany) Belgian General Confederation of Labour National Liberation Front (Algeria) Workers’ Force (French trade union federation) Gross National Product Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Italy) Greek Communist Party Revolutionary Communist League (French section of Fourth International) Confederation of Trade Unions (Sweden) Popular Republican Movement (French Christian Democrats) North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Panhellenic Liberation Movement (Greece) Panhellenic Socialist Party (Greece) Spanish Communist Party French Communist Party Italian Communist Party Portuguese Communist Party Socialist Party (France) (after 1971)

LO: MRP: NATO: PAR: PASOK: PCE: PCF: PCI: PCP: PS:

Bailing out the System

PSDl: PSI: PSIUP: PSOE: PSP: PSU: SAP: SDLP: SDP: SDS: SFIO: SP: SPD: SPO: UDSR: UGT: UIL:

Italian Social Democratic Party Italian Socialist Party Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity Spanish Socialist Workers Party Portuguese Socialist Party United Socialist Party (France) Social Democratic Labour Party (Sweden) Social Democratic and Labour Party (North of Ireland) Social Democratic Party (Britain) Socialist Student Association (West Germany) Socialist Party (France) (up to 1971) Socialist Party (of the country under discussion) Social Democratic Party (Germany) Socialist Party of Austria Socialist and Democratic Union of the Resistance (France) General Workers’ Union (Spain) Italian Union of Labour

7

Parti

Introduction

Chapter 1 The long and winding road

in Europe is in crisis. Communist Parties are in decline, Socialist Parties drift ever turther rightwards and the revolutionary left is in disarray. Yet a glance at the state of the world today makes the case for socialism. A deep recession with no end in sight; famine in the Third World; the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The argument for the abolition of the whole social system has never been stronger. Nor has the working class vanished, despite the repeated claims of academics and journalists that it has evaporated or otherwise said ‘farewell’. From the massive upsurge at the end of the Second World War, through the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Belgian General Strike of 1960, the French mass strike of 1968 and the Portuguese upheaval of 1974-75 to the British miners’ strike of 1984-85, workers have shown their determination and their potential power. Why, then, has the left made so little progress over the past forty years? Above all, because the organisations which claim to represent it and its interests have repeatedly blocked its advance. We have seen during the British miners’ strike that it was, in the last resort, not the policies of the government or the organised violence of the state machine that deprived the miners of their victory; it was the failure of Labour leaders and trade union bureaucrats to fight for the solidarity that could have won the strike. The aim of this book is to trace the history of social democratic politics in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War, to show what role they have played in the class struggle, and to analyse whose interests they have ultimately served. The debate between reform and revolution — do we change the existing order from within, or smash it and build anew? — is as old as the idea of socialism itself. What is at stake is not simply the winning of reforms — capitalism itself, as a historically developing system, makes it possible for reforms to be fought for and won. The argument THE LEFT

10

Bailing out the System

is about how socialism can be achieved and what sort of socialism we want to build. The crucial question is that of the state. Revolutionaries under¬ stand that the state is the weapon used by one class to oppress another. As a result the organs of the state — the law courts, police and army — cannot simply be infiltrated or made use of; they must be smashed and replaced. It is the simple recognition of this, not any kind of insurrec¬ tionary romanticism, that makes revolutionaries insist that somewhere along the road to socialism there has to be a sharp and rapid transfer of power. In R H Tawney’s words: ‘Onions can be eaten leaf by leaf, but you cannot skin a live tiger paw by paw.’1 The division goes deeper. Reformists and revolutionaries are not following two different roads to the same destination; they are heading for quite different goals. If socialism is defined, not as planning or state ownership, but as a society where human beings collectively control production and thereby their own destinies, then by definition it cannot be achieved by reformist means. Parliament can legislate a minimum wage or a higher pension for me, but no-one can legislate that I should take power into my own hands; I must take it for myself. Any socialism that deserves the name must be the product of the self-activity of the working class. And that means workers’ self¬ organisation — workers’ councils — as the indispensable means by which the old order must be destroyed and the new order built. The history of modern social democracy can be traced back to the founding, in 1889, of the Second International. The old Engels was actively involved in the organisation, and the International became committed to Marxist principles, to class struggle and proletarian internationalism. Its main sections were in the advanced capitalist nations of Western Europe — Britain, France, Austria and above all Germany. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) had a tough record of fighting for revolutionary principle against an authoritarian state; time and again its members were jailed for socialist activities. Yet there was a fatal duality at the heart of the SPD and the whole Socialist International. On the one hand they proclaimed the inevitable collapse of the whole capitalist system; on the other, they became increasingly involved in fighting for short-term gains within the institu¬ tions of the existing order. Those who attempted to argue openly for a reformist strategy, like Eduard Bernstein (‘I cannot believe in a final aim of socialism’),2 were soon defeated by conference resolutions; meanwhile those who claimed pure orthodoxy in words made huge concessions to reformism in practice. At the same time the International was overwhelmingly a Euro¬ pean organisation. Inevitably, there was enormous pressure on social

The Long and Winding Road

11

democrats to identify with the imperialist interests of their own ruling classes. In this respect too, revolutionary principles were subtly undermined. None the less, on the eve of the First World War the Second International was an impressive organisation, embodying the achieve¬ ments and class-consciousness of European workers. In 1912 the International’s parties had more than three million members; associ¬ ated with them were more than seven million members of co-operatives and nearly eleven million trade unionists. Affiliated parties had an electoral base of eleven to twelve million voters, and produced a total of two hundred daily papers. The outbreak of the First World War revealed the fragile nature of the edifice. The SPD abandoned its internationalism in order to ‘safeguard the civilisation and independence of our country’.3 In almost every country in Europe social democratic parties did the same; only small isolated groups stood up against the war. This was not the end of the road. Social democracy survived the war and when the peace came it was able to make massive gains. For the millions of men and women who had been radicalised by the bitter experience of war still looked to the organisations of the traditional left. In almost every country social democratic parties saw massive increases in the numbers of their members and voters. But amid the revolutionary wave that shook Europe after 1917, the social democratic leaders stood firmly on the side of the old order; this was most clearly seen in Germany, where the SPD was the main barrier to the success of a working-class revolution between 1918 and 1923.4 While the painfully reconstituted Socialist International now became openly reformist, the banner of the revolutionary socialist tradition was picked up by the new Communist International, founded in 1919 to defend and spread the gains of the Russian Revolution, and committed to a rejection of the parliamentary road to socialism, to the power of workers’ councils and to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In many countries the left wings of the social democratic parties split away to rally to the banner of the new International. As the post-war revolutionary wave began to subside, social democracy made further gains. Figures for voters and members began to rise. But there was no tangible success. In Britain there were two short-lived Labour governments; the first achieved little and the second ended in abject betrayal, as its leaders joined a coalition with the Tories. In the deep crisis of the thirties social democracy had little to offer. It had no strategy for fighting fascism; in Germany the SPD discovered that the ruling class showed no gratitude for its services in the post-war period; when the bourgeoisie switched its bets to Hitler

12

Bailing out the System

the SPD was crushed along with all the other workers’ organisations. In France a Popular Front government under Socialist leader Leon Blum found that its first job was to oppose a mass strike of two million workers; it soon crumbled. In a period when economic slump and mass unemployment made reformist solutions look singularly im¬ plausible, social democracy seemed to have no future. Meanwhile the social democrats’ main rival, the Communist International, was also undergoing major transformations. In Russia the isolation of the revolution in a poor and war-weakened country led to the erosion of workers’ democracy; the power vacuum was filled by a growing bureaucracy, and by the thirties Stalin and his allies had crushed the last remnants of workers’ power and established a brutal dictatorship. Stalin, with his doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’, had no perspective of world revolution; the Communist International was turned into a tool of the national interests of Russia’s ruling bureaucracy. Communist Parties throughout the world went through dizzying zigzags, from the ultra-left lunacy of the ‘Third Period’ (‘social democrats are the same as fascists’) to the rightism of the Popular Front (‘unite with the progressive bourgeoisie against fascism’). On the eve of the Second World War social democracy and Stalinism appeared equally bankrupt. But the story was not over for social democracy. The long boom after the Second World War gave a new lease of life to capitalism, and with it to reformism. When the system showed it could still offer reforms, reformist politics got some of their credibility back. Between 1945 and 1985 social democrats were in power — alone or in coalitions — at some time in virtually every country in Western Europe. Their continuing strength and resilience could be explained by the decline of their rivals and by the specific political role they were called upon to play in modern capitalism. From the 1950s international Stalinism went into a long historic decline.5 There were three main reasons for this. Firstly, with the nuclear arms race, the Communist Parties came to be a much less significant factor in the Russian bureaucracy’s foreign policy. In 1945 Stalin’s control over the Western Communist Parties had been a crucial item in his bargaining with the Western powers. By the time of the 1962 Cuba crisis they were largely irrelevant to his successor, Nikita Kruschev. Secondly, the attractive power of Russia as the one ‘homeland of socialism’ was seriously weakened by the emergence of a number of rival ‘socialist’ countries. Stalin’s split with Tito in 1948 was followed by Mao’s break from Kruschev in the early sixties. By the late sixties Russia was on the brink of war with China, and the late seventies saw a

The Long and Winding Road

13

squalid triple conflict between Vietnam, Cambodia and China. More¬ over, Kruschev’s revelations, in 1956, of some of Stalin’s crimes had permanently tarnished Russia’s image. Thirdly, Stalinism had been the product of defeat and despair. The Russian myth had been at its strongest in the thirties when Western workers saw Stalin as the only alternative to mass unemploy¬ ment and the rise of fascism. In the post-war period workers had much more confidence in their own strength and thus felt less need of a distant paradise. All this left Communist Parties in the West with two choices — to retreat into sectarian sentimentality, nostalgia for the days when Joe was in the Kremlin and all was right with the world, or to transform their organisations into social democratic parties. This second alterna¬ tive was fraught with risks. For if the price is the same, people will tend to prefer butter to margarine that claims to taste like butter. The bankruptcy of Stalinism left social democracy with the fundamental task of mediating between labour and capital. Modern industrial capitalism creates a huge and powerful working class; this cannot be held down by force alone, and without its acquiescence the system cannot continue to function. Social democratic parties, created by the working class but wholly committed to the existing order, are the best possible organisations to secure this acquiescence. This does not mean, of course, that the ruling class sees social democrats as the ideal party of government. Social democrats appear as both a threat and a support to the system. Because of their roots in the working class they may be able to restrain, by persuasion, better than a party of the right, and sell unpopular measures that a rightwing party could not get away with. At the same time their links with the working class may make them less willing to be tough in defence of the system. The events in Chile in 1970-73, when Allende’s govern¬ ment held back working-class struggle and was then cast aside by the army, is a graphic illustration of this duality. What suits the bourgeoisie is a system which keeps the social democrats available in reserve as an alternative solution. The parlia¬ mentary system, based on two or more parties, is the best way of achieving this. The capitalist system requires conservatism and in¬ novation, and a properly balanced two-party system will give it both in due measure. The ideal form of this is the American system, where both Republicans and Democrats, despite differences of emphasis or style, are equally committed, in words as well as deeds, to the maintenance of the existing system. But the American system is the product of specific historical circumstances; elsewhere in the world a social

Bailing out the System

14

democratic party is generally one of the main contenders for parlia¬ mentary power, and the United States often encourages social demo¬ crats to play the role of defenders of the system. An additional aspect of the strength and resilience of social democracy is its ability to co-opt on its left. Social democratic parties have always been adept in drawing towards them and absorbing groups on their left flank, while at the same time maintaining an air of respectable moderation. In order to do this they sometimes deliberately blur the distinctions between themselves and revolutionaries. Thus in 1971 Frangois Mitterrand declared: Whether violent or peaceful, revolution is first of all a break. Anyone who doesn’t accept this break — the method we can deal with later — anyone who doesn’t agree to a break with the established order — I mean the political order, of course — and with capitalist society, any such person, I say, cannot be a member of the Socialist Party.6

Of course a Mitterrand in opposition, aiming his words at party militants, uses a very different language from a Mitterrand in power. But more is at stake here than hypocrisy and deception. The continuing strength of social democracy shows the power of ideology in politics. Social democracy’s ability to keep an ideological grip on its rank and file is a major part of the explanation of its ability to survive. Hence the inadequacy of simple betrayal theories, which see right-wing leaders constantly selling out the militant rank and file. Betrayals there are indeed, but the scenario is more subtle than a rank and file straining at the leash and being held back by a corrupt leadership. This book has been written to illustrate both the resilience and the ultimately reactionary role of social democracy by looking at its history in Western Europe between 1945 and 1985. It aims to present arguments to show that social democracy has not changed and cannot change its spots, and that the time is ripe to build a revolutionary alternative. It is, of necessity, an outline account. (A comprehensive treatment of reformist betrayals would require something on the scale of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) There is a reasonably consecutive account of developments in Britain, France, Italy and West Germany. Other countries are dealt with in a more selective fashion, with a focus on events that are particularly significant or typical. A note on terminology

The term ‘social democracy’ has a chequered history. Before the First World War the term was used widely in the working-class movement; the Bolsheviks originated as a faction in the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. With the effective collapse of the Second International

The Long and Winding Road

IS

in 1914 and the founding of the Communist International in 1919, the term was dropped by the revolutionary wing of the movement; the Communist International used ‘social democracy’ as a label for those who rejected revolution and soviet power. Within the revolutionary Marxist tradition the term has continued to be used as it was by the Communist International. Since the Second World War there have been further develop¬ ments in the usage of the term. When Saragat organised a right-wing breakaway from the Italian Socialist Party in the late 1940s he even¬ tually adopted the name Italian Social Democratic Party. In 1981 a right-wing split from the British Labour Party likewise took the name Social Democratic Party. For this reason many in the labour movement are reluctant to use the name ‘social democrat’. Tony Benn, for example, and many of the leaders of the French Socialist Party, publicly repudiate ‘social demo¬ cracy’ and insist that they should be called ‘socialists’ or ‘democratic socialists’. The distinction is largely spurious. The dividing lines, in theory or practice, are far from clear. Thus the CERES group in the French Socialist Party* claim to reject ‘social democracy’, which they define in terms of a mass party, bringing together or attempting to bring together the greater part of the working class and middle classes so as to defend their interests without challenging the structures of capitalism.7 Now one might well question whether the French Socialist Party in government has defended the interests of the working class; but there can be no doubt that it has not challenged the structures of capitalism. Despite these terminological problems it is clear that there is a current of reformist socialism which, while showing national varia¬ tions, exists throughout Europe. One way of identifying it is in terms of membership of the Socialist International.** Among affiliates to this body are the Labour Parties of Britain, Norway, Holland and Ireland; the Socialist Parties of Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Luxembourg; the Social Democratic Parties of West Ger¬ many, Denmark and Finland; and the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party. Both the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian Social Democratic Party are members. In the rest of this book I shall refer to particular parties by their names, but I shall use the general term ‘social democratic’ to refer to a group of parties which have a programmatic commitment to some *See chapter 18. **See chapter 6.

16

Bailing out the System

form of socialism and some link (organisational, traditional or ideo¬ logical) with the working class, but whose practice is predominantly parliamentary and reformist.

Chapter 2 Daydream believers

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS want to make the world a better place. It is on the

basis of this claim that they have won, and continue to win, the support of million of working people. The case against them must rest, therefore, not on the fact that some of them have undoubtedly been charlatans and traitors to their own principles, but on a criticism of their arguments taken at face value. The ideas of reformist socialism go back a long way. The English Fabians of the late nineteenth century and Eduard Bernstein in early twentieth-century Germany began to cobble together a doctrine of gradual change which is still reproduced in one form of another. A glance at the festering pile of programmes and manifestos, personal or collective, that litters the history of reformist socialism reveals a continuing repetition of certain basic themes. In particular there is a strong emphasis on the moral aspect of socialism. Thus Leon Blum, leader of the French Socialist Party during the Popular Front of the 1930s, tells us . . . the object of socialism is the establishment of a universal society based on equal justice within nations and equal peace between peoples.1

Few people could disagree with this (though the few who do have a disproportionate amount of power in the present world). Most of us would like to see a juster and more humane society. The problem is how we get there. It may seem a paradox to say so, but reformist politics are essentially utopian. Social democrats, of course, flatter themselves on being ‘realistic’; they make great play of mocking those who promise overnight transformation of the world. Yet they share with the Utopians of the nineteenth century one essential feature — a failure to identify the agency of socialist transformation. The great Utopians had a powerful vision of how the world might be a better place. The French socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837), BOS- B

18

Bailing out the System

who imagined a world in which alienation had been overcome to such an extent that we should all get up at 3am out of pure enthusiasm for our work, had a sense of social transformation that makes modern reformists look pathetically tame. But Fourier had no idea how to get to his visionary world; he was reduced to advertising for a friendly millionaire to help him. For Marxists, the agency of socialist transformation is the work¬ ing class — those workers, by hand or brain, whose labour directly or indirectly enables the capitalists to amass surplus value, and who have no significant control over their own work situation. These are the people who can cut off the electric light, shut down food supplies and dry up the source of all profits. These are the people strong enough to resist the armed bodies of men and the prisons which defend the existing social order. For social democrats the working class pro¬ vides no more than a passive pool of support, voters who will troop out to mark a ballot paper once every few years. What social demo¬ crats cannot accept is the notion of working-class self-activity, the idea that workers will pursue their own ends through their own organisations — to quote Marx, the idea that ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’2 History tells us two things about the capitalist system. Firstly, it is an extremely tough and brutal system. Capitalism has been going for a long time and is not about to die a natural death. The men (and the few women) who run the system have a powerful interest in keeping things as they are. They have found agents — from Mussolini to Pinochet — who will defend them if they are threatened. In the last resort they will order mass extermination and even risk the nuclear holocaust rather than surrender their power. Secondly, capitalism is unplanned and anarchic. The rhythms of boom and recession may have changed, but the system remains unpredictable. The drive for profit has irrational and contradictory consequences; there are no guarantees that a plan can be followed through to its conclusion, or that increased resources will be available for sharing. To try to build a rational society on the foundation of capitalism is like building a house in a swamp. Among the policies and promises of social democracy certain themes recur: planning, equality, education, internationalism. All these concepts have deep and honourable roots in the socialist tradi¬ tion. The social democrats who have appropriated them have turned them into unrealisable fantasies, and in so doing have perverted the very essence of what they mean.

Daydream Believers

19

Planning The desire for a planned economy is a legitimate and long-standing one. To insist that the workings of the economy should not be seen as a blind, uncontrollable force of nature like the weather (‘the economic climate ), and that the economic organisation of society must be subjected to rational control for human ends — such is the very essence of socialism. But very deep in the socialist tradition is a contradiction between two quite distinct notions of planning: one that argues that society should be democratically controlled by its own members, and a quite different one that sees planning in terms of a benevolent (or not so benevolent) elite planning society on behalf of the rest of us. The latter tradition was already dominant with the Fabians. George Bernard Shaw, for example, insisted that nationalisation required above all a competent bureaucracy. Effective nationalisa¬ tions, he argued, needed nothing but new departments of the Civil Service, and these could be set up only by ‘stable and highly organised states’, certainly not by revolutions.3 The close parallels between the bureaucrats of right-wing social democracy and those of Stalinism have often been noted. Herbert Morrison, a prime example of the species, was well aware of it: I myself, if I had to choose between Mr Stalin, as a practical hard-headed administrator, and Mr Trotsky, whom I am bound to agree I think is a bit up in the air, temperamentally then, as an administrator myself, I would be inclined to sympathise with Stalin rather than Trotsky.4

Since the Second World War the idea of planning has become more and more detached from any concept of workers’ democracy. As capital has become concentrated into ever-larger units, the need for some kind of planning has become more apparent to the capitalists themselves. The eminent economist Andrew Shonfield has pointed out that industries are forced by the nature of the technology they use to commit capital to projects that will pay for themselves only after several years; they are thus driven to engage in ‘the seemingly specula¬ tive enterprise of long-range prediction.’5 Such planning, whether undertaken by companies, states, or the two together, clearly has nothing to do with working-class power, and everything to do with the preservation and expansion of profits. The Western European country which has been most consistently committed to planning — producing regular state plans every five years or so since 1947 — has been France. Yet until 1981 the left never held undivided power in France, and for well over half the period a clearly authoritarian right-wing government was in office.

20

Bailing out the System

Such planning does not aim to check the irrationality of competi¬ tion. On the contrary, it is a product of competition; it strives to enable the individual nation to compete more effectively in the inter¬ national market. This is true in the case of the ‘mixed economy’, which many social democrats now see as a desirable state of affairs to be extended indefinitely (in the words of former West German SPD leader Willy Brandt: ‘as much market economy as possible, as much planning as necessary’).6 It is also, in the last resort, true of societies where the whole economy is in state hands. Here too it is the competitive logic of the world market, transmitted through trade or through the arms race, that determines priorities. Russian agriculture is neglected (so that sixty years after the revolution, Russia has to buy grain from the capitalist West) because world competition demands that arms spend¬ ing comes first. Ever since the twenties Russia has been not socialist, but state capitalist, and its allegedly ‘planned’ economy has creaked with irrationalities as bad as those inherent in Western capitalism. As long as capitalism survives on a world scale, planning, whether Stalinist or social democratic, will be planning in the interests of the employers, not of the workers. But planning under capitalism is not only unsocialist, it is also illusory — for two reasons. Firstly, capitalism remains an anarchic system; without attacking its basic logic planning is impossible. For nearly thirty years after the Second World War capitalism enjoyed a prolonged boom; and during this many governments — whether ostensibly ‘socialist’ or not — used so-called ‘Keynesian’ techniques — namely the attempt to prevent recession by increasing government spending in order to stimulate demand. But Keynesian methods could not resolve the contradictions at the heart of capitalism; even¬ tually the fall in profits led to a return to crisis and recession in the mid-seventies, and Keynesian measures were dropped. The WilsonCallaghan Labour government in Britain in the seventies and the Mitterrand government in France in the eighties both had to abandon their very timid Keynesian measures in favour of a much cruder imposition of‘austerity’. Secondly, and even more fundamentally, the nature of capitalist society makes effective planning impossible. For capitalism rests on a fundamental division between those who control society and those who do the actual production. As long as this division exists, workers will have a different set of interests from those who control and plan. The media, trade union functionaries and politicians may try to persuade them that this is not so, but the persuasion ultimately wears thin. Workers will continue to strike, sabotage, underproduce and conceal

Daydream Believers

21

the true state of affairs from management. As long as this goes on, planning can never be more than a pragmatic half-measure. As Lenin said. Only the masses can really plan, for they alone are everywhere.’7 Many people on the left talk about planning and workers’ control as though they were two separable items, or as if the latter were the icing on the cake ( Russia has got a good solid cake but they haven’t got round to icing it yet’). The two are not separable. Socialist planning is based on democratic control by the producers themselves; anything else is an illusion. Equality The aspiration for human equality has a long ancestry. The American Declaration of Independence asserted that ‘all men are created equal (women as yet didn’t get a mention). A few years later the French Revolution triumphed under the slogan ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’; to this day French millionaires and paupers use coins bearing the slogan. Yet the concept of equality was profoundly ambiguous. Rather than equality of wealth or power, it was often held to mean equality of opportunity (to become unequal?) or simply equality before the law (as Anatole France pointed out, the law impartially forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris). The socialist tradition has tried to give a stronger and more precise meaning to the word. Thus Anthony Crosland argued that: The socialist seeks a distribution of rewards, status, and privileges egalitarian enough to minimise social resentment, to secure justice between individuals, and to equalise opportunities; and he seeks to weaken the existing deep-seated class stratification, with its concomitant feelings of envy and inferiority, and its barriers to uninhibited mingling between classes.8

Attractive as this picture of ‘uninhibited mingling’ is, it still leaves some questions unanswered. Classes, it appears, will still exist in Crosland’s socialism; indeed, if resentment is minimised, the class system may find itself less subject to challenge than before. Without abolition of the class system, no substantial movement towards greater equality is possible. And this takes us right to the heart of the utopianism of social democratic policies. To quote Crosland again, on the relation between equality and the universal provision of services: Social equality mainly requires the creation of standards of public health, education and housing so high that no marked qualitative gap remains

22

Bailing out the System

between public and private provision ... as for universal use, this will either follow automatically (or perhaps be enforced by a growing equality of incomes); and even if it does not, and some diehard snobs continue to prefer their private doctors, this will really be of little moment.

Crosland thus proposes a fantasy world in which council houses will be so good that all but the most snobbish dukes will abandon their castles to live in them. A permanently expanding and crisis-free capitalism, he suggests, can deliver these goods while private owner¬ ship remains. Hence, like all social democrats, he refuses to see that progress towards greater equality must start from the expropriation of private ownership and control of the means of production, for this is what perpetuates the exploitation of workers and hence produces the fundamental inequalities of wealth and power in our society; only after this appropriation can a society based on ever-greater abundance be founded. In practice, this approach means that social democrats in power have generally declined to expropriate the owners of property (though some nationalisations may be made for more specific reasons) and instead claimed to move towards equality by introducing measures of welfare and redistributive taxation. (The case of Sweden, with little public ownership and highly developed welfare, is often cited with approval.) The capacity of taxation to redistribute is, however, limited. In Britain, in 1949, the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population got, after tax, 27.1 per cent of total income; in 1979 — after thirteen more years of Labour government — the figure had fallen only slightly, to 23.4 per cent. But for the next richest 30 per cent the share after tax actually rose — from 36.9 per cent to 41.1 per cent. The poorest 60 per cent found themselves 0.5 per cent worse off.10 Moreover, there exists a whole industry of lawyers, publishers and conference-organisers to teach the wealthy how to evade taxation. As for welfare measures, they do not in themselves have any socialist content. The fact that they exist at all results partly from capitalism’s need to have a healthy and mobile labour force. In general social democrats have shied away from the political consequences of actually taking wealth away from anyone, and pre¬ ferred instead to try to achieve redistribution out of the increased resources produced by economic growth. As David Coates has pointed out, this involves a very basic case of Catch-22: For it the Labour Party is to achieve a sustained rate of economic growth from which to pay for greater social welfare programmes, educational expansion and the like, it has to provide when in office that economic and

Daydream Believers

23

social environment in which private corporate profits can flourish, and in which the class prerogatives of senior managerial personnel can remain unchallenged.11

In short, to challenge the pursuit of profit makes reform im¬ possible; but to leave profit unchallenged means that no significant progress can be made towards equality. Education The aspiration, not simply to share the economic benefits of society, but to have a share in culture and knowledge, is deeply rooted in the socialist tradition. Social democrats have traditionally put considerable emphasis on the demand for more widely available edu¬ cational facilities. Within a class society education plays a number of contradictory roles. For the system its main function is to train the labour force necessary to do the jobs required by an increasingly technological production process, to transmit the dominant ideology of society and to initiate a new generation into respect for authority and belief in the values of the existing order. Of course there are areas within the education system where radical and subversive ideas may be developed; but state control and the essentially competitive framework of the system ensure that these remain strictly limited. While increasing access to education within a class society may improve the opportuni¬ ties for the social advancement of individuals, it cannot change the class relations within society. For education to play a revolutionary role in society, not merely access, but the form and content of the educational process must be transformed. The experience of Russia in the years just after the revolution, when pupils had considerable control over their own institutions and project work replaced the authoritarian transmission of knowledge, can at least serve as an indication of an alternative direction. There is not an atom of this in the social democratic philosophy of education. Indeed, most post-1945 debates on educational policy have had little or no specifically socialist content. Control of the educational apparatus is obviously of considerable economic and ideological importance to any state; and in those countries where the Catholic Church has put up a significant resistance to that control, a sharp struggle has often ensued. Even in the eighties the Mitterrand govern¬ ment in France proposed measures which would have increased — marginally — the state’s control over Church schools, but backed off rapidly in the face of mass Catholic demonstrations.

24

Bailing out the System

In Britain comprehensive education has been largely associated with the Labour Party, but in France it was a right-wing Gaullist government that introduced a system of comprehensive secondary education in the early sixties. Political parties from all parts of the spectrum joined in the massive expansion of higher education after the Second World War; between 1950 and 1965 the number of students in higher education in Europe increased threefold. Moreover, the use of education as a tool to transform society seems condemned to failure. The massive expansion of higher educa¬ tion in the fifties and sixties did not produce a gradual erosion of class barriers. On the contrary, it led to the explosive ‘student revolt’ of 1968, when many thousands of students (for whom higher education was no longer a passport to an elite layer of society) began to identify with working-class struggles and thus to challenge the whole social framework they were working in. Furthermore, the expansion of education was predicated upon the expansion of the system as a whole. When the system began to slide into recession in the early seventies, one of the first consequences was cutbacks in education. The result has been continuing conflict, declining provision, and an attempt to reimpose authoritarian stan¬ dards. (A recent advocate of ‘Republican elitism’ in education — meaning more emphasis on correct spelling and patriotism — was Jean-Pierre Chevenement, France’s ‘left-wing’ Socialist minister of education from 1984 to 1986.) Reform through education certainly offers no soft option for those unwilling to fight the class struggle. Internationalism Internationalism lies at the very core of the revolutionary socialist tradition. For if the state is the weapon of one class against another, then workers can only effectively fight their own bosses if they recog¬ nise that they do not share in any ‘national interest’. The struggles against war and against racism are an integral part of socialist history. Reformism, on the other hand, operates within the structures of the national state; as a result it can never be truly internationalist. Nonetheless social democrats have often professed internationalism of a sort. Since the Second World War in particular there have been two reasons for this. Firstly, the world system has increasingly come to function as a single unit. Multinational companies go marauding around the globe; labour is shipped from continent to continent so that it may be most effectively exploited; the arms race provides a framework in which all other activities are set. There can be no plausible solutions to social problems that do not admit an international dimension.

Daydream Believers

25

Secondly, internationalism has sometimes proved to be a popular cause. Opposition to imperialist wars — above all that in Vietnam — and to the nuclear arms race have been issues that have mobilised millions of people in Western Europe over the past twenty-five years. No party aiming to put on a radical face could afford to miss out on the attempt to take over such movements. Hence social democracy continually throws up ideas with an international appeal; inevitably they turn out to be incorrigibly utopian. One example is the recent discussions between several European Socialist Parties about the idea that several countries should reflate together in order to begin to overcome the economic crisis.12 The notion sounds attractive until we enquire just how a group of competing ruling classes can be persuaded to act in co-operation. Even more utopian were the proposals for a new international econ¬ omic order discussed at the Vancouver Congress of the Socialist International in 1978. Delegates called for control of the arms trade; planned diversion of resources from armaments into development; reform of the international monetary system and an international code to control multinational corporations.13 All that was lacking was some indication of who was going to implement these policies. Perhaps we shall have to wait until all forty-two parties represented in Vancouver find themselves in power simultaneously. Yet another example is the Brandt Report, produced by a Com¬ mission led by the former Social Democratic chancellor of West Germany. The Report was inspired by a recognition that continuing massive inequality between developed and non-developed countries was a threat to the stability of the world order as a whole, as well as by an awareness of the fact that Western Europe in particular is increas¬ ingly dependent on the less developed countries for export markets. Brandt therefore came up with a number of detailed proposals for aid, trade and disarmament which in practice would mean a large-scale transfer of resources to non-developed countries. What Brandt failed to show was how this could be possible within the existing world economy. To develop, poor countries need markets; but the advanced world in crisis is scarcely likely to open its gates to a flood of imports. Brandt now expresses concern at starvation, but as West German chancellor he supported the Common Market policy of high food prices which gave rise to the obscene spectacle of unsaleable food surpluses existing alongside famine. The point is not to label Brandt a hypocrite, but to show that the dynamics of the system are incompat¬ ible with reform. Moreover, the very poorest countries (such as those African nations afflicted with famine) buy few imports, so the wealthy nations have little incentive to develop them. Aid is much more likely

26

Bailing out the System

to follow military interest; for while real international redistribu¬ tion would require huge arms cuts, the arms economy is central to the economic structure of the wealthier nations. The Brandt Report essentially proposes a kind of international Keynesian¬ ism, and as such is no more viable than Keynesianism in a single country. It is the Common Market, the EEC, which is the most glaring example of the utopianism of social democratic internationalism. Social democrats played a key role in the forties and fifties in cam¬ paigning for a united Europe. The question has acquired a huge ideological force, provoking splits and resignations among politicians who are quite willing to deal with strike-breaking or torture in terms of a quiet compromise. Yet a quarter of a century after its foundation, the European Common Market is clearly a failure in terms of any true inter¬ nationalist standards. It remains dominated by the relatively rich countries of Europe; it has failed to achieve any satisfactory harmonisation of taxation or transport policies. The lorry drivers’ blockades of 1984 revealed that the so-called ‘customs union’ still had well-developed — and inefficient — customs. In March 1984, while the EEC discussed the entry of Spain into the Community, a French naval patrol opened fire on Spanish trawlers ‘poaching’ in French fishing waters. In the same year, while there was talk of the imminent phasing out of national passports in favour of EEC documents, ‘Socialist’ France withdrew the right of British daytrippers to visit Channel ports without passports (an openly racist measure aimed at black tourists as part of France’s attempt to tighten up immigration controls). And 1984, too, saw the various EEC leaders at each other’s throats over the question of budget contributions. In face of such a shambles, it is not surprising that social demo¬ crats — often claiming to be on the ‘left’ — sometimes drop their internationalist rhetoric and lapse into an atavistic nationalism. At the British Labour Party Special Conference on the Common Market in July 1971, Clive Jenkins, trade union leader and one of the pillars of the Tribunite left, argued that Britain should not get involved with such countries as France, ‘twice to the brink of civil war within a decade’. (One of the two occasions was, of course, the strike of ten million workers in May 1968.) Social democratic rhetoric about internationalism should, then, be regarded with deep suspicion. Perhaps the most grotesque example on record is the way in which Guy Mollet, Socialist prime minister of France in 1957, defended the use of military repression and torture

Daydream Believers

21

against a national liberation struggle in Algeria* by appealing to internationalism: Individual nations are no longer large enough to cope with the world. What would Algeria represent alone? On the contrary, what might not its future be as one of the basic elements of the Eurafrican community in the process of creation . . . National sovereignties are fading, inter¬ dependence between nations is becoming the rule, the world is moving inescapably towards unity.14

When Dr Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, he did not foresee Guy Mollet. Some men are such scoundrels that only internationalism gives them shelter.

See chapter 9.

Part 2

1944-1953:

From World War to Cold War

Chapter 3 What are we fighting for?

BY THE END of the 1930s the left was defeated or discredited in most parts of Western Europe. Fascism had triumphed in Italy, Germany and Spain. In Britain Ramsay MacDonald had formed a National Government, leaving the Labour Party weakened and disoriented. The French Popular Front National Assembly, elected in 1936 on a high tide of anti-fascist feeling, was the same Assembly which in 1940 put the pro-German Petain into power. Three-quarters of the deputies of the SFIO (the French Socialist Party) voted full powers to Petain. It was the Second World War which began to revive the fortunes of reformism, giving it a new lease of historical life. To understand how this happened it is necesary to say something of the complex interplay of interests and ideologies that underlay the war. Fundamentally the war was a conflict between the imperialist ruling classes of Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan and the USA, each aiming to increase their power and influence on a global scale. By the end of the war Germany and Japan were — temporarily — defeated; Britain and France, despite being on the winning side, were in decline as imperial powers, and Russia and the USA had established them¬ selves as the two dominant world powers. The imperial ambitions of the major protagonists were made clear on many occasions. On 12 August 1941 Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt agreed the ‘Atlantic Charter’, which stated that ‘they respect the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live.’1 In September of the same year Churchill stated that this did not apply to India,2 and at the Yalta Conference in 1945 he insisted that ‘the Atlantic Charter did not apply to the British Empire’.3 The American leaders were obviously aiming to strengthen and extend their influence, notably in Western Europe and South

East Asia. The anti-fascist credentials of the governments opposing Hitler were, to say the least, somewhat thin. In August 1939, just before the

Bailing out the System

30

Second World War began, Stalin had made a non-aggression pact with Hitler; in December of that year Stalin assured Hitler that the friendship between Russia and Germany was ‘cemented by blood’;4 some of the blood belonged to German Communists he had handed over to the Gestapo. As for Churchill, his anti-fascism may be summed up by his comments on the fall of Mussolini: He was, as I had addressed him at the time of the fall of France, ‘the Italian lawgiver’. The alternative to his rule might well have been a Communist Italy, which would have brought perils and misfortunes of a different character both upon the Italian people and Europe . . . Even when the issue of the war became certain, Mussolini would have been welcomed by the Allies.5

Any authentic ‘anti-fascist’ strategy for winning the war would have included an appeal to German workers, who were just as much victims of Nazism as people elsewhere in Europe. But the Allies were determined that Hitler should be crushed militarily and that there should be no question of a popular anti-Hitler rising in Germany — which could threaten the security of capitalist domination in occupied Europe. Hence the Allied insistence on unconditional surrender and the publication in the United States of the ‘Morgenthau Plan’, which declared the intention to reduce Germany to the level of an agricultural country. Allied policy thus effectively forestalled any revolt by the German working class or within Hitler’s armed forces. While the war was in no sense an anti-fascist war, it was a war in which ideology had a special role to play. Those in power could not afford a re-run of the First World War. That war had been fought on the basis of pure nationalism — and when the nationalism wore thin after years of life in the trenches, the war ended with disaffection, mutiny and a revolutionary wave that swept right across Europe. To mobilise people for a new imperialist war, much more emphasis on the social content of the struggle was necessary. At the very beginning of the war British Labour leader Attlee told the House of Commons: ‘The fact is that if you want to win this war you will have to have a great deal of practical socialism.’6 Certainly the war in many ways produced a radicalisation of British society. After the long slump of the thirties, war-time brought about full employment, which led to a much higher degree of self-confidence and organisation among workers. Large numbers of women were brought into employment — and hence into trade union organisation — for the first time. Workers were not taking the war for granted as they had in 1914; the Communist Party’s campaign against the war up

What Are We Fighting For?

31

to June 1941 awakened certain echoes of sympathy. If the war was to be fought successfully, workers had to be promised, and indeed shown, certain changes in British society. In occupied Europe Nazi conquest meant the smashing of trade union and political organisation and the destruction of civil liberties. In the short term the left suffered massive demoralisation and disarray. But the occupation also produced a clear class differentiation. For the middle classes there was the easy option of collaboration (though some, to their credit, did not take it). Workers and peasants had to bear the main burden of the war. In France, for example, the first decree of German General von Stutnitz, six days after taking Paris, made strikes illegal and froze all prices and wages. During the occupa¬ tion workers suffered longer hours, the introduction of piece work and, later in the war, rising unemployment. It was the threat of deportation to become forced labour in Germany that drove many thousands to take to the maquis and join the Resistance. The German invasion of Russia in 1941 was a further radicalising force. The Hitler-Stalin pact was soon forgotten, and Communist Parties became the leading elements in Resistance movements through¬ out Europe. The British Communist Party — with a policy of opposi¬ tion to strikes and support for the electoral truce — reached the highest membership in its history. Whatever the reality of Stalin’s aims, Russia was immensely popular with a large section of the working class, and its entry into the war reinforced the sense that somehow this was different from previous national conflicts. This was the climate in which the European left began to revive. Millions of people worked or fought with the expectation that the post-war world would not be like the thirties. Many of the older reformist politicians had discredited themselves by support for, or at least acquiescence in, fascism, but a new generation of leaders was emerging. Many of the people who were to play a key role in reformist politics after the war had previously stood on the extreme left. Willy Brandt, for example, had joined the SAP (a leftist split from the German SPD) in 1931. Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan were expelled from the Labour Party in 1939 for advocating a Popular Front. Such leftists were typical of hundreds who were to play a leading role during and after the war. As the following chapters will make clear, the radical aspirations developed by millions of people during the war were to be betrayed, perverted or co-opted at the war’s end. To understand that, it is necessary to understand that the aspirations were indeed real.

32

Bailing out the System

Resistance movements In those parts of Europe under fascist domination, Resistance movements grew up rapidly. These represented a broad coalition of social and political forces, but after 1941 the Communist Parties in most cases came to exercise a dominating influence. Because of their traditions of centralism and clandestine organisation, the Communist Parties were better suited to Resistance work than other currents of the left. Moreover, it is undoubtedly true that they earned leadership both by courage and efficiency. The level of sacrifice was enormous. In France it is estimated that up to sixty thousand Communists may have lost their lives in the Resistance, while the Greek Communist Party, through the EAM (National Liberation Front) sank roots into the local population and played a key organising role in local areas. Yet the policies of the Communist Parties remained resolutely in ‘ the tradition of the Popular Front, except that now even more stress was put on nationalism. Italian party leader Palmiro Togliatti made a broadcast appeal to ‘Italians of all social conditions’, including ‘indus¬ trialists’ and ‘businessmen’ whose trade had been damaged by the war;7 and in France the slogan of the Communist Party-led FTP (.Francs-Tireurs et Partisans) in France was ‘Chacun son Boche’ (‘Let every man kill a Hun’). It was through their role in the Resistance movements that the Communist Parties were able to reintegrate them¬ selves into the mainstream of national life, and prepare the ground for the very influential role they were able to play at the end of the war. The social democratic parties were in general much less influential in the resistance struggle. Their political traditions were thoroughly parliamentary, and they contained many opportunists who were pre¬ pared to swim with the fascist stream if that was the way the tide was flowing. The involvement of the French Socialists in the Resistance was described by Guy Mollet, himself a prominent Resister and later party leader, in the following terms: In the party as in France, there were 5 to 7 per cent Resisters, 2 or 3 per cent who collaborated or supported Petain, while the rest took a waitand-see attitude till the beginning of 1944. The Resistance marked a real break in the history of the SFIO, a wild period. If you were in the Resistance, you didn’t reveal yourself, even to a comrade from the party: for example, the Liberation-N ord movement was made up of a majority of Socialists, something that many of the members and even the leaders didn’t know until the end.8

The uncentralised — and hence unpolitical — nature of the SFIO intervention in the Resistance thus contrasts sharply with the role of the CP.

What Are We Fighting For?

33

None the less, socialist ideas, at least of a reformist type, per¬ meated the resistance movements. In France the leading body of the Resistance, the CNR (Conseil National de la Resistance), contained nineteen members, of whom six were Communists and only two Socialists, the other eleven making no claim to socialist commitment. But in March 1944, when the end of the war was in sight, the CNR unanimously adopted a programme based on the principle of‘a rational organisation of the economy ensuring the subordination of private interests to the general interest’, and including calls for a national plan, nationalisations, co-operatives and workers’ participation in management.9 The war had clearly persuaded a lot of people of the necessity for change. But the same words mean different things to different people and the unanimity was not to last long. Britain At the beginning of the war the British Labour Party still had traces of internationalism in its politics. On 30 June 1939 the National Council of Labour issued an address to the German people saying ‘We are your friends’ and recognising that Hitler was an enemy of the German people. This attitude did not survive the war. In October 1941 the head of the Labour Party International Department, William Gillies, prepared a document that argued that no German, even a Social Democrat, could be trusted with power. From 1943 representa¬ tives of the German SPD were no longer allowed to attend or address Labour Party Conference.10 When Churchill formed his National Coalition Government in May 1940 he brought in a number of Labour leaders, in particular Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, and Ernest Bevin, who became minister of labour and national service. Bevin, who had not previously been a member of parliament, but who had a long record as general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, was the key figure. Churchill’s aim was to use Bevin to draw the organised working class into support for the war, and within weeks he noted that ‘under his leadership the British working class are now giving up holidays and privileges to a far greater extent than in the last war.’11 Bevin for his part argued that workers had to be given reforms — or at least the promise of reforms — if they were to be won over to support for the war effort. Bevin’s success can be measured by the fact that Britain achieved a higher degree of mobilisation of labour than the Nazi police state in Germany.12 Nonetheless, Bevin had to use the stick as well as the carrot. In the spring of 1944 he instigated the prosecution of four members of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party under the 1927 Trades BOS-C

34

Bailing out the System

Disputes Act for furthering a strike of apprentices in the North East (the jail sentences were quashed on appeal). At the same time Bevin introduced Regulation 1AA, laying down penalties for anyone insti¬ gating or extending strike action among workers engaged in ‘essential services’. Like much later trade union legislation, it aimed, not to shackle trade unions, but to assist trade union bureaucrats against the rank and file. A ministry of labour memorandum stated that the Regulation ‘should strengthen the hands of trade unions in dealing with irresponsible elements.’ The success of the measure is shown by the fact that it was never actually used.13 The presence of a handful of Labour Party ministers could not, of course, suffice to integrate workers into the war effort. The integra¬ tion also took place at much deeper levels of society. One important aspect of this was the creation of Joint Production Committees in workplaces. The government claimed that by June 1944 there were some four and a half thousand of these committees in existence — although in many cases they were a sham, meeting irregularly or having no effective trade union involvement. Nonetheless the commit¬ tees played an ideological role — a role which was enhanced by the enthusiastic commitment of the pro-war Communist Party. The Com¬ munist Party’s industrial influence was out of all proportion to its actual membership — never more than around fifty thousand,14 and its line of enthusiastic support for the war effort meant that in practical terms it reinforced the Labour Party’s position. Of course neither Ernest Bevin nor the Communist Party could win total support from workers. There was much disillusion and scepticism about Labour in the factories, and strikes continued throughout the war. The coalition partners had agreed to an electoral truce (supported by the Communist Party) meaning that all parties backed a single candidate in by-elections. Despite this, independent radical candidates beat the all-party bloc on more than one occasion. Common Wealth, an idealistic grouping of the radical left, made a significant impact as a left alternative to Labour, although it never amounted to more than fifteen thousand members. There was radicalism, too, in the ranks of the armed forces. Only a tiny minority of the army were volunteers, and while there were fewer outright mutinies than in the First World War, there was considerable potential opposition to the existing military and political order. One participant has described the British army in the Second World War as ‘half-chauvinist, half-anti-fascist, anti-militarist and yet militarily competent.’15 The situation was double-edged. The Labour politicians’ promises of reforms encouraged workers in their determination that

What Are We Fighting For?

35

things would not be same again after the war, while the Joint Produc¬ tion Committees helped to lay the bases for the rebirth of shop steward organisation in British industry. The incorporation of labour prevented any explosive outcome to the war; it also laid the founda¬ tions for the post-war Labour government. A Left Alternative? The organised revolutionary left was far too small to present an alternative to the Communist Parties or the social democrats. British Trotskyists called for army officers to be subject to election by soldiers and for a socialist appeal to German workers; in 1944 they helped to lead a strike of engineering apprentices. French Trotskyists tried to counter the anti-German nationalism of the Resistance, producing a German-language paper distributed to occupying soldiers in Paris and Brest. Yet neither group had a membership of more than a few hundred and elsewhere the sections of the Fourth Interntional were infinitesimally small. These groups had inherited from Trotsky an analysis which seriously underestimated the resilience of reformism,* but in any case they were too small and isolated to make a serious application of the United Front tactic. However, if the revolutionary left was too small to have an impact, there was nonetheless a revolutionary potential in the situation. Certainly most workers — whether they were in factories, conscripts in the armed forces or members of Resistance movements — accepted the myth that this was an anti-fascist war. The very fact that they had swallowed this line meant that for them this was not a war like any other. They did not intend to go back to the world of the thirties — a decade of right-wing rulers and mass unemployment. All this meant that the system would not have an easy ride when the war came to an end. The reformist leaders would have their work cut out to keep the radicalisation within safe channels.

See chapters 21 and 22.

Chapter 4

Dancing in the street?

The crucial principle of our foreign policy should be to protect, assist, encourage and aid in every way that socialist revolution wherever it appears . . . The upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent. These upper classes look to the British Army and the British people to protect them against the just wrath of the people who have been fighting underground against them for the past four years. We must see that that does not happen. THIS RATHER apocalyptic view of revolution already under way in

Europe came from one of the bright-eyed young delegates at the Labour Party Conference in May 1945, the month Nazi Germany surrendered. His name was Denis Healey. Healey’s vision was typical of the time. What was hoped for on the left was feared on the other side of the fence. In June 1945 a prominent US official wrote to his superior: I am deeply concerned over conditions in Western Europe and the possibility that serious disorders may develop during the coming months. If the people of that area, particularly those in France, have to face another winter without heat or without adequate food and clothing, I can foresee disturbances of such serious consequences as not only to involve conflict with our troops, but to gravely imperil our long-term interests. The outlook is at best a gloomy one . . ,2

Europe in 1945 stood at a historic crossroads. Millions of working people had developed aspirations that the post-war world should be somehow different from what had gone before. The order which Hitler had imposed on Europe was in ruins. Thousands upon thous¬ ands of functionaries and officials had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. If they were to be effectively purged, they could not be simply replaced; an alternative supply of‘trained’ bureaucrats just did not exist. If a new order was to emerge, it would have to be based on

Dancing in the Streets?

37

different, and more democratic, forms of social organisation. In many parts of Europe working people, often armed, followed the logic of this situation and began to take things into their own hands. Commit¬ tees were set up to control workplaces and administer localities. A rather rough-and-ready justice was dispensed to those who had col¬ laborated with the Nazis. It was possible to see the first signs of a society based on workers’ councils, bodies directly elected by workers and subject to recall. Even in Germany, where twelve years of Nazism had crushed workers organisations, the seeds of a new society began to flower. The invading armies found . . . local Left committees . . . running factories and municipalities which the owners and masters had deserted, via spontaneously created shop committees and councils . . . everywhere they moved to liberate concentration-camp prisoners, organise food supplies and eradicate the Old Order.3

Russian, British and American forces alike dissolved the committees as quickly as possible. Obviously this was only one trend among several. As will be seen, it was rapidly stifled. What did exist in Europe in 1945 was a situation which could potentially have developed within a short space of time to a point where a revolutionary seizure of power was on the agenda. US troops were still occupying Europe in huge numbers. But, as emerged by the end of 1945, there was massive discontent among these troops. They were anxious to be demobilised and very reluctant to be used against the peoples they thought they had been fighting to liberate. At the beginning of 1946 more than a thousand Gls staged a march down the Champs-Elysees in Paris; in the same month a New York paper carried a report from Nuremberg that stated: ‘The fact is that the Gls have strike fever. Almost every soldier you talk to is full of resentment, humiliation and anger.’4 An emerging revolutionary movement could clearly have won fraternisation, or at least absten¬ tion, from a significant part of the US troops. What was at stake was a crisis of leadership. Many of the parties and individuals which had ruled Europe in the thirties emerged from the war totally discredited, either by explicit sympathy for fascism, or by their responsibility for the economic disasters of the pre-war period. In Italy and Germany most established politicians had been totally complicit in the fascist dictatorship; in France much of the traditional right and centre had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers; in Britain even Churchill’s personal popularity could not save the Tories from being seen as to blame for mass unemployment in the

38

Bailing out the System

thirties. At the same time millions of those who had gone through the war wanted to see some radical change in society; with the revolutionary left too small to make an impact, it was the Communist and social democratic parties which filled the power vacuum. Their main rivals were generally ‘left’ Catholics, who soon dropped the veneer of radical¬ ism and moved rightwards. It was against this background that the major world powers were able to carry through a monstrous land-grab and divide the post-war world into the notorious ‘spheres of influence’. This was done without any concern for the views or interests of the millions of people involved. At a celebrated meeting between Churchill and Stalin in October 1944, the former wrote on a half-sheet of paper a proposed carve-up of influence between Britain and Russia in Eastern Europe. Stalin added a tick in blue pencil. As Churchill unashamedly notes: ‘It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down.’5 Such informal ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ were modified and given more formal status at the major conferences between the victorious powers held at Yalta in January 1945 and Potsdam in July 1945. In the course of the Potsdam Conference, Clement Attlee, who had just become prime minister following Labour’s election victory, replaced Churchill, but his presence seems to have made little difference to the proceedings. While the reformists kept peace down on the ground, the thieves met in conference halls to share out the loot. The atomic bomb Before the carve-up could be finalised more blood was needed. Nazi Germany had surrendered, but the war against Japan was con¬ tinuing. It was to be ended in August 1945 when the United States decided that Asian cities would provide a suitable testing-ground for its new atomic weapon. A proposal to demonstrate the bomb on an uninhabited island was rejected, as was a suggestion — emanating from the British Foreign Office, not a body known for its humanitarianism — that the Japanese should be warned in time to evacuate the cities to be bombed.6 The US wanted real corposes. They were also determined to use the weapon before Japan surrendered, even if it was not necessary. US secretary for War Henry Stimson recalled telling President Truman in June 1945 that he ‘was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength.’ The president ‘laughed and said he understood.’7 On 6 August 1945 Hiroshima was bombed; 78,150 people were killed immediately, at least fifty thousand more were injured, and 176,987 were left homeless. Three days later a second bomb killed

Dancing in the Streets?

39

23,000 more in Nagasaki. Within five days the Japanese surrendered, as they would probably have done if nuclear weapons had not been used. Obviously the nature and potential of nuclear weapons was not yet fully understood. Nonetheless many people were alarmed or angry at what had been done; 21 per cent of British people disapproved of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.8 But this minority got no lead from the reformist politicians, who saw themselves as policing the post¬ war settlement, and were quite happy to see the Allies win by any means necessary. The Italian Communist Party paper L’Unita commented: The news that an atomic bomb was dropped by the American Air Force has made an enormous impression throughout the whole world, and has been received on all sides with a sense of panic and condemnation. This shows, it seems to us, a curious psychological perversion and a doctrinaire obedience to a form of abstract humanitarianism.9

There were, apparently, no perverts in the British Labour Party leadership. Indeed Walter Citrine, general secretary of the TUC, verged on racism when he stated: The Japanese are a tenacious race whose philosophy of life and death is far different from ours, and one can understand that only by the use of some weapon as devastating as the atomic bomb is there any hope of bringing them quickly to submission.10

France The liberation of France from Nazi occupation in the second half of 1944 left the country in a state of turmoil. Initially central govern¬ ment had little control over the situation. In various municipalities liberation committees were set up; in Marseilles the local authorities began a programme of regional public ownership without even con¬ sulting Paris. People’s courts were set up and some eleven thousand collaborators shot. In most cases the French Communist Party (PCF) had a tight grip on the workers’ committees that were formed; here and there revolutionaries from the Trotskyist PCI (Parti Communiste Inter¬ nationalists) were able to take an initiative. But the authorities persistently refused to allow the PCI’s paper, La Verite, to appear legally. The novelist Andre Malraux and Gaston Defferre (many years later to be Mitterrand’s minister of the interior) were among those who connived at this suppression of press freedom.11 As late as December 1944 the minister of the interior was still appealing to local liberation committees to stop acting autonomously.

Bailing out the System

40

He was backed up by French Communist Party leader Maurice Thorez, who insisted: Local liberation committees must not substitute themselves for municipal and departmental administration, just as the National Council of the Resistance has not substituted itself for the government.12

The traditional right in France had been so heavily involved with collaboration that they were virtually absent from the immediate post-war political scene. Those who had escaped execution or prose¬ cution were keeping their heads well down for the time being. The reformist left should have had a free run. But the Communists were anxious to respect the emerging carve-up between Russia and the West, and the Socialists had no stomach for a bid for power based on workers’ councils. So both parties agreed to serve in a government under Charles de Gaulle. Like Churchill, de Gaulle was a man of right-wing background but an outsider to the established political elite. He had played an undeniably courageous role in 1940, when he refused to back Petain, and had built up a body of support while in exile. But he would have been no match for the armed and internally organised Resistance, had not the Communist and Socialist leaders found it politically oppor¬ tune to accept his leadership. The PCF was the largest and best organised of the political parties; in the period just after the Liberation its membership rose to close to one million. Its industrial penetration was crucial in persuad¬ ing organised labour to acquiesce in the new regime, to ban strikes and to increase productivity. The role of the French Socialist Party (SFIO) was also crucial. While its base was less substantial, it had considerable electoral support, and it was able to play a balancing role between the PCF on the one hand and the newly-emerging Christian Democrats (the MRP — a party formed by Catholic Resisters) on the other. In the municipal elections held in the spring of 1945 the SFIO pursued a variety of alliance strategies according to locality. In some areas it allied with the PCF, in others it formed joint lists with the right against the PCF. In the Constituent Assembly elections of October 1945 the left had an absolute majority (a situation that was not to recur until 1981). The Communists and Socialists took more than half the votes cast, and between them had 302 deputies out of 586. A PCF-SFIO coalition government could thus have been formed. Such a government would not (as some on the right feared) have taken France into the Russian bloc; Stalin would have made sure the Yalta bargain was kept. Cir¬ cumstances would have obliged it to impose austerity on the working

Dancing in the Streets?

41

class in the interests of reconstruction and productivity. But a govern¬ ment of the left alone would have raised the expectations of the working class, and it would have had fewer excuses for failing to deliver. The SFIO preferred not to take the risk, and insisted on including the MRP in the coalition. During the next year de Gaulle resigned and withdrew from the parliamentary scene; two further general elections were held, and the SFIO saw its parliamentary repre¬ sentation fall from 150 to 105. The basic political line-up, however, remained the same. During this period the SFIO was undergoing a significant evolu¬ tion. Deputies who had voted for Petain in 1940 (three-quarters of the parliamentary party) were temporarily excluded from membership; with the loss of these and other collaborators the party swung to the left. One tendency within the party wanted to use the new circum¬ stances to transform the SFIO. Their objective was the construction of a new party on the lines of the British Labour Party; this would have meant dropping the SFlO’s programmatic commitment to Marxism and abandoning its traditional anti-clericalism. This, it has been argued, would have enabled it to attract many of those who joined the MRP. The other tendency, which wanted to stand by the SFlO’s traditional programme, was in a majority. As a result the SFIO avoided the rightist trap only to fall into one on the left. At the party congress held in July 1946 the position of the party left wing was expressed in a motion submitted by a young former member of the Resistance, who aimed to displace the old guard around Leon Blum. The motion contained some ringing phrases: We believe we must condemn all attempts at revisionism, notably those which are inspired by a false humanism, the real meaning of which is to disguise the fundamental reality of the class struggle. It is this weakening of Marxist thought in the party which has led it to neglect the essential tasks of organisation, propaganda and penetration into the masses, to con¬ fine itself to parliamentary and governmental action, and to commit the political and tactical errors which have been made, even on this level, since the Liberation ... To enrich Marxism with the lessons of the struggle against fascism, to adjust it to the necessities of the present phase . . . and not to water it down by a more or less disguised return to Utopian socialism — this is the key to the doctrinal effort we have to undertake.13

The motion was carried and its mover became the new General Secretary of the SFIO. He was Guy Mollet, who over the next twelve years was to preside over a series of brutally right-wing policies.* *See chapter 9.

42

Bailing out the System

Unlike many of its European counterparts, the SFIO was to remain set in the mould of the pre-1914 Second International — a combination of programmatic purity and reformist practice. One side-effect of this was that some of the most notable reform¬ ists in post-war France stayed outside the SFIO — in particular Pierre Mendes-France and Francois Mitterrand. Mendes-France stayed in the Radical Party while Mitterrand helped to found the Union Democratique et Socialiste de la Resistance (UDSR). The UDSR claimed to be socialist but rejected Marxism and anti-clericalism. While its leaders aspired to the creation of a French version of the British Labour Party, the UDSR never had more than a handful of deputies in the French National Assembly; but under the proportional representation system of the Fourth Republic it was strong enough to provide Mitterrand with the base for a ministerial career. Italy In Italy the basic factors in the situation were similar to those in France, but the tempo of events was different. In July 1943 Mussolini was overthrown by a palace revolution and replaced by Marshal Badoglio. Badoglio, who had led the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, had no significant political differences with Mussolini; but recog¬ nising the way things were going he made an armistice with the Allied powers. The whole of Northern Italy, however, remained in German hands. In April 1944 the leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), Togliatti, returned to Italy and agreed to enter Badoglio’s government. By so doing he was giving a clear indication that the PCI would make no attempt to lead independent working-class action or make a bid for power. In the next twelve months, as Germany went down to defeat and Italy awoke after twenty years of fascist rule, there was plenty of evidence of the potential for working-class power. In December 1944 there was an insurrection at Ragusa in Sicily, sparked off by opposi¬ tion to conscription. The local Socialists and Communists played an active part, though the PCI nationally opposed the rising. It was eventually put down bloodily by the army. At the end of April 1945 workers in the great Northern industrial cities of Milan and Turin revolted and seized the cities. With many militants doubtless remem¬ bering the factory occupations of 1920, workers’ councils were set up to run the factories. Some twenty thousand fascists were shot. Throughout 1945 the government coexisted uneasily with a dif¬ ferent kind of power in the workplaces. As The Economist recorded:

Dancing in the Streets?

43

■ . . councils of management’ . . . have been appointed in every big factory by the local Committee of National Liberation. These councils are intended to ensure that the notions of anti-Fascist patriots of Resist¬ ance days shall not now be flouted by the captains of industry.14

As in France, the Communist Party was the strongest and best organised section of the left. It grew rapidly as the war came to an end; some reports speak of people queuing in the streets to join.15 It was a resolutely governmental party. In 1944, when the Socialists refused to serve under the conservative Bonomi, the PCI remained in the govern¬ ment. In 1945 the PCI brought down a government led by a member of the left-wing Action Party and replaced it with a coalition under the Christian Democrat De Gasperi. Two lines were emerging within the PCI; one, advocated by the leader, Togliatti, sought broad unity which would include Christian Democrats, while the other put the stress on organic fusion with the Socialist Party. Neither aim was achieved, though the PCI did develop a close alliance with the Socialist Party for several years. The traditional Italian Socialist Party had fared badly under fascism, having neither an orientation to underground work nor the protection of the Vatican; it was largely an organisation in exile and deeply divided. In January 1943 Lelio Basso and others founded a new organisation, the MUP (Movement of Proletarian Unity) in which Trotskyists and other Marxists had some influence. In August 1943 the old Socialist Party fused with the MUP to produce a new and more vital Socialist Party which grew rapidly in 1944-45, and placed itself distinctly to the left of the PCI. While the rhetoric of the PCI centred on national unity and alliances, the Socialists put far more stress on class, and advocated more radical reforms. As we have seen, they refused to join the PCI in serving under Bonomi. The Socialists were strongly in favour of united action with the PCI, hoping thereby to draw the PCI away from its attachment to Moscow. In the short term the attraction was to work in the opposite direction. The Socialists did not have the base or the politics that could have enabled them either to outflank the PCI on the left, or to draw it away from Stalinism towards social democracy. Mention should also be made of the Action Party. This was formed in 1942 as an anti-fascist party with no links with the political forces of the twenties and no clearly defined doctrine. Its lack of coherent position meant that it was sometimes, like the Socialist Party, to the left of the PCI, but it was far less stable. Like Common Wealth in Britain, it rose with the radicalism of the moment and went

Bailing out the System

44

down again with it. In 1947 it dissolved, with most of its members joining the Socialist Party. Greece In Greece under wartime German occupation the Communist Party (KKE) had built up a mass organisation, the EAM (National Liberation Front) and the associated ELAS (People’s Liberation Army). By 1944 EAM was said to have up to two million supporters out of a population of seven million, and when the Germans withdrew in October it effectively controlled almost the entire country. But in that same month Churchill had agreed with Stalin that Greece should be in the British sphere of influence. British troops entered Greece as the Germans left. EAM was scrupulous not to be provocative or to upset the Churchill-Stalin deal. Its press called for support for the existing government, a purge of collaborators, social services within a national economic plan and continued private ownership of industry. None the less there were indications of working-class militancy. At the beginning of November two thousand Athens textile workers took over their factory and set up a ‘management committee’.16 At the beginning of December the British commander in Greece, General Ronald Scobie, ordered the EAM to disarm; demonstrators were shot in the streets of Athens and the working-class districts of the city were bombed. Despite willingness to compromise, EAM was forced to fight to preserve its own existence. A bitter struggle continued until the following February when EAM accepted an unsatisfactory settlement — doubtless under pressure from Moscow, for it had not used its full strength. There was no significant social democratic current in Greece; the left was dominated by EAM. But the British needed some sort of a left face to oppose to EAM and George Papandreou filled the bill. Papandreou had been prime minister of the British-backed govern¬ ment in exile since April 1944. Churchill perceived him very much as the British representative in Greece; in August he wrote to Anthony Eden: Surely we should tell Papandreou he should continue as prime minister and defy them all . . . We cannot take a man up as we have done Papandreou and let him be thrown to the wolves at the first snarlings of the miserable Greek [Communist] banditti.17 A Greek historian has noted Papandreou’s eminent suitability for the job of smashing the left:

Dancing in the Streets?

45

Papandreou was the ideal choice for this very subtle and delicate process. A former minister under Eleftherios Venizelos, he was known for his consistent republican feelings; he therefore inspired a maximum of confidence on the left. He had even been offered the presidency of EAM, which he had declined. Now he was called upon to annihilate EAM.18

For several months Papandreou negotiated a series of agreements and compromises with EAM. By January 1945 EAM, under Russian pres¬ sure, had effectively given up the fight. Papandreou had served his purpose and was dropped. The fruits of Papandreou’s compromises and Churchill’s bloody intervention were to be bitter. After the agreement signed on 12 February 1945 the Communists faced harsh repression. Elections in 1946 were so blatantly fixed that the Communist Party refused to participate, and soon afterwards a new and more vicious civil war broke out. Until February 1947 the right-wing regime got substantial military and financial assistance from the British Labour government; British troops were not finally withdrawn from Greece until October 1949. The Greek Communist Party was now smaller and more isolated than it had been in 1944; after two years Russia and Yugoslavia withdrew their support, and the party had to admit defeat. The time wasted negotiating with Papandreou could have been used to prepare a bid for power. Now many years of right-wing rule lay ahead for Greece. The colonial world It was not only Europe that was on the knife-edge of revolution at the war’s end. One of the purposes of the war had been a continued struggle for control of the countries of Asia and Africa; but the peoples of those countries often saw no reason why any type of imperialist rule should continue. Britain, unlike the other European colonial powers, had not suffered Nazi occupation; therefore it had a special role to play in 1945. The Labour Party, on coming to power in July of that year, had no clear perspective about the future of imperialism. The official rhetoric of the Labour Party was paternalistic but ultimately racist. A war-time report by the Labour Party’s National Executive stated: In Africa, Great Britain and other European states are responsible for the direct government of an immense expanse of territory and millions of Africans, whose economic and political systems are so backward that they are ‘not yet able to stand by themselves’.19

Bailing out the System

46

Among what the report calls ‘backward peoples or peoples of primitive culture’, who were not up to running their own countries, are listed Nigeria, the Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. Behind the paternalism lay a cruder logic, spelt out clearly by Ernest Bevin: I am not prepared to sacrifice the British Empire, because I know that if the British Empire fell... it would mean that the standard of life of our constituents would fall considerably.20

Hence it is no surprise that the Attlee government was happy to work as the custodian of empire, not only preserving the British Empire to the best of its ability, but intervening to help other colonial powers. British troops were sent to Indonesia, where, after the end of the Japanese occupation, nationalist forces were fighting for in¬ dependence. A Labour government was thus backing up the Dutch colonialists in their vain struggle to hold on to this territory. Even more noteworthy is the case of Vietnam, because it was perhaps the one colonial country where a working-class revolution was actually on the cards in 1945. Vietnam had a long tradition of working-class and anti-imperialist struggle, and a revolutionary current, under Trotskyist leadership, had a significant base in the country. Vietnam, formerly French-ruled, had been occupied by Japan, and even under the occupation there had been displays of worker militancy. When the Japanese surrendered, France had been in no position immediately to repossess its territory; and in accordance with the decision of the Potsdam Conference British troops were sent in, under the command of Lord Mountbatten. They were confronted by armed insurrection and the formation of a workers’ militia. Some suburbs of Saigon fell into rebel hands and French colonialists were executed. The Communist-led Vietminh had to fight, just as the Greek Communists had had to, but the pressure was clearly on them not to upset the Potsdam agreements. The Vietminh eventually signed a peace agreement; before restoring total control they murdered the Trotskyist leaders. Despite its critics within the Labour Party, the Attlee government loyally fulfilled its commitments and made Vietnam safe for French imperialist rule. A working-class revolution in Vietnam could have unleashed aspirations throughout the colonial world and made ‘per¬ manent revolution’ a reality again; its strangling paved the way for thirty more years of bloodshed in Indochina. The Labour leaders’ attachment to empire was moderated by their pragmatism. Vietnam was one thing, but India was quite another.

Dancing in the Streets?

47

At the time of the 1945 election Labour had no clear proposals for India, and fewer than 10 per cent of Labour candidates had bothered to mention the question in their manifestos. By 1946 it became clear that India would no longer be ruled by Britain. There was massive popular discontent, much of it outside the control of Mahatma Gandhi and rejecting his commitment to non¬ violence. Any attempt to maintain British rule in India would have demanded a massive military effort; this became absolutely clear after the naval mutinies of 1946. In any case British imperialism could hope to continue exploiting India without direct political rule; so the Labour government rapidly decided to withdraw as soon as possible. Mountbatten was sent to fix the details. Labour’s ‘granting’ of independence to India owed everything to expediency and nothing whatsoever to anti-imperialist principle.

Chapter 5 Meet the new boss

BY THE END of 1945 Europe had been saved from the immediate danger of working-class revolution — largely by the parties which claimed to represent the interests of workers. A larger task remained — to re¬ construct Western European capitalism after the destruction and dis¬ location caused by the war, and to establish that capitalism on a securer basis than the ramshackle crisis-ridden foundations of the thirties. Social democratic parties were ideally suited to this task. They were committed to state intervention, an obvious necessity for a revivified capitalism; they had working-class support and trade union links which would enable them to win co-operation in industry; and they were patently not out to overthrow capitalism. In the second half of the forties virtually every country in Europe had social democratic participation in government for some time and in some form. Social democratic prime ministers led governments in Britain, France, Belgium, Austria and various Scandinavian countries, and social democrats took part in coalitions in Italy, Holland and Luxembourg. In most cases social democrats co-operated with other forces, in particular Communists and Christian Democrats; there were Com¬ munist ministers in Austria, Belgium, France, Iceland, Italy and Finland. On short-term issues they were able to agree, but they had different long-term strategies. The Communist Parties, still effectively controlled from Moscow, were not very interested in social reform as such; they entered coalitions in order to police the post-war carve-up, and when it suited Moscow’s book they would rapidly return to the rhetoric, though not the practice, of revolution. Christian Democrats, on the other hand, were the direct representatives of capitalist inter¬ ests, with only a thin veneer of anti-fascist radicalism.

Britain The case of the British Labour government is therefore particu¬ larly interesting. Elected with a massive overall majority in July 1945,

Meet the New Boss

49

it remained in power uninterruptedly for nearly six and a half years without needing an alliance with any other political force. As such it provides a pure experimental model of what a social democratic government would, could and could not do in the circumstances of the aftermath of war. The Labour leaders had two main strategic aims. The first was to channel the expectations and demands for reforms which were being made by the working class. This would inevitably involve some concessions. While there might be differences of emphasis on this between Labour and Tories, the necessity was accepted on all sides. As a bright young Conservative, the aptly named Q Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) put it in 1943: If you do not give the people reform, they are going to give you revolution. Let anyone consider the possibility of a series of dangerous industrial strikes, following the present hostilities, and the effect it would have on our industrial recovery.1

The second aim was to restructure the economy, and in particular to develop those sections of the economy which private ownership was not running efficiently, but which were necessary for the economy as a whole. This meant a fairly substantial programme of nationalisation, especially in the fuel and transport sectors. These measures did not mark a radical break with the past. Already after the First World War a Royal Commission had stated that ‘the present system of ownership and working’ in the coal industry ‘stands condemned’,2 and in the thirties one Tory MP, Harold Macmillan, had advocated ‘planned capitalism’ with substantial public ownership including coal-mining and sections of the food industry.3 In the most rigorously capitalist terms coal-mining and the rail¬ ways were ripe for nationalisation — with compensation, of course. The mine-owners had sought to profiteer from the war-time need for coal, but the sharp rise in pit strikes in 1944 had made it clear that the old management were no longer capable of producing the coal needed by British industry. The railways were in an even more ramshackle state. In 1938 only one of the four main railway companies had paid a dividend. In 1940 the government had done a deal whereby the railway industry was guaranteed a minimum annual revenue of forty million pounds, without any significant conditions being imposed. In the post-war period the only alternatives were to continue paying massive subsidies, or to nationalise. Not surprisingly, therefore, the prospect of nationalisation did not seem to provoke any great alarm. Labour’s election victory had produced some concern on the Stock Exchange, but within a week or ROS-D

Bailing out the System

50

two the Daily Herald reported that the Stock Exchange ‘was boom¬ ing’, and even shares of companies earmarked for nationalisation were rising.4 Ruling-class hopes were not disappointed. Coal production rose by 17 per cent in the first five years of public ownership, an increase primarily attributable to higher productivity. Output per man shift rose from 1.07 tons in 1947 to 1.21 tons in 1951; output per man year rose from 266 tons in 1942-46 to 303 tons in 1951.5 As a result, some of Labour’s natural enemies paid tribute to its nationalisation policy. In 1948 Lord McGowan, head of Imperial Chemical Industries, declared that it had been right to nationalise the mines, and that under private ownership weekly production would have been a million tons less.6 The following year the Economist argued that ‘it may be things would have been worse without nation¬ alisation’, with scarcer coal and higher railway costs.7 What is clear is that Labour’s nationalisations were in no way a challenge to the wealth or power of the existing ruling class. Com¬ pensation was given on a highly generous basis. When the Bank of England was nationalised stockholders received enough government stock to assure them the same income they had been getting from the Bank in the past; in the case of coal a special tribunal was established to calculate the net annual revenue that owners might be expected to earn if the industry remained in private hands. Nor was the pattern of management broken. The first head of the National Coal Board, Lord Hyndley, had been a leading figure in the largest colliery company in Britain. Below him many regional, district and colliery managers remained the same. Certainly there was no attempt to transform the nature of power within the nationalised industries. As one of Attlee’s ministers, Stafford Cripps, put it: From my experience there is not as yet a very large body of workers in Britain capable of taking over large enterprises ... I think it would be almost impossible to have worker-controlled industry in Britain, even if it were on the whole desirable.8

Workers’ control cannot be given — it must be taken; but there was no danger that the Labour leaders would risk making an offer. A few token posts in the nationalised industries for trade union bureaucrats were as far as they were likely to venture. Miners and railway-workers had no desire to go back to the old owners, but equally they did not feel the new industries to be ‘theirs’. Within a year of coal nationalisation nearly half Yorkshire’s miners were involved in an unofficial strike sparked off by increased work-

Meet the New Boss

51

loads. They now found themselves confronting both law courts and the Opposition of their own union. For many Labour supporters the crucial achievement of the post-war Labour government was not its nationalisation programme but its welfare measures, which were seen as having made a material contribution to improving working-class living standards. Once again Labour s strategy contained two major components: a willingness to concede to the demand for reform, and a concern to meet the needs of a renovated capitalism. If British capitalism was to be modernised, it needed a working class that was healthier, better educated and more mobile. It needed improved health care, secondary schooling for all and a shift of the burden of welfare away from the individual family (before 1945 one adult in four was helping to maintain an old age pensioner). As Samuel Courtauld (head of the textile company) put it: Social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long-term investment the country could make ... it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among [workers] and a lowering of production costs.9

The basis of Labour’s welfare programme lay in the Beveridge Report, published in December 1942. The report was designed to boost wartime morale and proved extremely popular; it was not, however, in any sense socialist. Beveridge himself became a Liberal MP in 1944; the report was endorsed, not only by Labour and the TUC, but by the Liberals and by Churchill and many of the younger Tories. There were many defects in Beveridge’s scheme; a major one was the fact that it was based on the insurance principle — since the total cost of benefits had to be covered by contributions, benefits remained low and there was no effective redistribution between classes. Another loophole was the principle of reduced benefits for married women, who were assumed to be dependent on their husbands. Nor were all Beveridge’s intentions carried out. Pension increases were inadequate; by 1949 nearly half of all National Assistance payments were to old people who found the pension insufficient. The family allowance introduced was only two-thirds of what Beveridge had recommended; it was argued that food subsidies and school meals and milk would make up the difference; in fact it left an easy area for future Tory governments to attack. Much of the redistribution of wealth that did take place was between workers (for example from workers without children to workers with children) rather than between classes. In the period 1936-38 the wealthiest 5 per cent of the population owned 79 per cent of total wealth in Britain; in 1960 they owned 75 per cent.10

52

Bailing out the System

Beveridge eventually disowned the implementation of his own proposals.11 The National Health Service has often been seen as the crowning glory of the post-war Labour government. Certainly it represented a real gain for many thousands of workers; they no longer had to spend the latter part of their lives with mouths full of rotting teeth, peering through Woolworths’ spectacles. And the NHS irritated the privileged as little else did. For months after it was established radio comedians found their main source of humour in the claim that people were asking for false teeth and glasses that they did not need. Aneurin Bevan, Labour’s minister of health, had to fight a bitter battle against the vested interests of the British Medical Association, members of which accused him of acting in a way akin to the Nazis. Yet as Michael Foot, Bevan’s adulatory biographer, records, the BMA ‘had got most of what they wanted — a special status for teaching hospitals, paybeds, the continuance of private practice, the prospect of good salaries.’12 The NHS was a real gain for workers, as is shown by subsequent Tory attempts to undermine it; but it fell far short of what the working-class movement could have achieved if it had been fully mobilised. The class nature of the post-war Labour government can be seen most clearly in its relation to the organised working class. Labour’s constant concern was to increase production and productivity — that is, to raise the rate of exploitation. In the latter years of Labour’s rule this meant that one of the main priorities of the government was to impose wage restraint; Labour succeeded in getting the support of the TUC leadership with the promise of a dividend freeze (which simply diverted profits into investment and higher dividends later on). Wage restraint was accompanied by a wave of cuts in public spending — school-building, school meals and the health service being among the victims. While Labour maintained massive working-class support, its commitment to productivity and wage restraint inevitably brought it into conflict with workers in struggle. Already when Labour came to power on 27 July 1945 there was a go-slow by London dockers in opposition to the ending of a piecework agreement — which had meant a sharp pay cut. Four days later the government sent troops into the Surrey Docks to break the strike. Over the next six years there were to be another ten or more occasions when Labour used troops against strikers — dockers again, Smithfield meat-porters, power-workers in Belfast and London and boiler-stokers in Buckingham Palace.13 Throughout virtually its entire period of office Labour failed to repeal Order 1305, a piece of war-time legislation severely limiting the right

Meet the New Boss

53

to strike. It was withdrawn only in August 1951 after an unsuccessful attempt to use it against a strike of several thousand dockers. At the 1950 General Election Labour was returned with a much reduced but workable majority. In October 1951 Attlee called a further election. The leader of the party of the organised working class later explained that he chose the date out of concern for the king’s health.14 The working class gave Labour its highest vote in its history, but the vagaries of the electoral system ensured a Tory victory. Thus ended Britain’s post-war experiment with social democracy. France The British example — a combination of concessions to the working class and measures which would aid the renovation of capital¬ ism — was a model to social democrats elsewhere in Europe. Yet the political conjuncture gave none of them the freedom to pursue a programme over as long a period of time as the British Labour government. In those countries where a substantial Communist Party shared power the outbreak of the Cold War in mid-1947 was to lead to a major political upheaval.* In France the governmental alliance at the Liberation was estab¬ lished between the Communists (PCF), the Socialists (SFIO) and the Christian Democrats (MRP). This alliance was the basis of all govern¬ ments between 1944 and 1947, with the brief exception of an allSocialist government under Leon Blum. Apart from Blum two other Socialists served as prime minister after the departure of de Gaulle — Felix Gouin and Paul Ramadier. The tripartite governments of the 1944-47 period introduced a number of reforms: increases in old age pensions, compensation to war injured, conditions of service for various groups of public sector workers, re-establishment of the forty-hour week and the legal insti¬ tution of factory committees with certain rights (though no effective control over production). A new and more comprehensive system of social security was established, providing workers with some protection in the event of illness, old age or unemployment. The whole system was based on workers’ contributions and involved no redistribution of wealth between classes. Although technically the scheme had administrators elected by workers, in practice they had no control over the funds. The motivation behind the scheme, as in Britain, was to make con¬ cessions in order to stave off more radical demands. As Pierre Laroque, original director-general of French Social Security has put it: *See chapter 6.

Bailing out the System

54

Having lived through the 1936 period with its social conflicts, and having had to lecture at the College of Political Science about the relations between employers and workers, I observed that the differences and antagonisms between classes were increased by inequalities in security . . . The establishment of social protection did not harm national re¬ construction; it even assisted it because it was possible to ask workers to make considerable efforts.15

At the same time the government had to take measures to deal with the immediate economic situation, including cuts in public spending, tax increases and measures to limit inflation. A number of important nationalisation measures were carried through. In this situation nationalisation was not particularly contro¬ versial or an issue between left and right; among other things it provided a convenient way of dealing with companies, such as the Renault car firm, whose previous owners had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers. Renault was to become an important instrument of the state’s economic policy, serving as a means of orienting the private sector of the economy in accordance with the wishes of the government. It was also, at least until 1947, to serve as a model of how the trade unions could be integrated. The Communist-controlled CGT union confederation dominated the Renault shopfloor and acted as a trans¬ mission belt for the PCF’s economic policy of putting production before everything else. Communist Party shop stewards disciplined their fellow-workers who wasted electric light or tried to fiddle the canteen run by the factory committee. In addition to Renault, post-war nationalisations in France in¬ cluded electricity, gas, mining, and sections of insurance and banking. As in Britain it was basically those sectors of the economy that were needed to ensure the smooth functioning of the rest of the privatelyowned economy. Nationalisation represented no threat to class power. Shareholders were compensated (except where nationalisation was a penalty for collaboration) on the basis of the market values of their shares over a given period. In general it was not an entire industry that was nation¬ alised, but simply the major firms within it, leaving a private sector. In the case of banks and insurance the companies retained their previous structure. Top management was appointed by the govern¬ ment or the appropriate minister, and boards were established with representation from the state, consumers and workers.16 The role of the Communist Party was crucial in winning workingclass support for productivity and in opposing strikes, but it could not completely stifle working-class militancy. In July 1946 a post office

Meet the New Boss

55

strike broke out, despite the CGT’s attempt to limit it to a half-day stoppage; it was on the initiative of a Socialist deputy that the National Assembly voted to accept the strikers’ demands. The PCF had to recognise the danger of being outflanked on its left. Perhaps the most scandalous aspect of the period of tripartite government was its colonial policy. In May 1945 there was a national¬ ist rising in the Constantine area of Algeria. While it may have been originally sparked off by agents provocateurs, it led to bitter fighting by native Algerians which took two months to suppress. Thousands of Algerians were machine-gunned to death and their bodies disposed of in lime-kilns. The final death-toll may have been as high as forty or fifty thousand.17 Despite the Vietnamese Communist Party’s policy of co¬ operation, resistance to French rule continued in Vietnam. Using this as a pretext, in December 1946 French troops bombarded Haiphong, causing six thousand deaths. The French government, under Socialist premier Ramadier, stepped up the war effort. Thus the seeds of the two colonial wars that were to dominate and ultimately destroy the French Fourth Republic were sown in the period when the ‘left’ was at its strongest. Italy In Italy too the three years immediately after the war were dominated by an alliance of Communists (PCI), Socialists (PSI) and Christian Democrats (DC). Because of the way the left had entered the Badoglio government, they had in effect accepted a continuity of the state apparatus from the Mussolini period, and many fascist institu¬ tions were preserved. In 1947 the PCI supported the inclusion of the Concordat with the Vatican in the new constitution; the PSI abstained on the issue. This gave the Catholic Church an influence in education which has continued to strengthen the Christian Democrats. The post-war coalition had to face massive economic difficulties — two and a half million unemployed by 1946 and galloping inflation. There was no attempt to impose a programme of nationalisations; however, the post-war regime took over an important economic legacy from the fascist period. Under Mussolini the state had acquired controlling stock interest in substantial parts of the economy. Many firms were grouped by Mussolini into a large holding company, the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), which the post-war republic inherited. The fact that the IRI could be used successively by Mussolini, the post-war coalition and later governments dominated by the Christian Democrats is a striking example of the fact that there is nothing specifically socialist about state intervention in the economy.

56

Bailing out the System

The period did, however, produce some gains for the working class. The left in government established a sliding scale of wages that helped to protect workers against inflation. In 1945 an agreement between the main union body, the CGIL, and the employers fixed minimum wages and established at least in principle the right of women to equal pay. A new Constitution came into force in January 1948, which on paper promised the right to work for all and free medical treatment for the poor. In practice considerable unemployment remained and millions were excluded from the social insurance scheme. Fascist laws were not repealed, and the Italian Penal Code continued to contain an article which prescribed up to five years’ prison for anyone advocating ‘the violent establishment of a dictatorship of one class over the others.’ (Technically all the self-professed Marxists in the Socialist and Communist Parties could have been jailed.) The post-war govern¬ ment also cut and eventually abolished taxes on war profits and yields from shares. The Communist Finance Minister Mauro Scoccimarro, who tried to introduce taxation measures aimed at accumulated wealth, was thwarted and eventually sacked by Christian Democrat premier De Gasperi. West Germany The German working class had been Nazism’s first victim. Whereas in France and other occupied countries a clandestine labour movement managed to survive, in Germany the pre-Hitler workers’ organisations had suffered even harsher repression. Yet the collapse of the Nazi state opened up great possibilities for radical change. For that very reason the occupying powers, who divided Germany into four ‘zones of occupation’, were faced with a problem; they were committed to uprooting Nazism, but recognised that a full purge would be impossible without the introduction of a radically new form of social organisation. The French made no attempt to denazify in the zone, and used ex-Nazi officials to control the population, while the other occupying powers went about the job half-heartedly. Yet despite this there was a considerable radicalisation in the immediate post-war period. This was reflected even in the 1947 programme (soon to be dropped) of the Christian Democratic Union, which argued that the ‘capitalist economic system’ had not served the interests of the German people, and called for ‘a new order built right from the ground’ based on ‘an economic system of collective owner¬ ship’. At the grass-roots the working class began to rebuild the trade union movement on a local level. In a situation where the old employers

Meet the New Boss

57

had disappeared and there was massive destruction caused by bombing and invasion, workers often set up local committees which began to reorganise production. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, there was a level of working-class self-activity which had an enormous revolutionary potential. But the environment was far from favourable. Germany was divided into the four zones occupied by Britain, France, the USA and Russia; as conflict developed between West and East, the three Western zones came together to form the Federal Republic of West Germany. Meanwhile in East Germany a state was established which claimed to be on the road to socialism. But this was a ‘socialism’ in which workers had no control over their own lives, in which workers’ organisations had no independence from the state, in which political dissidents were ruthlessly silenced. Russia bled the economy through reparations and exploitative trade terms; in 1950 real wages were less than half what they had been in 1936.8 In 1953 a building workers’ strike led to a massive uprising of workers which was physically crushed by the state that was allegedly theirs. All this helped to discredit the ideas of ‘Marxism’ and ‘socialism’ in the eyes of West German workers for a generation or more. Moreover, the other occupying powers were scarcely sympa¬ thetic to workers’ activity. In spring 1947 the US military governor in Hesse warned on the radio that ‘strikes or other activities against the policies of the military government which could in any way jeopard¬ ise the plans of the occupying power will not be tolerated . . . Do not forget that those responsible are liable even to capital punish¬ ment.’19 The initial demand among rank-and-file trade unionists was for the formation of a single ‘General Trades Union’ to include all workers. This was violently opposed by the occupying powers, who received assistance from a delegation from the British TUC which visited Germany — at the invitation of the War Office — in November 1945. Their letter to Ruhr trade unionists is noteworthy for its hypocritical invocation of democratic principles which British bureaucrats have rarely demonstrated in dealing with their own members: We are disturbed about your desire to have one trade union for the North Rhine Province, even if you have separate sections for each industry. Even if this desire comes from the workers, we feel it will mean in practice all effective power will ultimately reside in a small group of men at the top . . . Our experience as representing the oldest trade union movement in the world is that ... the strength of trade unionism depends largely upon . . . members’ . . . active participation in all

Bailing out the System

58

decisions ... If the workers are too far away from the centre . . . they will lose interest and merely obey orders.20 Under this pressure the German trade union federation (DGB) was established on the basis of sixteen autonomous industrial unions; it developed into the moderate and bureaucratic body which has been praised by employers for decades. The DGB was to have no formal links with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was also being reconstructed in this period. The fact that the SPD grew to a membership of 896,275 by 1948 is another reflection of the radicalisation of the period. But the radicalisation was contained by the SPD leadership. Key figures in the reconstructed party were Herbert Wehner, who had been a top leader of the exiled Communist Party and had little to learn about bureaucracy, and Kurt Schumacher. Schumacher was determined to make the SPD into a nationalist party, not tainted with the internationalism of the pre-war left. He is said to have told an American diplomat that ‘never again will the Social Democrats be less nationalistic than the parties to the right.’21 In 1948, when the transition from the occupied zones to the Federal Republic was being prepared, it was proposed that a coalition should be established between the Christian Democrats and the SPD. Schumacher was prepared to agree only on condition that the SPD had control over economic and financial policy. The Christian Democrats vetoed this and the SPD went into opposition. It was to stay there until the 1960s. The circumstances of a defeated and occupied country made things harder for the left in West Germany than elsewhere in Europe. But that in no way excuses the role of the SPD. By sticking to a legalistic and nationalist framework, it dissociated itself from the working-class radicalisation that undoubtedly existed in the late forties. It had chosen its road for the future. Elsewhere in Europe In many other European countries social democrats played a similar role in the process of reconstruction. In Austria, for example, the Socialists were involved in a prolonged period of collaboration with the People’s Party. Yet the weakness of the Austrian bourgeoisie and the disappearance of German capital meant that an extensive nationalisation programme was possible. Heavy industry, the major banks and electricity were taken into public ownership; something like a quarter of Austrian wage-earners became state employees. By the late forties all threat of revolution had disappeared, and

Meet the New Boss

59

Europe was on the way to recovery. The social democratic parties had served their purpose and had often in the process demoralised or disillusioned their own supporters. The parties of the right, which had been unnerved by the radicalism that emerged at the end of the war, were regaining their confidence and becoming eager to rule again. Europe began to swing to the right, a process which was intensified by the outbreak of the Cold War.

Chapter 6 Beneath the flag of democracy

THE SEEDS of East-West conflict were already present in the post-war carve-up, but until the threatened revolution had been strangled the conflict did not come into the open. Once the thieves were sure of their gains they began to quarrel over the loot. The Cold War began in March 1947, when US President Truman launched the ‘Truman doctrine’, namely, the threat that the US would intervene against any revolution it believed to be Communist (in other words, contrary to US interests). The Truman doctrine was accom¬ panied by Marshall Aid, a massive programme of economic aid for Western Europe. This had two functions. Firstly, by assisting Euro¬ pean recovery it prepared the ground for the penetration of Europe by American multinational companies. Secondly, it provided a means to marginalise the Western European Communist Parties; in 1947 Com¬ munist ministers were ousted from the governments of Austria, Belgium, France and Italy. It was in fact highly unlikely that the Russians were going to attempt a military conquest of Western Europe. Not because they were ‘peace-loving’ or socialistic; the Russian takeover of Eastern Europe had shown that they were quite capable of land-grabbing when it suited them. But it would have been neither militarily practical nor politically expedient for them to try to take Europe up to the Atlantic. The more sober American leaders were doubtless well aware of this. However, it suited them to make much of the Russian threat, which served as a valuable way of dividing and demoralising the working-class movement in Europe. While Marshall Aid and the begin¬ nings of the post-war boom could be used to buy off the mass of workers by giving them marginally improved living standards, the political activists could be isolated as ‘red agitators’ and ‘Communist agents’. The Russian response to the outbreak of the Cold War was not to appeal to proletarian internationalism, but to consolidate their own

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

61

patch. The Eastern European states in the Russian sphere of influence had originally after the war been ‘bourgeois democratic’ in form, and Communists shared power with other parties. After the introduction of Marshall Aid a monopoly of foreign trade was established and the Communist Parties succeeded in absorbing or discarding other political forces. The new states were baptised ‘People’s Democracies’. In February 1948 the Stalinist coup in Czechoslovakia completed the picture, while the Berlin blockade of 1948-49 was a Russian attempt to show that they would hold what they had. Russian anxiety to preserve their own gains was shown by the near-hysteria that greeted Tito’s attempt to establish Yugoslavia’s political independence from Moscow. Tito was rapidly labelled a ‘fascist’. In October 1947 the Russians set up the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). This contained representatives of seven Eastern European Communist Parties, plus the Communist Parties of France and Italy. This was in no sense an attempt to recreate the dissolved Communist International (among many others the Communist Parties of Greece, Britain, China and Albania were missing). The aim was to regroup the various Communist Parties and orient them on a new Cold War line. The rhetoric of the Cominform (expressed in its quaintly named journal For A Lasting Peace, For A People’s Demo¬ cracy) was so much froth, but the new line meant that militancy was back on the agenda for Western Communists. In France and Italy, where mass Communist Parties existed, the next few years were marked by strikes, demonstrations and semi¬ insurrectionary riots. Late in 1947 in Marseilles a demonstration against increased tram fares led to crowds storming the town-hall and court-house — the death of a demonstrator produced a city-wide general strike. In the French miners’ strike of 1947 flying pickets toured the pit areas and in some places pickets controlled road traffic. Militant strikes continued for some years, though more and more went down to defeat. In June 1948 the attempted assassination of Italian Communist leader Togliatti led to a three-day general strike which in some places reached insurrectionary proportions. All this showed that the fighting spirit of the working class had not been destroyed by the betrayals of the post-war period. Yet that spirit had been mobilised by the bureaucratic and manipulative leader¬ ship of the Communist Parties, and was thus led into a demoralising dead-end. The founding of the Cominform showed that the Western Com¬ munist Parties were still a significant card in the Kremlin’s hand. But this was soon to change. Russian scientists were working hard to catch up with the West in nuclear research; by 1953, when a Russian

Bailing out the System

62

hydrogen bomb was announced, a balance of terror was established. Periodic confrontations between the major powers (over Berlin, Cuba, and other issues) continued into the sixties, but the nuclear stalemate meant that neither side was likely to risk all-out war (though accidental war remained an ever-present possibility) and the Cold War was increasingly exported to the Third World. The most obvious example was the Korean War. Korea had been hurriedly partitioned at the time of the Japanese surrender, with Russian and American puppet rulers installed in the North and South respectively. Between 1950 and 1953 it was used as an arena for controlled combat as Russia and America tried to adjust the boundaries of their spheres of influence. Neither side won, while the Korean people — the victims, not the protagonists of the war — lost massively. For the Western powers the Cold War meant a military build-up: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was formed in 1949. It also meant an ideological offensive on several fronts. In this the social democratic parties had a key role to play. They could influence many who would be impervious to straightforward red-baiting, but who could be affected by some form of‘left’ anti-communism. Social democrats were among the most fervent supporters of the Atlantic Alliance — a leading Belgian Socialist Party member, Paul-Henri Spaak, was to become secretary-general of NATO in the fifties. As a prominent member of the French SFIO, Jules Moch, was to put it: In the democracies the Socialist Party appears as the most solid rampart against communism, for it is virtually the only party that addresses itself to the same social layers.1

France In France two processes combined to put an end to tripartite government. The first was the evolution of the Cold War; the second a strike which started in April 1947 at the Renault car factory in Paris. 1 he PCF and its followers in the CGT were still opposing all strike action; the initiative in the dispute over a wage demand came from a small group of Trotskyists, the Union Communiste (forerunners of today’s Lutte Ouvriere). As the strike spread, despite threats and slanders from the CGT, the PCF began to recognise the great danger it now faced of being outflanked on its left. Thorez, the PCF leader, announced that his party could no longer support the wage and price policy of the government led by SFIO member Ramadier. Ramadier, who was being leaned on by the Americans to bounce out the Com¬ munist ministers in return for Marshall Aid, grasped the opportunity by organising a vote of confidence. When, in early May, the 183 PCF

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

63

deputies refused to vote for him, he sacked four ministers, together with two SFIO ministers who sided with them. The PCF were initially disoriented, and apparently believed that if they showed their muscle with a little industrial militancy they would return to government within a few months. The PCF’s base took another severe knock later in the same year when the CGT suffered a split. An anti-Communist grouping called Force Ouvriere seceded from the CGT and formed a separate federa¬ tion. As George Meany of the American Federation of Labor and Thomas Braden of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have sub¬ sequently admitted, American money played a key role in organising this split. Force Ouvriere had no formal political ties, but was probably politically closest to the SFIO. The main impact of the split was that millions of workers abandoned trade unionism altogether in disgust with all concerned. Certainly the Cold War ensured that the Americans would not neglect France. As Pierre Mendes-France commented with ironic candour: Thank God for the Communists! Just because we’ve got a ‘Communist danger’, the Americans are going to make a tremendous effort to help us. We must keep up this indispensable Communist scare.2

The Ramadier government lasted another six months after the ousting of the PCF. The events caused serious repercussions inside the SFIO, and Mollet, as party boss, was concerned that he did not have suf¬ ficient control over the prime minister, Ramadier. The SFIO did not take the office of prime minister again for another eight years; the PCFSFIO-MRP alliance gave way to a centre bloc in which Radicals and rep¬ resentatives of the various conservative groups replaced the Commun¬ ists. Yet the SFIO remained a governmental party; they served in seven out of the nine coalitions formed between the end of 1947 and the 1951 elections. Indeed, they provided a significant element of continuity; if they had withdrawn from government at the same time as the PCF the switch from left to right would have seemed too blatant and made the upheavals of the next couple of years harder to deal with. At the same time the SFIO became more and more an openly anti-Communist party, which saw Communism as a greater enemy than the French employers. One observer notes that In 1951, on the bookstalls at the entrance to Socialist Conferences you could find, apart from a few tatty volumes of Jaures and Guesde, nothing but anti-Communist literature, ranging from Leon Blum’s pamphlets to the works of Dallin, Kravchenko and General Anders.3

64

Bailing out the System

During the massive strike wave that ran from late 1947 through most of 1948, SFIO ministers occupied some key positions. Robert Lacoste (an ex-trade union official who was later to distinguish him¬ self in Algeria) was minister of industry, while his colleague Jules Moch was minister of the interior. The CRS riot police, which were directly under Moch’s command, opened fire on striking miners in the autumn of 1948, causing two deaths and a number of wounded. The SFIO had made it quite clear which side of the barricades it was on. To play its role it had to maintain some sort of claim to being a party of reform. That highly class-conscious journal The Economist made a shrewd assessment of this in 1949 when it noted that the increasingly right-wing governments were trying to undermine some of the gains of the post-war period, especially nationalisation and social services: The Socialists must defend these outposts of the Left, not only because they helped to create them but also because their ceaseless struggle to keep a footing in the working class and in the trade unions against the steady pressure of Communism will be compromised if the workers can be made to feel that the last of the gains of the Liberation have been wiped out. At present, Communism is in a weaker position than at any time since 1945, but it remains solidly entrenched in the working class. It can still profit by the antics of General de Gaulle. It can still exploit any resentment at the actions of the government. Above all, it waits like a tide ready to advance on any turn for the worse in the national economy.4

Italy In France the Cold Warriors held the line. Italy looked much more threatening, for the Italian Socialist Party had developed a close working alliance with the PCI. In many ways it seemed as if the PSI had swallowed PCI policies hook, line and sinker. After Stalin’s split with Tito, PSI militants were expelled for visiting Yugoslavia; Nenni, the PSI leader, received a Stalin Prize ‘for strengthening peace among nations’; at Stalin’s funeral Nenni shared the honours accorded to world Communist Party leaders; and when Beria was purged Nenni publicly denounced him.5 The PSI was not monolithic; its relation with the PCI remained a matter for open debate. It is claimed that around 1950 the PCI sent a number of its own militants into the PSI in order to strengthen the pro-Stalinist wing.6 But from 1947 to 1953 the leadership line was one of absolute solidarity with the PCI. So when, a couple of weeks after Ramadier, the Christian Demo¬ crat prime minister De Gasperi succumbed to the same pressures and

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

65

ousted the PCI from the government, the PSI accepted that it too must withdraw; as Nenni told the PSI daily Avanti: ‘Our solidarity is absolute because based on class motives.’7 Consequently, for enemies of the left, the weakening of the PSI was a major priority. In January 1947 one of the leaders of the PSI, Giuseppe Saragat, led a split. Saragat had just returned from a visit to the United States, and he rapidly received the endorsement of the pro-Western Socialist International. The mood of the period was such that Saragat had to show a left face; he claimed to be a Marxist and among his supporters was Angelica Balabanova, who had been the first secretary of the Communist International in 1919. Saragat’s grouping, which after various name changes became the Italian Social Democratic Party (PSDI), succeeded in taking with it one of the ‘leftist’ groupings in the PSI, Iniziativa Socialista, which controlled the PSI Youth. Over the next two years Saragat’s split was followed by two right-wing breakaways from the main union federation, the CGIL, leading to the establishment of rival federations, the UIL and CISL. The Italian elections of April 1948, in which the PCI and the PSI ran as a united front, were therefore a cause of some alarm and consternation to the United States and its friends. Despite the presence of Saragat’s ‘Social Democrats’ in the government, the Christian Democrat-dominated coalition was pursuing a policy so right-wing as to undermine its own support. As The Economist commented just before the elections: The other issue is that of economic and financial policy ... It is hard to believe that the degree of incompetence achieved was in fact inevitable. The deflationary policy initiated last year was carried much too far and applied far too rigidly. After forcing prices to fall briefly, it is now reaping the whirlwind in growing unemployment, the collapse and disappearance of many small businesses, the near-bankruptcy of some big firms and the re-emergence of inflation and rising prices, thanks to the government’s expenditure on the unemployed. The resulting sense of confusion and hopelessness is leading even businessmen to talk of voting for the Popular Front, since ‘at least it might provide a competent administration’.8

This account perceives the crucial problem of post-war Italian politics — the absence of a reliable reformist alternative government, leaving the political situation polarised between a corrupt and re¬ actionary right and a Communist-dominated left. Since such was the choice, the Cold Warriors were in no doubt as to which side they were on, and they showed little scruple in the means they used. One historian relates: BOS-E

66

Bailing out the System

On March 15, 1948, the [us] State Department announced that all economic aid would be cut off if the Communist-Socialist slate won . . . Americans of Italian origin or extraction were encouraged to bombard their relatives in Italy with letters urging them to vote for the government parties. In American Catholic churches, priests encouraged their parish¬ ioners to write to any Italian friends or connnections. In Italy, various cardinals and bishops were ordering their priests not to administer sacraments to anyone voting for the pro-Soviet slate.9

Just in case anyone didn’t get the message, British and American warships anchored off Italian ports during the campaign. Such tactics clearly revealed the right’s ruthlessness and con¬ tempt for legality, and should have led the PCI-PSI Front to recognise that they could win only by mobilising on an extra-parliamentary level. Instead the campaign remained resolutely legalistic. At the election weekend the PSI daily paper boasted that the left had ‘ . . . not afforded the government a single pretext for suspending the elections.’10 The PSI drew heavily on nationalist themes in its campaign; its paper headlined the demand ‘For the Independence, Autonomy and Neutrality of Italy’.11 In particular it stressed the continuity between the radical nationalist populism of the nineteenth-century struggle for Italian unity and the present crisis; under the optimistic headline ‘Victory Certain’ the Socialist Party daily Avanti declared on its front page: What moves, unites and guides such multitudes is not so much the words of our orators as the flag which the Front has raised in the sky of Italy, bearing promises of peace, work, justice, freedom . . . it is the banner of Garibaldi, that warrior in every just war, that knight of humanity, as he was called, who came running to be present wherever there was a right to be reclaimed, an act of justice to be done, a faith to be affirmed.12

To make sure that the point got across, Avanti adopted the practice of carrying a box next to the title, reading ‘Vote for Garibaldi, Vote for Socialism’.13 Even the alliance of Garibaldi and Stalin was not enough for the combined forces of the USA and the Vatican. The Front’s vote was only 31 per cent of the total, as against the 39.6 per cent that the PCI and PSI (just before Saragat’s defection) had totalled when standing separately two years earlier. The Italian left was defeated but not smashed. The PCI now turned to strikes and mass demonstrations in which its continuing power was revealed; its membership went on growing until 1953,

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

67

when it topped the two million mark. Political power remained securely in Christian Democratic hands. It was not until after Stalin’s death that the log-jam of Italian politics was broken. Britain Britain was easier territory for the Cold Warriors to handle. The Communist party was marginal if not negligible, and the Labour leaders were only too willing to take on a pro-American role, for example backing the right-wing government in the second Greek civil war. If they had not been willing, the means of pressure were to hand. Within days of the surrender of Japan the US cancelled the existing Lend-Lease programme whereby Britain had obtained supplies from the USA on credit during the war, and the Attlee government had to seek an American loan. With the introduction of Marshall Aid, an American official was sent to London to report on the British economy; in 1948 he told a Senate committee with some satisfaction: The housing programme has been quite seriously cut back. So has the health programme, and so has the programme for education.14

But economic pressures alone do not explain the sycophancy with which Labour ministers, notably Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Minister, adopted a pro-American line. Bevin told members of the American Legion at a dinner at the Savoy Hotel: My dear Americans, we may be short of dollars, but we are not short of will. . . We won’t let you down . . . Standards oflife may go back. We may have to say to our miners and to our steel workers: ‘We can’t give you all we hoped for. We can’t give you the houses we want you to live in. We can’t give the amenities we desire to give you. But we won’t fail.’15

Bevin was particularly enthusiastic about the establishment of NATO. He told the House of Commons that it was a ‘powerful defensive arrangement’, and he described signing the Treaty in 1949 as ‘one of the great moments of all my life.’16 Bevin’s anti-Communism was rooted in the prejudices of many years as a trade union bureaucrat. He described a conversation with Maisky, the Russian Ambassador in London: I said to Maisky on one occasion: ‘You have built the Soviet Union and you have a right to defend it. I have built the Transport Union and if you seek to break it I will fight you.’ That was a proper position. Both were the results of long years of labour.17

Both Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden expressed high praise of

Bailing out the System

68

Bevin’s work as foreign minister, saying they would have acted similarly themselves. It was in the context of this policy that Attlee accepted the establishment of bases for US atomic bomber planes in Britain. Attlee also took the decision to manufacture Britain’s own independent nuclear weapons and he took it in a highly undemocratic manner. As his biographer records: So far as possible ... the Cabinet was kept in the dark about atomic energy and the bomb. When major atomic decisions had to be taken at Cabinet level, as much of the information as could be was deliberately obscured or made highly secret.

Neither the Defence Ministry nor the Ministry of Supply received adequate information; instead decisions were taken by Attlee himself together with an Advisory Committee headed by Sir John Anderson — a leading Tory! The final decision to make atomic bombs was taken in January 1947, but the House of Commons was not even informed until May 1948.18 When some Labour backbenchers opposed the introduction of conscription in peacetime, Lord Montgomery, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, ‘assembled the military members of the Army Council . . . and asked them if they were all prepared to resign in a body ... if anything less than eighteen months National Service with the Colours was decided upon by the government. They all agreed. ’19 The govern¬ ment conceded to this pressure. There was some opposition to the government line on foreign policy from the Labour left — notably from the Keep Left group of MPs who, in 1947, issued a pamphlet criticising Bevin’s pro-American and anti-Russian policies. But the mainstream of the Labour left accepted the basic framework of government policy. At the time of the Berlin blockade, which began in June 1948 when the Russian occupy¬ ing forces denied land access to Berlin to the Western powers, Aneurin Bevan was in favour of forcing a confrontation by trying to send tanks to Berlin through the Russian zone rather than using an airlift.20 Michael Foot supported the Americans fighting in Korea ‘to uphold the principles of collective defence against wanton aggression.’21 As in continental Europe, the Cold War was also used in Britain to attack and divide working-class organisations. Certainly there was nothing on the scale of the anti-Communist witch-hunts in the USA led by Senator Joe McCarthy; the fact that the Communist Party did have limited roots in the British labour movement ensured that. In 1948 Attlee announced that the government had decided

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

69

... to ensure that no-one who is known to be a member of the Commun¬ ist Party, or to be associated with it in such a way as to raise legitimate doubts about his or her reliability, is employed in connection with work the nature of which is vital to the security of the state.22

In 1950 the Labour government sabotaged the World Peace Congress due to be held in Sheffield by refusing entry to Britain to a number of the delegates. The crowning irony came in 1949 and again in 1950 when a Labour home secretary, taking as a pretext recent fascist demonstrations, banned May Day marches in London. A heavy police intervention was made against supporters of the London Trades Council who attempted to defy the ban. Labour’s commitment to the Cold War meant that it was undermining its own traditions. Austria In Austria, with its long history of mass social democratic organ¬ isation and its geographical location between East and West, the Socialist Party had a particular role to play. At the end of the war Austria was occupied by the Allied powers, Britain, France, USA and Russia, and the last troops did not leave until 1955. The new Socialist Party was formed from the old Social Democrats and the pre-war Revolutionary Socialists. Its main role was to marginalise the Com¬ munists, who initially held some key positions in the coalition govern¬ ment under the Socialist Karl Renner, but who were forced out of government by 1947. Erwin Scharf, the main advocate of joint action with the Communist Party, was expelled from the Socialist Party in 1948, and the party’s press came to develop a style of anti-Communist rhetoric that was almost a mirror-image of the language of the Cominform: More and more ‘fellow-travellers’ are sick to death; from the great Wallace in America down to the little wild geese in Austria they are getting out of Moscow’s camp; from now on the only people who stand in the service of the Communists and war are the completely intimidated or the political and economic jackals who smell plunder beneath the refuse of the dictatorship.23

In September 1950 the Communist Party called a general strike accompanied by violent demonstrations. Road-blocks were set up and cement poured into tram-lines. But the Socialist Party had a sufficient workplace base to mobilise its supporters to neutralise the Communist Party action. From this point on Communist influence declined and the Socialist Party continued to rule jointly with the right-wing People’s Party.

Bailing out the System

70

The Socialist International The reconstruction of the Socialist International after the Second World War was closely linked to the emergence of the Cold War. Initially the British Labour Party took the initiative, convening a conference in 1946 of nineteen socialist parties at Clacton. The provi¬ sional body emerging from this (COMISCO, the Committee of the International Socialist Conference) originally operated from Labour Party premises at Transport House in London. By 1948 its main role was to mobilise affiliates for the anti-Communist crusade. In March 1948 Morgan Phillips, general secretary of the Labour Party, and Denis Healey went to Rome to try to persuade Nenni to break his electoral alliance with the PCI. Later the same month, when this move had failed, a COMISCO meeting in London expelled the Czech Social¬ ists, and put the Polish Socialists and Nenni’s party ‘on probation’ for co-operating with Communists. The Czechs and Poles could not defend themselves at the meeting because the British Labour govern¬ ment had not given them visas to enter the country.24 The Vienna Conference the same year expelled all the Eastern European sections; the PSI was finally expelled in 1949. Nothing was left but the proWestern, anti-Communist parties. The time was now ripe to finalise the re-establishment of an International. This was done at Frankfurt-am-Main in July 1951. All but nine of the 34 parties represented were European. Although the new body was founded to the strains of the Internationale, its Cold War role was unmistakeable. Article Seven of the Conference Declaration actually claimed that . . . since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Communism has divided the international workers’ movement and thus delayed for decades the achievement of socialism in numerous countries.25

There is something contemptibly comic in the smugness with which the affiliated parties, many of which had been in power for some years since 1945, pushed the blame for their own shortcomings on to ‘Bolshevism’. ★ ★ ★

The Cold War period brought no great gains for social democracy. But the social democratic leaders had given proof positive of their political reliability. The outbreak of the Cold War and the pushing of the Communist Parties into militant opposition could have produced serious social instability in Western Europe. That it did not do so was largely due to the social democratic parties, which picked up the

Beneath the Flag of Democracy

71

pieces and gave a left cover to anti-Communism. Social democracy had passed the test — it would be called on again when the going got rough.

Part 3

1953-1963:

Drift to the right

Chapter 7 No more heroes

fifties the social democratic parties had done their job for capitalism and could be cast aside. The next decade was a period of right-wing domination: in Britain the Tories ruled for thirteen years from 1951; in West Germany the Christian Democrats won the highest share of the poll at five consecutive elections, going from 31 per cent in 1949 to more than 50 per cent in 1957; in Italy Christian Democrats dominated the government; and in France no SFIO minister served in a government between the elections of 1951 and 1956. Leaving aside the special case of Sweden* and some smaller countries where social democrats continued to share power, it was a bleak period for the reformists. The Cold War which social democrats had helped to launch produced some contradictory effects. The arms race led to massive expenditure — by 1951 more than 20 per cent of the US economy was allocated to military spending, which in turn produced a boom in capitalism that was unexpected on all sides. Arms production made massive demands on heavy industry without flooding the market with consumer goods; capitalists who would have grudged a bent halfpenny towards welfare programmes cheerfully paid increased taxes for arms; and once one country began arming, the rest — including Russia — had to follow suit. Instead of the crisis which had followed the First World War, full employment and rising living standards characterised the fifties. The arms-fed boom had some contradictory implications for reformism. On the one hand it gave it a new lease of life. Before the Second World War it had seemed to many people — including Leon Trotsky — that capitalism had exhausted its room for manoeuvre, that there were no more reforms to be had, that socialism or barbarism was the only choice ahead. This was now clearly false. A better BY THE EARLY

See chapter 16.

Bailing out the System

74

standard of life could be won within capitalism, and while it could, revolution seemed a needless extravagance. Yet looming behind the affluence, the threat of nuclear annihilation made the choice of‘social¬ ism or barbarism’ more relevant than ever. The class struggle had not come to an end. Labour and capital were still irreconcilably opposed, but workers now pursued their interests in different ways. The extension of piecework and localised bargaining meant that the fight for better pay and better working conditions depended more and more on workplace organisation, and less on parliament and the national trade union machinery. Full employment gave workers a degree of industrial muscle they had never before enjoyed in peacetime. An ability to win wage rises, fringe benefits and even a degree of control over production through effective shopfloor organisation was often accompanied by a contempt for parliamentary politics. In Britain the fifties saw the growth of shop steward organisation throughout industry; meanwhile the Tories won three successive election victories. In Germany the Vertrauensmanner (entrusted persons) played a similar role to shop stewards, despite pressure to become entangled with the official works councils. In France factory delegates had legally guaranteed rights, though in a situation of plural unionism they often remained in the grip of the union machine. But time and again working-class militancy would explode beyond the limits of the official structures. In 1960 in France the Renault management sacked 3,000 workers, leading to a violent demonstration in which windows were smashed. The main union, the CGT, did not simply condemn violence, but publicly named individuals as responsible for it.1 In this situation the struggle for reforms passed less and less through the traditional channels. Social democratic parties were, for the present, not called on to play their traditional role of intermediary between labour and capital. Their immediate future was bleak and uncertain; only when the cracks in the economic boom began to show would they be needed again. Destalinisation A second factor which deeply affected the European left in the fifties was the onset of a long period of upheaval in the Communist Parties of the world. Stalin’s death in 1953 had given rise to a power struggle among his successors, a power struggle conducted against the background of a profound crisis in Russian society. The planned economy was no longer working. Under Stalin the much-vaunted plans had been no more than targets for rapid industrialisation; by the

No More Heroes

75

time of his death workers and managers had learnt how to manipulate the system. Kruschev, who emerged as Stalin’s successor, was a pragmatic administrator, who recognised the need to reform aspects of the existing system, and in so doing to purge sections of the bureaucracy which had a vested interest in the status quo. He also saw that, while the repressive state machine could not be dismantled, a certain degree of intellectual freedom was necessary if Russia was to keep up with the West in armaments technology. In order to advance his campaign to transform policy, Kruschev decided on a campaign against the legacy of his predecessor. The Stalin cult was toned down shortly after the leader’s death, but in February 1956 Kruschev made his celebrated ‘secret speech’ to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In this he recited some facts about Stalin’s brutality which were already accepted on all sides except by Communist supporters. Kruschev could give no explanation for the Stalinist experience; he had been too deeply complicit in it himself. He tried to explain things by reference to Stalin’s character (‘Stalin was a very distrustful man, morbidly suspicious’); doubtless Stalin was a pretty unpleasant individual, but this left unanswered the problem of how such an unpleasant individual had managed to hold supreme power in a so-called socialist society. If he could do so, any Marxist had to conclude that there was something very wrong with Russian society. This was the basic issue that began to perplex Communists and their sympathisers around the world when, in June 1956, the US Department of State made a text of the speech available to the press. The crisis was to be intensified by events in Hungary the following autumn. A movement for the withdrawal of Russian troops initially led by students sparked off a mass working-class movement. In the last days of October workers’ councils were set up throughout Hun¬ gary; they took on the tasks of organising food supplies, keeping order and negotiating with the Russian troops. This was too much for Kruschev’s ‘liberalism’ and Russian tanks were sent into Budapest, where they unleashed a bloody repression against the working-class suburbs. While Kruschev was determined to hold his own ground, his foreign policy was in general rather more accommodating than Stalin’s had been. Kruschev recognised the logic of nuclear extermination, and from now on Russian statements stressed ‘peaceful coexistence’. The new policy faced ups and downs, with a number of major crises, notably over Berlin in 1961; but with the resolution of what had appeared the most dangerous of all, the Cuban missiles crisis of 1962,

76

Bailing out the System

the Cold War effectively came to an end. The peaceful coexistence line was to be one of the causes leading to a public split between Russia and China in 1963; but detente survived. Areas of conflict — for example the Vietnam War — were carefully localised and not allowed to interfere with otherwise amicable East-West relations. A crucial aspect of the peaceful coexistence line was a changed attitude to social democratic parties. In a speech to the notorious Twentieth Congress, Suslov, an influential figure in the Russian leadership, launched a new line of co-operation. Arguing that the ‘cleavage in the international labour movement’ should be overcome, he urged Communists to find ‘common ground’ with social democrats on issues such as peace. He even claimed to detect ‘a leftward swing of the masses’ in many capitalist countries.2 This swing was largely imaginary; at the time he spoke, for example, the French SFIO was intensifying the war in Algeria. But his analysis was to be crucial for the orientation of Western Communist Parties. The impact of the Kruschev speech and the invasion of Hungary on the various Communist Parties was profound but uneven. Yet it was to set in train a process that would culminate nearly twenty years later in ‘Eurocommunism’. Anxious not to get fooled again, the various Communist Parties, especially those with independent bases, began, tentatively but surely, to disentangle themselves from Moscow’s control. The term that was coined for this was ‘polycentrism’ — the idea that international Communism should no longer have a single centre, but that each party should cultivate a national road. (The idea of‘national roads’ had first surfaced in the Popular Front period of the thirties; but at that time it was firmly subordinated to a pro-Moscow strategy, as was shown by the sharp turn in the autumn of 1939. It was to prove a lot more tenacious the second time round.) The Communist Parties had not been revolutionary for many a day; if they were to cease to be Stalinist, the only option left was for them to become effectively social democratic. Other factors too gave the psychological advantage to social democracy. In the thirties and during the Second World War many people had been drawn to Communism by the moral bankruptcy and political ineffectiveness of social democracy. Now the tables were turned. The discredit which 1956 cast upon Communism could only enhance the attractions of social democracy. Detente, too, had its impact. The Cold Warriors had sought to isolate the Communist Parties in a political ghetto, but this actually served to reinforce their revolutionary credentials. Detente helped the Communist Parties to reintegrate themselves back into the mainstream of politics, but it also meant that they were much more open to reformist influences,

Mo More Heroes

77

much less the self-evident heirs of October 1917. The home of ‘polycentrism’ was Italy. The PCI leader, Togliatti, was an adroit opportunist whose break with Stalinism was cautious. He denounced the Hungarian insurgents, claiming they were aiming to restore fascism’.3 Yet he also criticised the Kruschev speech for confining itself to Stalin’s ‘personal defects’ and not investigating how Russian society had become deformed.4 Meanwhile Nenni and the PSI were also distancing themselves from Moscow. Nenni had originally been disturbed by the Kruschev speech, saying that the Russian leader ‘had no right to compromise the working-class movement by revealing such things.’5 But after the events in Hungary Nenni donated half his Stalin Prize to the Hungarian cause, and the PSl’s evolution away from the PCI and towards an eventual alliance with the Christian Democrats began in earnest. The PCI remained committed to unity with the PSI, not simply at the behest of Suslov, but because many local electoral deals and joint work in the CGIL depended on it. As the PSI moved to the right, the PCI was dragged along behind it. The picture in France, the other Western country with a mass Communist Party, was very different. The official line was, quite simply, to deny the authenticity of the Kruschev speech. Jean Pronteau, in 1956 a member of the PCF central committee, tells how he obtained a copy of the speech in Poland, and on his return went to see Thorez, the party leader. When he told Thorez he had seen the report, the latter simply responded: ‘What report?’ When Pronteau pulled his notes from his briefcase, Thorez said: ‘Oh! So you’ve got it. You should have said so straight away.’6 The PCF’s slowness to destalinise affected its development for many years; this was un¬ doubtedly one of the factors that allowed the Socialist Party to out¬ distance and isolate it in the seventies. In Britain the Communist Party lost more than eight thousand members in the aftermath of Hungary. Many of these undoubtedly found their way into the Labour party; some, like Les Cannon and Frank Chappie of the electricians’ union, to move to the extreme right, but most to swell the ranks of the Labour left. For behind the debate on Hungary and the Kruschev speech lay an issue that in the long term was more fundamental. If the British Communist Party was committed, as its programme declared, to a parliamentary road to socialism and a strengthening of the Labour left, then the independent existence of the party had no justification; the rational place to be was in the Labour Party. Over the years many members followed the logical course and voted with their feet to join the Labour left. The Communist Party did increase its membership

78

Bailing out the System

again for a few years in the sixties, but it was already a softer organisa¬ tion, less focussed on industry. In the long run it was condemned to a lingering but certain death. 1956 was not a total victory for reformism. A few of those who broke with Stalinism went to the revolutionary left, and rather more to the emerging ‘new left’ or to movements such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain. But the main impact of the year’s events was certainly a long-term strengthening of social democracy. Communist Parties declined in credibility as a political alternative; and when they tried to restore their influence by adopting overtly reformist politics, they merely strengthened the hold of social demo¬ cratic ideas and organisation over the working class.

Chapter 8 No faith to lose

THE ECONOMIC BOOM created a working class that was increasingly confident and organised in the workplace, increasingly ‘apathetic’ to¬ wards generalised politics. Workers more and more relied on their own strength and organisation to win improvements, rather than on repre¬ sentatives in parliament or elsewhere. For those few socialists in the fifties who believed that workers must emancipate themselves by their own activity, this self-reliance was enormously positive. It was the basis for a new politics of self-activity, even though a long struggle for political generalisation lay ahead. Social democracy, with its obsessive parliamentarism and deep distrust of working-class action, could not accept any such perspective. So it drifted to the right, in pursuit of the floating votes of the apathetic. It was in the West German SPD and the British Labour Party that this drift could be most clearly seen. In both cases the party programme was at stake. A discrepancy between programme and practice was nothing new for social demo¬ cracy. Already before 1914 parties combined a rhetoric of social transformation with a daily practice of opportunism. But by the fifties this discrepancy began to pose problems. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, amid the ideological battles of the Cold War many social democratic politicians were anxious to clear themselves of any associ¬ ation with Marxism or class-based politics. Secondly the growing power of the media — press, radio and above all television — meant that political leaders could address voters directly; the intermediary role of the local activists — those who took the programmatic demands most seriously — was of declining importance. And thirdly, before 1939 social democratic parties had been in power, in most cases, only briefly and at times of crisis. The experience of government after 1945 in many countries led them to aspire to be permanent parties of government and hence to free themselves from the constraints of

programmatic commitment.

80

Bailing out the System

The debate, then, was about rhetoric, not practice, though many of the left opponents of change mistook words for reality. None the less the changes were important, for they announced an era when electoral image-making would have the upper hand in social democratic politics. West Germany In the late forties the West German SPD missed the boat. It did so because it was neither fish nor fowl; too much a reformist party to seize the possibility of revolutionary action, but too tied to its pre-war traditions to respond pragmatically to the post-war world. The com¬ bination of Marxist prgramme and opportunist practice made the SPD unattractive to left and right alike. Membership fell from nearly 900,000 in the late forties to some 300,000 in 1954. The fifties saw what is often described as West Germany’s ‘econ¬ omic miracle’, a rapid expansion of the economy and rise in living standards after the disastrous defeat of 1945. With the initial boost of Marshall Aid, Germany’s economic and military position enabled it to profit from the world economic boom; but the ‘miracle’ was also built on the basis of an exceptionally high rate of exploitation. In 1955 the average male German worker worked a fifty-hour week (2Vi hours more than a British worker), while average real wages did not reach the 1938 level until 1956. One economist has calculated that the rate of exploitation in the fifties was as high as under Hitler. This exploitation was backed up by the presence of a massive reserve army of unemployed, including millions of refugees. In 1950 West Germany had 11 per cent unemployment, and in 1954 still 7.6 per cent.1 All this was made possible by the collapse of post-war working-class radicalism, and by the high degree of anti-Communism produced by Germany’s front-line position, an anti-Communism that was made all the more plausible by the distinctly unattractive picture of ‘socialism’ offered just over the border in East Germany. One possible strategy for the West German left would have been to constantly attack the prevailing ideology and draw attention to the class nature of the system; so that when the ‘miracle’ began to become threadbare it could harness the working-class militancy that would develop. This was not to be the SPD’s approach. Rather it moved to a wholesale abandonment of its previous verbal commitment to socialism and to an acceptance of the virtues of the ‘free market’. At most it preserved a rather vague belief in ‘planning’ which served to distinguish it from the Christian Democrats and to make it a plausible alternative government when the gloss did wear off the economic miracle. The SPD’s rightward evolution began in the early fifties. In 1951 it opposed the European Steel and Coal Community, but in 1956 it

No Faith To Lose

81

supported the setting up of the Common Market. The left wing around Victor Agartz, who advocated forms of workers’ control, was marginalised and lost support. After 1956, when the declining Com¬ munist Party was made illegal, the SPD had no competition to its left. The growth of the anti-nuclear movement in the late fifties could not, however, be ignored. When an opinion poll showed that 83 per cent of the population thought that the West German armed forces should not have nuclear weapons, the SPD was forced to involve itself in the campaigns and demonstrations. It did so in order to take over the movement, not to be taken over by it; and the rightward drift continued. The culmination of the movement to the right came with the SPD’s Bad Godesberg Conference in November 1959, which adopted a new party programme. The conference revealed the total dominance of the right in the party; 25 per cent of the delegates were present ex officio as a result of holding positions in the SPD apparatus, and the rest of them had been subjected to heavy bureaucratic pressure in the selection procedure. To make sure that there was no effective opposi¬ tion from the left, the conference was bludgeoned with left-wing rhetoric from Ollenhauer, the party leader, and above all from the ex-Communist Herbert Wehner, until recently one of the leaders of the SPD left, who, as The Economist reported, . . . played the chief part at Godesberg in persuading the bulk of the left wing to jettison long-cherished articles of faith for the sake of arriving nearer the approaches to power. His impassioned intervention in the debates on nationalisation and defence won over most doubters to the side of the executive.2

Among other things Wehner told the conference that ‘Marxist thought is essential to social democracy as one of many components, but there cannot be any claim of exclusivity for Marxism as a party doctrine.’3 Yet in private the cynical Wehner said that the only purpose of the programme was to demonstrate ‘that the SPD had become a permanent and irreplaceable factor in German politics.’4 On those few issues where there seemed ground for some con¬ certed opposition the points at stake were fudged. When a significant group demanded the rejection of conscription the question was left open; and while it was agreed that German forces should not have nuclear weapons, the way was left open for American nuclear weapons to be based on German soil. The left were totally crushed. While 99 delegates initially voted against the section on economic policy, only 16 delegates (against 324) voted against the programme as a whole.5 BOS-F

Bailing out the System

82

The Bad Godesberg Programme is in many ways a typical state¬ ment of modern social democratic thought (if thought is not too rigorous a word for it). It begins with a statement of fundamental values: Freedom, justice and solidarity, which are everyone’s obligation towards his neighbours and spring from our common humanity, are the funda¬ mental values of socialism. Democratic socialism, which in Europe is rooted in Christian ethics, humanism and classical philosophy, does not proclaim ultimate truths . . .

We may presume that this statement did not spring from any positive enthusiasm for Aristode and the Sermon on the Mount, but was rather there in order to make clear the repudiauon of Marxism. To stress the point, there was an obligatory paragraph of anti-Communism: Communists have no right to invoke socialist traditions. In fact, they have falsified socialist ideas.

But the and-Communism was not designed to prevent the exercise of a thoroughly pragmatic policy towards East Germany: Not until Germany is reunited will the whole people be able freely to determine the content and form of the state and society.

This appears to mean strictly nothing at all (‘Germany will not be reunited until it is reunited’). In fact the SPD’s failure to offer any active solidarity with the East German rising in 1953 had destroyed all possibility of a socialist reunification. The programme goes on to affirm the ‘need to defend the free democradc society’ and hence to support ‘national defence’. It is the section on the economy which shows the crucial develop¬ ment in SPD thinking. The analysis begins with a highly optimisuc account of the possibilities offered by modern capitalism: The second industrial revolution makes possible a rise in the general standard of living greater than ever before and the elimination of poverty and misery still suffered by large numbers of people.

To achieve a juster society, it argues, some planning is necessary, but this must take place within the context of a mixed economy: Totalitarian control of the economy destroys freedom. The Social Demo¬ cratic Party therefore favours a free market wherever free competition really exists ... As much competition as possible — as much planning as necessary.

Nationalisation becomes merely a last resort:

No Faith To Lose

83

Private ownership of the means of production is therefore no longer identical with the control of power. Economic power, rather than owner¬ ship, is the central problem today. Where sound economic power relations cannot be guaranteed by other means, public ownership is appropriate and necessary.

The programme also states that Wage and salary policies are adequate and necessary means of distributing incomes and wealth more justly.6

Shortly after the Conference the SPD confirmed its move to the right by publicly expressing its support for NATO. The party also purged itself of what remained of an authentic left. In particular it broke all links with the Socialist Student Association (SDS) which had opposed the new programme. This must be accounted the one positive feature in the situation, for the SDS survived as an autonomous body and was able to play an important role in 1968.* For the time being one thing was clear. Despite the frantic efforts of the Christian Democrats to maintain that the Social Democrats were still dangerous reds at heart, the SPD had established itself as an alternative party of government. Now it simply had to wait till the fruit fell from the tree. Britain During the 1950s the Tories ruled Britain, but there was growing convergence between Tory and Labour policies, symbolised by The Economist’s invention of‘Mr Butskell’, a composite figure of Labour’s right-wing leader Hugh Gaitskell, and the ‘left-wing’ Tory R A Butler.7 The Tories, judging that Labour’s nationalisation and wel¬ fare measures did not threaten the system, and that the boom would allow their survival, made no attempt to reverse the major reforms achieved by the post-war Labour government, though they pared away the edges of the ‘welfare state’. Labour, in turn, moved to a position which argued that the kind of reforming effort made after 1945 was no longer necessary; that capitalism had changed, and that piecemeal reforms within the system were all that was needed. The most coherent exposition of this new doctrine was Anthony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism (1956). Crosland argued: Today the capitalist business class has lost this commanding position. The change in the balance of economic power is reflected in, and may be inferred from three developments. First, certain decisive sources and

See chapter 11.

84

Bailing out the System

levers of economic power have been transferred from private business to other hands; and new levers have emerged, again concentrated in other hands than theirs. Secondly, the outcome of clashes of group or class economic interests is markedly less favourable to private employers than it used to be. Thirdly, the social attitudes and behaviour of the business class have undergone a significant change, which appears to reflect a pronounced loss of strength and self-confidence . . . Of course we still have strikes, hostilities, and periodic outbursts of emotion — perhaps even to a surprising extent. But they no longer take the same prolonged, dogged and embittered form. The disputes are conducted within more moderate limits; compromises are more quickly reached; and the militant language of class war, the terminology of revolt and counter-revolt, is itself passing out of usage.8

From the vantage point of the eighties it is easy to mock Crosland’s naive optimism; but two things should be noted to help understand the impact Crosland’s work made at the time. Firstly, in the condi¬ tions of the boom it appeared very plausible; it was at least trying to look at the way capitalism had changed, while so many on the left merely repeated outdated dogma (for instance the French Communist Party’s insistence on the ‘absolute pauperisation of the working class’). Secondly, unlike many of the pure opportunists on Labour’s right then and now, Crosland was a genuine reformist; he believed society should be made more fair and equal, and he proposed concrete measures for achieving this. In practice the effect of ideas such as Crosland’s was to make Labour dilute its commitment to nationalisation. The nationalisations of the Attlee government had become electorally unpopular. The bureaucratic structures that had been adopted offered little to arouse enthusiasm, and the Labour Party had made no great effort to counter the anti-nationalisation propaganda of the press, for the Labour right was above all anxious to destroy any lingering suspicion that it still had the long-term aim of expropriating the ruling class. Labour’s 1957 pol¬ icy statement Industry and Society argued that further extensive nationalisation was unnecessary because ‘under increasingly profes¬ sional managements, large firms are as a whole serving the nation well.’ It was in the period of demoralisation caused by Labour’s crushing electoral defeat in 1959 that the right wing tried to push the issue further. Ever since the end of the First World War Labour’s constitu¬ tion had contained a clause (IV:4 — the famous ‘Clause Four’) com¬ mitting the Party to ending capitalist exploitation: To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of thenindustry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible,

No Faith To Lose

85

upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

The clause had been enshrined in Labour’s constitution in 1918, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when radical sentiment was powerful and needed to be contained (in 1919 miners had come close to striking in support of their demand for public ownership). Successive Labour governments had ignored the clause; at best some state ownership, but precious little ‘popular administration and control’ and no thought of ever putting a stop to the extraction of surplus value. Clause Four was no more relevant to the party’s practice than the Book of Revelations is to the average working vicar, and any attempt to remove it might seem purely nugatory. But at the special Labour Conference in November 1959 Gaitskell’s right-wing allies did just that — and got soundly thrashed. The party rank and file recognised that the removal of the clause would be a confirmation of the right-wing dominance over the party; moreover, many trade union leaders saw the attempt to change the party constitution as part of a strategy to make the Labour Party into something more akin to the US Democratic Party — and in such a ‘classless’ party there would obviously be less power for trade union bureaucrats. The retention of Clause IV: 4 was thus in no sense a victory for the left. The party’s policy statements — let alone the actual policies of the 1964-70 Labour government — continued to envisage an indefinite future for the ‘mixed economy’. The real winners were the party’s opportunist centre — typified by Harold Wilson — who supported Clause IV:4 and then ignored it. The right’s inept manoeuvres served only to increase the credibility of the centre in the eyes of the left — when in fact the centre’s policies were indistinguishable from those of the right. Nuclear disarmament was to prove a far more bitterly divisive issue. Here it was no longer a question of a squabble between party cliques, but of a response to a mass movement which had grown up largely outside the Labour machine, and which raised some funda¬ mental questions about the party’s strategy and its very nature. Some Labour personalities had played a role in launching the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but by Easter 1960 CND was able to put a hundred thousand people on the streets — rank-and-file trade union¬ ists and above all young people of a generation which did not remember the thirties, the Second World War or even the Attlee government, and who had a gut distrust of all political apparatuses. Here was the makings of a genuinely popular movement. If Labour had put itself at

86

Bailing out the System

the head of the nuclear disarmers, it might well have swung the middle ground of the electorate even against the press barrage. But the Labour leaders knew too much was at stake. The nuclear arms race was not a policy to be taken or left; it was at the very heart of the capitalist economy and of the Western alliance. The Labour leaders knew they could not opt out of the nuclear system without challenging the whole political framework to which they were irrevoc¬ ably committed. By the autumn of 1960 the growth of CND had made its presence felt inside the Labour Party. In October 1960 the Labour Party Conference at Scarborough carried, by the narrow margin of 3,303,000 to 2,896,000, a resolution demanding the ‘unilateral renunciation of the testing, manufacture, stockpiling, and basing of all nuclear weapons in Great Britain.’ In fact the result had shallow foundations. Some two-thirds of the constituency party votes went against ‘unilateralism’. The motion was carried as a result of trade union block votes (which up to this time had largely been in the pockets of the right, and a constant target of left-wing scorn), and in particular the votes of the two biggest unions, the Engineers and the Transport Workers, who between them could swing virtually any Labour Conference. Unfortunately the votes did not mean that hundreds of thousands of dockers, tool-makers and bus conductors were now sporting CND badges. The Engineers’ vote was decided by an internal wrangle on interpretation after a bizarre manoeuvre at the previous month’s TUC, when the union had voted both for and against unilateralism; the Transport Workers’ swing to the left was partly a result of the untimely death of the intended right-wing successor to Ernest Bevin and Arthur Deakin, an accident which allowed Frank Cousins to become general secretary. The situation therefore allowed Gaitskell to take an aggressive attitude to the result. In his winding-up speech at Scarborough he attacked ‘pacifists, unilateralists and fellow-travellers’ (the last taunt being particular unfair, since the Communist Party had opposed unilateralism until May 1960, and only jumped on the bandwagon at the last moment). He went on to promise to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love.’9 The aggressive response was taken up with enthusiasm by some of Gaitskell’s underlings. William Rodgers, who was many years later in the eighties to be a founder of the right-wing breakaway Social Democratic Party, launched the Campaign for Democratic Socialism. While the American CIA funded his propaganda effort, Rodgers master-minded a campaign that was in many ways more geared to the rank and file than anything the left could muster, mounting a counter-

No Faith To Lose

87

attack in union branches and constituency parties. The strategy of a section of the right was set out by the leader writers of The Guardian, who could afford a greater degree of candour than those playing the game on the ground: The pacifists in the old days did not aspire to change the policy of the party; they were individual dissenters from the official policy — not an organised group, with an alternative policy of their own. The bulk of the Labour party supported military defence, and was known to support it. The dissent of the pacifists was harmless, because everyone knew that if a Labour government came to power, the pacifists would have no influence on it . . . So long as the unilateralists stay in the Labour Party the party will be divided over defence; and so long as the party is divided over defence it will stay in opposition. The object of party unity is to win power, so that an agreed policy can be carried out. If party unity leads only to perpetual defeat, is the price worth paying?

The left, then, had stepped out of line. As long as the Labour left acted as a means of allowing a minority to appease their consciences while remaining voting fodder, it could be tolerated; indeed it played a certain role in pulling the small pacifist vote behind Labour. If, however, the left actually started winning, then the rules of the game must be hurriedly changed. Meanwhile the Labour left were, despite their victory, in some disarray. Their cult-hero, Aneurin Bevan, had dropped the left when unilateralism became a major issue, saying that a British foreign secretary could not be sent ‘naked into the conference chamber’.11 Bevan had died in the summer of 1960; otherwise his blend of left charisma and right politics might have bailed Gaitskell out at Scarborough. The orphaned left were fearsome of a split and inclined to rely on their undoubted constitutional correctness rather than go out to the rank and file; for to do so would have meant linking the issue of the Bomb to a range of industrial and extraparliamentary struggles. They were not willing or able to accept the advice of one left critic who insisted that ‘progress for the Left lies in breaking down the high stakes of nuclear diplomacy into the small chips of class struggle.’12 The initiative fell to the conciliators of the centre. Tony Benn told the Fabian Society that unilateralist Frank Cousins and anti¬ unilateralist Gaitskell could together form a ‘formidable partner¬ ship’.13 More cynically, Harold Wilson declared: I was not looking for splits for I would say they’re all good chaps,

Bailing out the System

88

essential to the party, and it was my job to keep links around them, which I did.14

The strategy of winning over the disarmers, rather than crush¬ ing them, also led to Labour’s decision to re-establish a national youth organisation, the Young Socialists. Labour bureaucrats were reluctant to do this, since previous youth organisations had been captured by Communists or Trotskyists; but faced with the spec¬ tacle of thousands of young people marching along the leafy lanes of Berkshire from the Aldermaston Atomic Research Establishment, when they could have been canvassing for local elections, the bureaucrats gritted their teeth and opened the gates. Expulsions could — and did — come later. After some manoeuvring around a compromise formula, Gaitskell . won a substantial majority for his line at the 1961 Conference. The Labour left now largely dropped the issue, and for fifteen years CND was no more than a rump with an office. Where had all the marchers gone? Many, if not all, were writing poll-cards for Labour. As over nationalisation, the centre had won the day. The aggres¬ siveness of the extreme right of the party had served its purpose; its willingness to split had sent the left cringing into the arms of the centre, which was able to come out of the sorry shambles with its credentials enhanced. Gaitskell performed one last service to save the party he loved by dying a well-timed death, and the way was clear for Harold Wilson.* Other new programmes The debate about programme was not confined to Britain and West Germany. When the Socialist International discussed its political foundations in the early fifties, virtually all the European affiliates — with the notable exception of the British Labour Party — still described themselves as ‘Marxist’, although in practice this meant remarkably little. The Socialist International fudged the issue in its founding declaration by dissolving Marxism into a broad liberal humanist tradition. But during the fifties several affiliated parties reconsidered their programmes. In the Austrian Socialist Party a commission under Bruno Kreisky drafted a new programme, which was finally adopted in 1958 after extensive debate; this contained little reference to Marxism and was very conciliatory towards small businessmen and the Catholic Church. Like the Bad Godesberg Programme, the preamble made an abstract invocation of vague ethical principles: *See chapter 10.

No Faith To Lose

89

The Socialists want a social order . . . whose aim is the free development of the human personality. They want to abolish classes and divide the product of social labour fairly.15

Until 1959 the Dutch Labour Party had participated continuously in all government coalitions, on the basis of consensus politics — support for the Western Alliance, European integration and the mixed economy. But when its associated trade union, the NVV, rejected government control of incomes, the Labour Party was forced to go into opposition. In the same year, 1959, it adopted a new programme which noted far-reaching changes in capitalism and declared the intention of pursuing constructive efforts for change within the existing framework. In June 1960 the Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party fol¬ lowed suit and also drew up a new programme. As for the Swiss Socialist Party, it had in 1920 adopted a pro¬ gramme calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. But in 1959 it dropped its identification with the working class and its intention of overthrowing capitalism. The right-wing tide was so high that even the peaceful mountains of Switzerland were not left undisturbed.

Chapter 9

The bitterest pill

ONE OF the clear implications of the post-war carve-up was the decline

of the colonial empires built up in the late nineteenth century by the European powers. While Russia and the US extended their grip over the globe, Britain, France and Belgium all disengaged from their empires. Only Portugal clung on to its empire until the seventies — and stored up a lot of trouble for itself by so doing. Changing patterns of trade and of economic domination meant that imperialism no longer depended on colonialism. The United States, the world’s most powerful imperialist power, had virtually no colonies in the traditional sense. The boom allowed a certain margin for reform, and the Third World saw the establishment of new independent states led by aggressively nationalist leaders — Sukarno in Indonesia, Nasser in Egypt, Nkrumah in Ghana. Of course such developments did not take place smoothly; the bourgeoisie did not abandon empire overnight on the basis of pure reason. Deep divisions often developed in the ruling class between those sectors who wanted to cling on to the colonies at any price and those who saw they would be able to continue exploiting nominally independent regimes. It might have seemed that social democracy, which carried out the job of modernisation for post-war capitalism, would be eminently suited to the task of decolonisation. In some cases this may have been so; if Britain had had a Tory government after 1945 Indian indepen¬ dence might have cost even more bloodshed. But social democracy had a number of inhibitions. Above all it was committed to serving the interests of its own national state. It might — sometimes — have reservations about uniformed torturers or the bombing of homes and hospitals; but at the end of the day it always had to come down on the side of the ‘national interest’. Moreover, social democracy was deeply concerned with electoral considerations. It was therefore always forced to look over its shoulder

The Bitterest Pill

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at the most reactionary prejudices of the working class and petty bourgeoisie. De Gaulle could get away with ending the Algerian war because his patriotic credentials were not in doubt; if a social democrat had done the same thing he would have been vilified as a ‘traitor’. The liquidation of empire thus showed up the social democrats of the colonial powers in their most abject right-wing colours. Suez The tragi-comic Suez affair of 1956 was the last frenzied fling of old-style European colonialism. In July 1956 Nasser, the Egyptian leader, nationalised the Suez canal. At the end of October French and British troops launched an invasion of Egypt in close collusion with Israel, Western imperialism’s main ally in the Middle East. It was the final attempt by Britain and France to show that they were imperialist powers in their own right, able to act independently of the United States, rather than being its subordinate partners. Within a week pressure from both Russia and the US forced a cease-fire. The invasion was planned between July and October at a number of meetings between the Tory prime minister Anthony Eden and the French SFIO leader Guy Mollet. This was not, as one might suppose, a case of a naive reformist being misled by a wicked Tory imperialist. By all accounts Mollet was the leading partner, the more enthusiastic of the two. When Mollet addressed the SFIO Congress in 1957, he not only defended the invasion, but had the impudence to do so in Marxist terms, disguising naked imperialism as a defence of Israel against the Arab powers: People say the Suez operation cannot be reconciled with our socialist conscience; but Marx and Engels always taught that, in a conflict, socialists should be on the side of the more progressive nation. Between Nasser and Ben Gurion [the Israeli prime minister] I made my choice. (Applause.) If Israel had been wiped off the map, that would have produced some fine speeches, perhaps even collections for the refugees. We regret nothing, except that we could not finish off the operation in accordance with proletarian internationalism. (Applause.)

On the question of Suez, Mollet gained the support of even those figures on the French left who were usually on the side of decolonisa¬ tion: Gaston Defferre, Frangois Mitterrand — who compared Nasser’s seizure of the canal to Hitler’s treatment of Czechoslovakia — and even, more conditionally, Pierre Mendes-France.2 The British Labour Party, being in opposition, could afford the luxury of a greater radicalism. For the Labour leaders the issue was

Bailing out the System

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not anti-imperialism; it was rather that they genuinely believed in the principles of NATO, and saw Britain’s future as a loyal junior partner of the USA. Moreover, both left and right of the party showed by their responses that they were thoroughly steeped in nationalism. Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader, compared Nasser’s actions to what ‘we encountered from Mussolini and Hitler in those days before the war. ’3 Meanwhile in the columns of Tribune, Aneurin Bevan, hero of the left, felt called upon to upbraid the nationalism, not of those preparing an invasion, but of Nasser. The Egyptian leader, he wrote, . . . has not realised that to keep on stirring the pot of nationalist passion is not conducive to the creation of conditions favourable to long-term economic projects.4

This was the same Bevan who was to argue that a British foreign secretary without H-Bombs would be ‘naked’. There was clearly a big difference between the imperialist goose and the Third World gander. Bevan’s somewhat unrealistic solution was to ‘internationalise all these waterways through which the commerce of the world is articu¬ lated’.5 Given the existing world order, such a solution could only strengthen the grip of imperialism. When the actual invasion came the Labour Party did oppose it, organising public meetings under the slogan ‘Law — Not War’. While Eden bombed Egypt, Labour stuck to parliamentary channels; the British people were urged ‘to refrain from taking industrial action as a means of influencing national policy in the present crisis.’6 In at least one case this injunction was disregarded — workers on the industrial estate at Crawley stopped work early on 6 November to march against the war.7 How many more such cases might there have been if Labour had sought to mobilise instead of to demobilise? Even the hardest left-wingers in Labour’s ranks found it impos¬ sible to present a fully anti-imperialist position. Ian Mikardo, while denouncing ‘the mock heroics of the Anglo-French intervention’, backed Israeli military action against guerrillas based in Egypt.8 Suez revealed just how much imperialist poison flows in social democratic veins. The Belgian general strike The decline of European colonialism in face of the growing might of US imperialism also produced crisis in Belgium. In 1960 the Belgian government abandoned — hastily and ineptly — its colonial role in the Congo (now Zaire). Given Belgium’s already low rate of growth, loss of income from the Congo led to an economic crisis. The govern¬ ment, dominated by the Social Christian Party, adopted the well-tried

The Bitterest Pill

93

solution of making the working class pay. This took the form of the loi unique, an economic package which raised taxes, especially those falling mainly on workers, and cut public spending, notably on welfare provision, for instance reducing entitlement to unemployment benefit. On 20 December 1960 a strike of municipal workers rapidly and spontaneously spread to workers throughout the country. It was a magnificent reaffirmation of the potential power of working-class self-activity against those who had argued that the class struggle was over. In many places workers elected their own strike committees to conduct the struggle; one report says that two-fifths of the Charleroi region was under the control of directly-elected strike committees.9 Spontaneity does not survive for long, and the strike could not bypass the existing reformist organisations. The Belgian Socialist Party still had a strong working-class base, with local organisation enjoying a considerable degree of autonomy. Matters were complicated by the existence in Belgium of two linguistic communities. The Socialist Party’s main roots were in the Walloon (French-speaking) area, which had been the first part of Belgium to be industrialised; the Flemish areas, more recently industrialised, tended to be dominated by Catholic unionism. The Socialists had frequently participated in coalition governments, most recently sharing power with the Liberals between 1954 and 1958. In July 1957 the Socialist prime minister Van Acker had broken a strike of engineering workers. The limited achieve¬ ments of parliamentary reformism meant that among the rank and file of the Socialist Party there was much sympathy for syndicalist methods, looking back to a long tradition of general strikes since the late nineteenth century. The Socialist Party Congress, held only a few days before the strike, declared total opposition to the loi unique, but had no proposals for action. As the strike spread, the aim of the Socialists seemed to be to seek some compromise formula; but as the initiative moved first to the workers, then back to the government, neither side wanted such a compromise. The Socialist leaders felt far more affinity with the government than with the workers; as ex-prime minister Van Acker put it in a parliamentary debate: I too have found myself having to deal with a grave social conflict. So I understand that.the government has to maintain order. I would have done the same thing myself in the circumstances.10

The bureaucracy of the FGTB, the union federation associated with the Socialists, faced similar problems. The day after the strike began, Louis Major, general secretary of the FGTB, told a press conference: ‘The FGTB is not in favour of a general strike. It has not

94

Bailing out the System

made any call for such action.’11 But the lower ranks of the union machine had to support the strike so as not to be outflanked, and in order to get control over the movement. A key figure during the strike was Andre Renard, recognised as the leader of the left in the FGTB. Renard was immensely popular; he kept up intense activity during the strike, constantly being cheered at mass meetings. For the bourgeois press, he was a target to be repeatedly reviled. Yet even Renard saw the strike in terms of putting pressure on the bourgeoisie, rather than of unleashing the full power of the class against the regime. When sections of the left began to raise the demand for a march on Brussels, Renard came out firmly in opposition to it. Instead he allowed some of the energy of the strike to be diverted into the dead end of Walloon nationalism. He raised the call for a separate provincial government for the Walloon area, in which the Socialists would have the majority. Although it was true that the strike was strongest in Walloon areas, many Flemish workers were parti¬ cipating, and such regionalist demands could only be a diversion. Within the Socialist Party there was a left wing organised around the weekly paper La Gauche; this had some real base in the party and had won more than 25 per cent of the votes at a party congress for a resolution demanding withdrawal from NATO. La Gauche had revo¬ lutionary pretensions; among its key leaders was the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel. Its main programmatic concern was the demand for ‘structural reforms’, which it saw as a way of making a radical challenge to the existing system. Thus La Gauche wanted to orient the strike, not simply to the withdrawal of the loi unique, but to demands for various reforms, such as a cut in arms spending, nationalisation of the energy industries, a planned economy to ensure full employment and a national health service. It was La Gauche which had originally helped to launch the demand for a march on Brussels, a march which might (for nothing is certain unless it is tried) have brought down the government and shifted the balance of forces in favour of the workers. But in early January La Gauche pulled back from the demand, just as Renard had done. The absence of any alternative leadership able to provide a focus meant that the movement was bound to fall back into the hands of the Socialist Party leaders. Perhaps the most creditable role was played by the Socialist Youth, the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes. The JGS tried to relate to the militant young workers who were in the forefront of the strike, met regularly to co-ordinate activity, and even prepared propaganda aimed at the army. Unfortunately the JGS were not sufficiently large to constitute an alternative leadership.

The Bitterest Pill

95

By the first week of January 1961 the movement had reached a turning-point. A mass strike must either go forward or go back. And neither the Socialist Party, nor Renard, nor La Gauche, had any way forward to offer. On 6 January two workers were killed in Liege during a day of bitter fighting with police. Seeing no hope of victory, some groups of strikers began to return to work. The Socialist Party was now able to help liquidate the movement. On 10 January the Socialist leader in parliament, Van Acker, proposed two amendments to the loi unique with reference to un¬ employment provision. By accepting that the loi unique could be amended he was repudiating what had been the basic demand of the strike — its total withdrawal. The government gladly accepted the specific amendments, for Van Acker’s willingness to compromise gave them the initiative again. The police now became more aggressive; on 16 January one striker was killed, and by 21 January the movement had collapsed. At the next elections the Socialist vote rose slightly and the party entered a coalition with the Social Christians, returning to the government role it so richly deserved after its moderate and responsible conduct during the strike. The Algerian War The country which faced the most intractable decolonisation problem was France. Between 1946 and 1962 French political life was dominated by two disastrous colonial wars, in Indochina and Algeria. The role of social democrats of all shades and alignments is the most squalid chapter of a very squalid story. By 1954 the fall of Dien Bien Phu showed that France could no longer hope to hold Indochina. The withdrawal was organised by Pierre Mendes-France, perhaps the most intelligent of the decolonisers on the French left. He headed a government which contained no Communists or Socialists, and rapidly negotiated the Geneva Agreements which provided for the fateful partition of Vietnam. Mendes-France was also working to disengage France from Morocco and Tunisia. In November 1954 the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), encouraged by the Vietnamese victory, embarked on armed struggle for national independence. This was difficult for even the most ardent decoloniser to swallow, for technically Algeria was not a colony, but an integral part of France (though the rigged electoral system grossly under-represented the Muslim population, many of whom had no vote at all). Algeria had a large settler community, and very many French people had friends or relatives resident in Algeria. Mendes-France immediately responded that Algeria was ‘not a foreign country’ and that there could be no compromise over ‘the

Bailing out the System

96

unity and integrity of the Republic’.12 He was here echoing the sentiments of his minister of the interior and close collaborator, Frangois Mitterrand, who had declared the previous year: For me, the maintenance of the French presence in North Africa, from Bizerta to Casablanca, is the first imperative of any national policy.13

When the war began Mitterrand exercised his official powers to ban a public meeting organised by the Committee of Struggle Against Colonialist Repression. Other actions of Mitterrand while in the Mendes-France government included banning a Communist Party 14 July demonstration, making flyposting for the Communist Party daily paper L’Humanite illegal and sending riot police with tear gas against a peasant demonstration at Lille. There were, of course, deep racist and pro-imperialist feelings in • the French working class; but there was also evidence of opposition to the war. There was considerable resistance among conscripts who were being sent to Algeria; in the autumn of 1955 and early 1956 there were many cases of conscripts refusing to board trains or, if they did so, systematically pulling the communication cords to stop trains moving. In October 1955 conscripts in Rouen rioted and were joined by several hundred workers; in July 1956 two thousand conscripts at a camp at Mourmelon mutinied and hired buses to take them home. In many factories there were petitions, collections and even stoppages in support of the conscripts. For a time it seemed as though the situation might get out of control. One Renault worker recounts: At Renault a large number of workers were ready to fight to prevent their workmates being called up. But the possibilities which undoubtedly existed then were undermined, sabotaged and eventually crushed by the attitudes of the ‘left’ organisations.14

By the end of 1956 the conscript revolt was over; a historic chance had been lost. Later opponents of the war were driven to individual desertion, something that posed far less of a threat to the regime. It is, however, true that when conscripts were finally forced to go to Algeria they expressed their frustration in racist antagonism towards the Arabs; true also that they resented the fact that Algerian immigrants were getting jobs in France while they were fighting in Algeria. Moreover the continuing conflict between the FLN and the older wing of the nationalist movement, the MNA, made it harder to win French workers’ support for Algerian independence. Whether the working class supported or opposed the war was, therefore, not something determined in advance, but was a question of political leadership. Opinion polls tended to show the working class

The Bitterest Pill

97

somewhat more sympathetic to Algerian independence than other classes. In April 1956 a poll showed that 40 per cent of SFIO voters (and 83 per cent of PCF voters) favoured negotiations with the FLN, while 41 per cent of SFIO voters supported repressing the rebellion by all military means necessary.15 A clear lead from the SFIO could have swung working-class opinion against the war. But this was not to be. In the general election at the beginning of 1956 the SFIO formed a loose alliance with the UDSR, Radicals and Gaullists. For the centre parties, the main inten¬ tion was to prevent the SFIO from making any electoral agreement with the PCF. The alliance, however, attracted a good vote, to some extent because people hoped that Mendes-France would again become prime minister and solve the Algerian problem as he had dealt with Indochina. Instead they got Guy Mollet. In February Mollet visited Algeria and was pelted with tomatoes by European settlers who feared he might be going to make an unfavourable peace settlement. From this point on Mollet became one of the most fervent advocates of pursuing the war until the FLN was crushed. Any hope of mobilising workers against the war was now lost; the SFIO had embarked on a course that would lead to the destruction of the Fourth Republic and ultimately to its own terminal decline. A minority in the SFIO continued to oppose the war, but they be¬ came totally isolated and eventually split to become the Parti Socialist Uni fie (PSU).* A more pragmatic current around Gaston Defferre ar¬ gued for negotations with the FLN, referring to the economic effects of the war rather than anti-imperialist principle. But Mollet stayed on top by means of adroit manoeuvring and demagogic attacks on the religious base of the FLN (thus appealing to the SFlO’s anti-clerical tradition). In March 1956 Mollet asked for ‘special powers’ to deal with the Algerian situation. He succeeded in winning support from a quarter that no right-wing prime minister could have got it from — the French Communist Party. The PCF were anxious to use any means to escape from their political isolation. Their decision was to have a long-term effect. During his 1965 presidential election campaign, Frangois Mitterrand referred back to the incident: When I saw the Communists vote in favour of the special powers, knowing how they really felt, I understood just how responsible and serious this party was.16

The reward was to be finally handed over only in June 1981, when Mitterrand took PCF ministers into his government. *See chapter 19. BOS-G

98

Bailing out the System

The Mollet government must bear full responsibility for the intensification of the war and the associated repression. In April 1956 Claude Bourdet, a well-known left-wing journalist, was imprisoned for having published information about torture in Algeria. Mollet appointed as resident-minister in Algeria Robert Lacoste, a man who continually argued that the war could be won only if more and more troops were sent to do the job. Under Lacoste brutal repression increased against the FLN and any section of the Arab population suspected of sympathising with it; torture was practised on a scale that became an open scandal. Legality was flouted in glaring fashion, as in the case of Maurice Audin, a mathematics lecturer who in 1957 was arrested and subsequently disappeared — in fact murdered during torture. Lacoste personally intervened to prevent any investigation of Audin’s disappearance. (But Guy Mollet, though his conduct brought the very name of socialism into disrepute, did not lack admirers. When he died in 1975, Jean-Marie Le Pen, ex-paratrooper and leader of the racist Front National, declared that ‘. . . the undeniable patriotism which he showed when in power, his sincerity and his integrity, his deep-rooted hostility to Communism, justify us in saluting his memory.’17 The barbaric logic of the Mollet-Lacoste policies (and a possible alternative to them) is highlighted by the case of Fernand Yveton. Yveton was a member of the European working class in Algeria, a turner; he was also a Communist and a sympathiser with the FLN. In 1956 he decided to plant a bomb in his workplace as an expression of solidarity. The bomb was timed to explode at a time when there would be no-one on the premises, and in any case it was discovered before it went off. The possibility of links between the settler working class and the FLN threatened to undermine the whole edifice of imperialist rule and the Mollets and Lacostes who perched on it. Yveton was arrested; he was tortured with electricity and was forced to drink huge quantities of water, whereupon his torturers jumped on his stomach; he was then sentenced to death and guillotined in February 1957. Mollet’s govern¬ ment contained a man laughingly known as the ‘minister of justice’ — Frangois Mitterrand. Mitterrand is said to have pleaded with president Coty to pardon Yveton; the thought of resigning, let alone launching a public campaign, does not seem to have occurred to him.18 In view of his later eminence, Mitterrand’s views on decolonisa¬ tion are worth some detailed attention. His ability to appear at different points on the political spectrum show him to be possessed to the highest degree with the chameleon-like quality that characterises social democrats. Mitterrand had no natural sympathy with the aspir¬ ations of colonial peoples; he showed all the arrogant paternalism of a

The Bitterest Pill

99

European bourgeois in discussing the development of African nation¬ alism in the fifties: A nationalism of limited scope, without any historical context, was bom and developed, fed on disappointment and bitterness, sometimes on hatred nourished by latent racism and stirred up by Communist propaganda.19 Unlike Mollet, Mitterrand was shrewd enough to recognise that Third World nationalism would not simply go away. He also recog¬ nised — as Mendes-France, who resigned from Mollet’s government, had also done — that if France was to come to terms with Third World nationalists, it would have to co-opt the ‘moderate’ and ‘responsible’ elements among them, and that a policy of repression would simply push the moderates into the arms of the more intransigent elements. Thus Mitterrand sharply criticised the policy of French imperialism towards Tunisia in the early fifties; when young nationalists had emerged, French governments had failed to win their sympathy but had treated them ‘as though they were under age.’20 But Mitterrand’s commitment to decolonisation was only skin-deep; the sole thing that distinguished him from Mollet was that he was a more skilful opportunist. By 1958 the Fourth Republic was in a state of collapse. Since 1954 five successive governments had failed to resolve the Algerian situation. There was deep demoralisation in the army, and the state machine was slipping out of the hands of the politicians; in March 1958 members of the Paris police force demonstrated outside parlia¬ ment, chanting ‘throw the deputies in the Seine’ and ‘death to the Jews’. On 13 May a military putsch in Algeria set up a Committee of Public Safety and demanded the creation of a government in Paris which would guarantee the preservation of French Algeria. For a few days the situation was extremely unclear; there was much talk of the danger of civil war. It soon became clear that the one person acceptable to both the army and a broad range of the political parties was Charles de Gaulle, who had withdrawn from political life several years earlier. De Gaulle’s conditions for returning to power were the scrapping of the Constitution of the French Republic, which he had always regarded with contempt, and the establishment of a new type of presidential regime which would give him a considerable amount of personal power. In this situation the role of the SFIO was crucial. The Communists could be expected to oppose de Gaulle, but if they were isolated they would be unable to do anything about it. In a situation where the right had already revealed its contempt for legality, the rational course for

100

Bailing out the System

the left would have been to mobilise the working class for direct action. The mood among most workers was one of confusion and cynicism; but at the same time many were looking for a lead.21 If the PCF, SFIO and trade unions had called a general strike to stop de Gaulle, and at the same time made an offer of immediate independence to the FLN, they could have opened a radically different future for France. There was, of course, no hope of this. In a moment of bravado on 26 May Mollet declared that he would die on the barricades at the head of the miners from the Nord.22 In fact he was already working actively to ensure de Gaulle’s return. De Gaulle was anxious to win over Mollet; he went so far as to reminisce about a meeting between himself and Mollet at Arras just after the Liberation; in fact this was a complete fabrication. During election meetings Mollet returned the compliment by waving an autographed photograph of de Gaulle. On 28 May some three or four hundred thousand people marched through Paris ‘to save the Republic’, — a slogan which for the French left still aroused echoes of the revolutionary days of 1792 and 1848 — although in the absence of any fighting leadership the demonstration was more like a funeral than the preparation for a fightback. Some SFIO leaders joined the march — mainly members of the left which was shortly to split away. Marching too were Mitterrand and MendesFrance. While Mollet had fallen for the opportunism of rapid results, they had adopted the more long-term variety. They were not about to die on the barricades — nor even to tour the factories organising strikes. They were simply going to bide their time, knowing that when an opposition to de Gaulle began to emerge their record would stand them in good stead. So de Gaulle returned to power. The left for the moment seemed crushed, with only a token opposition in the presidential election. During nearly four years of manoeuvres and with much bloodshed, in Algeria and in France, the war went on; eventually de Gaulle betrayed those who had brought him to power and Algeria gained its independence. The war left behind a mortally wounded casualty — the SFIO. Weakened by splits, discredited by opportunism, the SFIO had no future. For years Mollet kept the apparatus together, for no apparent purpose other than to satisfy his own ego. If social democracy was to live in France, the SFIO would have to die.

'

•

,

Part 4

1963-1973:

New openings

Chapter 10 (l want to be elected’

THE FIFTIES was a bleak decade for social democracy; by the early

sixties the tide had begun to turn. The boom had not yet begun to falter, but on the political level there were problems. Parties which had ruled for a decade or more, such as the Christian Democrats in Italy or Germany, or the Tories in Britain, had become complacent and unimaginative, and were often caught up in corruption. Meanwhile, as a result of full employment, the working class was becoming more aggressive. 1963 saw a number of major strikes in Europe: a long and successful miners’ strike in France; in West Germany a hundred thousand engineering workers on strike in Baden-Wiirttemberg; in Italy the end of a nine-month ‘on and off strike by engineering workers. In Britain the years of full employ¬ ment had seen the development of powerful shop-floor organisation. Employers were determined that this growth of working-class milit¬ ancy must be checked; yet the parties of the right seemed to be in no fit shape to do the job. Social democrats, with their left rhetoric and their close links with the trade union bureaucracy, just might bring it off. So the sixties saw the return of the left to government in a number of countries — notably Italy, Britain and West Germany.

Italy Since 1947 all Italian governments had been dominated by the Christian Democratic Party (DC). The Christian Democrats became increasingly corrupt and internally divided, but there was no alter¬ native to it. The small parties of the centre (Republicans, Liberals and Saragat’s PSDI) did not have the strength or the social base to rule without the Christian Democrats. The Communists, despite their mass support, were the main ideological enemy of the regime, and their involvement in government could not be countenanced. The same applied to Nenni’s PSI as long as it was linked to the PCI.

104

Bailing out the System

One way out which began to be discussed in Italy in the fifties was the so-called ‘opening to the left’, which would involve the PSI break¬ ing its links with the PCI and entering a coalition government with the Christian Democrats. The idea had a long history. Nenni had first floated the possibility as early as 1953, and it had received a new impetus after the events of 1956 began to detach the PSI from the PCI. Before the deal could be consummated the ruling class (for which anti-Marxism was a central ideological theme) had to be convinced. In the fifties it was still divided. Large-scale industry poured money into the Liberal Party to try to develop an alternative to the opening to the left. However state bodies such as the IRI and ENI, the state petrol and gas monopoly, used their money to push for a deal with the PSI. In January 1962 Nenni gave a further proof of reliability when he wrote in an American magazine that the PSI was not opposed to NATO.1 A Centre-Left government, led by the Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo Moro, and containing representatives of the PSDI and the Republicans as well as Christian Democrats and the PSI, was formed in December 1963. Between then and February 1972 there were six Centre-Left governments, with never more than a few months’ gap between them. The Centre-Left formula was not exhausted even then; versions of it were tried again on several occasions in the seventies and eighties. The Centre-Left government got initial support from virtually all the newspapers that expressed the interests of big capital — II Messaggero, II Corriere della Sera and the Fiat-mouthpiece La Stampa. Fiat was anxious to see a modernising government, com¬ mitted to raising purchasing power and developing the south of Italy, since this would increase the market for cars and agricultural machin¬ ery. La Stampa welcomed the formation of the Centre-Left: The most striking feature of the government is the participation of the Socialists, which, by the very novelty of its historical character, produces on the one hand great unease and on the other great hopes ... It must immediately be said, however, that the reforms contemplated and pro¬ vided for in the programmatic agreement of Montecitorio have nothing subversive or revolutionary about them; even if strictly implemented on the basis of what could be called a maximum programme, they would represent nothing other than an updating and adjustment of our political and economic structures so as to modernise the Italian state and raise it to the level of the most progressive states in the Western world, with respect, for example, to civil rights, educational and health provision, justice in taxation and national insurance. La Stampa went on to make it clear that the Centre-Left was not a

‘I Want To Be Elected’

10S

short-term crisis measure, but a long-term strategic gamble: Hence it is necessary for the government newly formed yesterday to last for a long time, possibly for the whole term of the present parliament. The best five-year economic plan cannot bear fruit if it is not carried out within the framework of an equally long-term political plan. Even the opponents of the Centre-Left, in so far as they are motivated by genuine concern for the interests of the country, cannot hope for any other solution.2

In March 1964 the US government granted Italy a credit of over one billion dollars to deal with the loss of foreign exchange reserves. This was a reward for Nenni’s stance on NATO, and an expression of faith in the future of the Italian economy. In 1965 the Italian employers’ organisation Confindustria, which had initially had doubts about the Centre-Left, declared its support. For workers the achievements of the Centre-Left were much less obvious. The advent of the Centre-Left government coincided with a period of recession, and unemployment actually rose during 1964. The Centre-Left had begun its period of government by trying to get the unions to accept a year’s pay pause; by the mid-sixties actual wage payments were lagging behind negotiated wage-scales. Despite the existence of a Centre-Left government for more than five years, Italian workers still found it necessary to launch a massive wave of industrial struggle in 1969; only after this did the government intro¬ duce legislation which strengthened trade union powers and extended workers’ rights in the factories. The phased abolition of share-cropping — a system whereby tenants paid part of the crops they had produced as rent — was another major reform designed to modernise the Italian countryside. In addition there was pension reform and the introduction of divorce. But even in terms of the introduction of a modern welfare state the Centre-Left fell pitifully short. When the Centre-Left collapsed in 1972 a proposed health service had still not been brought in; there was an estimated shortage of some four million houses, but only two to three hundred thousand homes a year were being built; and there was a deficiency of some two million school places, so that many children got only half a day’s education. Before coming into government the Socialists had made much of the need for greater honesty and morality in public life; once they had their snouts in the trough, however, they showed themselves to be not very different from the Christian Democrats, being widely involved in dispensing patronage in public and economic bodies. The Socialist public works minister, Giacomo Mancini, was frequently accused of

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irregularities in awarding government contracts. In 1971 Mancini was named by the public prosecutor in connection with the rigging of road-building contracts, but parliamentary immunity saved him from facing trial.3 Meanwhile the PSI was suffering from a basic contradiction. Its political role was now dominated by a series of manoeuvres around the construction of governmental formulae. At the same time its base was slowly eroding; in the 1963 election it won 13.8 per cent of the vote; by 1972 its vote was down to 9.6 per cent. Once the PSI had ceased to have a distinct identity it had no obvious electoral appeal. Anyone who supported the Centre-Left might as well vote Christian Democrat; anyone who did not would probably vote Communist. Since the differences that had led to Saragat’s split in 1947 had now evaporated, moves were made for a reunification of the PSI and the PSDI, which might compensate for the loss of electoral support; but this turned out to be a grotesque charade. Reunification was agreed in principle in 1966, and consummated at a congress in 1968; but in 1969 the Saragat wing split away again. At the same time the PSI still had the problem of its relations with the PCI. PSI members still co-operated with the Communists in the CGIL trade union confederation, and had some alliances in local government. For the PCI this meant a degree of disorientation; while it had to criticise the Centre-Left, it did not dare break its links with the PSI, or it could find itself as isolated as the French Communist Party. The pressure was therefore on the PCI to move towards a more social democratic position. In short, the Centre-Left was an almost unqualified success — for those forces seeking to tame and harness the Italian working-class movement. Britain By October 1964 Britain had been ruled by Tories for all but thirteen years. The Tories had taken credit for many of the improve¬ ments in living standards produced by the boom. But in the early sixties the Tory leadership became divided and demoralised. In 1963 a Tory minister, Profumo, embroiled the party in a public scandal involving prostitution and espionage. The subsequent leadership contest was marked by squalid back-stabbing and the leader who emerged, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, revealed an ineptitude that made him a major electoral liability. All in all, the Tories did not appear to have the backbone to stand up to a militant working class. Meanwhile the Labour Party had emerged from its post-1959 conflicts as a reliable alternative party of government. In 1961 the

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party s new programme, Signposts for the Sixties, promised a national plan for which the people feel actively responsible and a taxation policy which ensures that burdens are fairly shared’ — a modest enough aim, certainly no threat to the existing order of class power. Signposts for the Sixties was openly concerned, not to put workers into power, but to make existing management structures more efficient: If the dead wood were cut out of Britain’s boardrooms and replaced by the keen young executives, production engineers and scientists who are at present denied their legitimate prospects of promotion, our produc¬ tion and export problems would be much more manageable.

The election of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour Party in early 1963 reinforced this technocratic current in Labour’s programme. Wilson was supported by the Labour left, but his election was not primarily an indication of a shift to the left. Wilson seemed to be a more sober figure than his main right-wing rival, the erratic George Brown, and more dynamic than the undistinguished James Callaghan; his Bevanite past was now no more than a memory. Wilson’s style of leadership did not, however, mark a change from that of Gaitskell; as Paul Foot shrewdly noted: Pundit after pundit had informed the Labour Party leadership that it had lost the General Election of 1959 because its policies and ‘image’ were ‘out of date’. Hugh Gaitskell’s answer to this problem was to seek to change the party’s policies; Wilson’s to seek to change its image.4

Wilson set out his own faith in bureaucratic socialism at the 1963 Labour Party Conference; his main concern seemed to be to complete the bourgeois revolution by weeding out aristocratic influence in the ruling class and reorganising it along strictly meritocratic lines. He deplored the fact that the commanding heights of British industry were controlled by ‘men whose only claim is their aristocratic connec¬ tions or the power of inherited wealth or speculative finance.’ His fulsome praise of Russian methods revealed him to be an advocate of a ‘state capitalist’ future for Britain: Those of us who have studied the formidable Soviet challenge in the education of scientists and technologists, and above all, in the ruthless application of scientific techniques in Soviet industry, know that our future lies not in military strength alone but in the efforts, the sacrifices, and above all the energies which a free people can mobilise for the future greatness of our country.5

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Wilson’s rhetoric won support on all sides. The Economist — internal bulletin of the British ruling class — told its readers somewhat reluctantly that ‘on the nicest balance, the riskier choice of Labour — and Mr Wilson — will be the better choice for voters to make on Thursday.’6 At the other end of the spectrum Wilson received the endorsement, not only of the Tribunite left, but of the Marxist editor of New Left Review, Perry Anderson.7 Despite such advocacy, Labour did not win a massive increase in support in the 1964 election; in fact fewer people voted Labour than in the Tory landslide of 1959 — it was the defection of disabused Tory voters to the Liberals which put Labour in power with a wafer-thin majority. Eighteen months later Wilson won a much larger majority, and continued in office until the summer of 1970. For the ruling class a single-party social democratic government is a riskier enterprise than a coalition; there are no loyal representatives of the system to issue calls to order. Pressure has to be exerted through other channels and with the Wilson government this was to be done very soon. As Wilson himself wrote later: We were soon to learn that decisions on pensions and taxation were no longer to be regarded, as in the past, as decisions for parliament alone. The combination of tax increases with increased social security benefits provoked the first of a series of attacks on sterling, by speculators and others, which beset almost every section of the government for the next five years.8

Within weeks of becoming prime minister, Wilson found himself up against the unelected Governor of the Bank of England, the Third Earl of Cromer, educated at Eton and former Page of Honour to King George V, who was constantly demanding “immediate cuts in govern¬ ment expenditure, and particularly in those parts of government expenditure which related to the social services.’9 Wilson describes an early confrontation: Not for the first time, I said that we had now reached the situation where a newly-elected government with a mandate from the people was being told, not so much by the Governor of the Bank of England but by international speculators, that the policies on which we had fought the election could not be implemented; that the government was to be forced into the adoption of Tory policies to which it was fundamentally opposed. The Governor confirmed that that was, in fact, the case.10

This time round Wilson succeeded in winning a game of double¬ bluff by threatening to call a general election; but the framework of the next five and a half years was now defined. Labour was operating

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within the system, not against it. All Wilson’s achievements, the reforms and the more numerous sell-outs, must be understood in this context. The main reason why significant sections of the ruling class had welcomed a Labour victory was that they hoped that a Labour govern¬ ment, through its links with the trade union bureaucracy and its credi¬ bility among workers, would be able to discipline workers more effec¬ tively and above all to control wages. Throughout its six years in office, Wilson’s government was preoccupied with the attempt to impose various forms of incomes policy. In the autumn of 1966 a total wage freeze was imposed for six months. The policy was only moderately suc¬ cessful; real wages actually rose in every single year of the Wilson govern¬ ment, and on average they rose faster than they had done under the previ¬ ous Tory government. Aubrey Jones, chairman of Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board, estimated that the total effect of Labour’s policy was that the ‘average annual increase in earnings in recent years may have been just under 1 per cent less than otherwise it would have been.’11 When workers actually took the defence of their own interests into their own hands, however, the nature of the government became crystal clear. The summer of 1966 saw a long and bitter strike by seamen over wages and conditions. Wilson’s response was to blame the strike on the British Communist Party, which he described as . . . this tightly knit group of politically motivated men, who, as the last General Election showed, utterly failed to secure acceptance of their views by the British electorate, but who are now determined to exercise back-stage pressures, forcing great hardship on the members of the union, and their families, and endangering the security of the industry and the economic welfare of the nation.12 At the end of 1966 Labour’s economic policy was commended by an unlikely source, the economist Sir Roy Harrod: . . . some industrialists have told me that the squeeze, involving a certain increase in unemployment, has been having a good effect on discipline in the factories.13 In 1969 the Labour government introduced proposals for legisla¬ tion to limit the rights of trade unions, the notorious document In Place of Strike. This advocated, among other things, compulsory strike ballots, a conciliation pause for unofficial strikes, and fines for trade unionists to be paid by attachment to wages. Under heavy pressure from the labour movement the proposals were dropped, but the Labour government had opened up a road to be followed by Tory governments over the next decade.

110

Bailing out the System

The aim of Labour’s legislation was not, of course, to attack the unions as such, but rather to check the power of rank-and-file organ¬ isation and strengthen the grip of the bureaucracy. Wilson made this clear when he met the finance and general purposes committee of the TUC in April 1969 and told them that the more they could discipline their members the less need there would be for legislation.14 In terms of social policy the Labour government did introduce some reforms. There was a considerable increase in the sums spent on housing, education, welfare and health. However, when meas¬ ured against rising prices, the increases were modest; between 1964 and 1968 expenditure on education rose from 4.8 per cent to 5.9 per cent of GNP, on health from 3.9 per cent to 4.6 per cent, and on housing from 2.8 per cent to 3.0 per cent. Welcome increases, no doubt, but hardly a radical redistribution, especially when it is recalled that some of the increased health expenditure found its way into growing profits for drug companies, while a good part of the housing budget went in higher interest charges paid by local authori¬ ties to the money-lenders. The old National Assistance system was abolished and replaced by supplementary benefits. This involved not only an increase in benefit rates, but the removal of the stigma attached to National Assistance since it laid down that benefits were a right. Poor families with children undoubtedly gained from this change, but there was not much in it for the old and unemployed. There was a major expansion of higher education, and the intro¬ duction of comprehensive schooling to replace the old selective system of grammar and secondary modern schools. This was an important reform (and one not opposed in principle by the Tories); however, not only were many grammar schools allowed to survive, but not enough money was made available for the building programme necessary to implement a fully comprehensive system. Labour’s period in office also saw the introduction of the Abortion Act and legislation which meant that male homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence. It should be noted, however, that neither of these measures was a government initiative; both were promoted by back-bench MPs — the Abortion Act came from a Liberal, David Steel, while the original bill on homosexuality was put forward by a Tory, Humphry Berkeley. The government described its attitude to the Abortion Act as one of ‘benevolent neutrality’. Labour’s taxation policy actually operated a redistribution in the wrong direction, being most generous to the better-off and harshest to those most in need. One commentator points out that Labour had

‘I Want To Be Elected’

■ .

111

. allowed income tax to become a major cause of poverty . . . The

income tax threshold — the point of income at which people started to pay income tax — had been allowed to drop sharply downwards. The effect was that in the late sixties income tax was increasingly levied on incomes below the official poverty line.15

So much for ‘a taxation policy which ensures that burdens are fairly shared’. Britain had by now little Empire left, but Wilson succeeded in being a vicarious imperialist. Britain enjoyed a so-called ‘special relationship’ with the United States (a ‘special relationship’ illustrated by one contemporary cartoonist with a picture of Wilson lustfully inserting his tongue into US President Lyndon Johnson’s arse-hole). This meant that Britain assisted the US in policing the Third World, especially in Malaysia (until the massacre of half a million Indonesian Communists made this unnecessary) and in Africa. Above all it meant the Wilson government giving slavish support to the American war in Vietnam, which began to escalate rapidly from early 1965. Wilson’s attempt to assert the role of the Commonwealth by setting up in 1965 a ‘Commonwealth Peace Mission’ to Vietnam was rejected with con¬ tempt by the North Vietnamese, in view of Wilson’s record of support for the US. When the Tories had first succumbed to racist pressures and introduced immigration controls in the early sixties, Labour MPs had opposed them in a great show of principle and dedication to the Commonwealth. Once in office the Labour government proceeded to introduce even tighter controls, sharply reducing the number of entry vouchers. Since the controls did not affect Irish nationals, nor, in practice, white Commonwealth citizens, the controls were openly racist. By focussing attention on the numbers of black immigrants as the core of the problem, the Labour legislation positively encouraged racist sentiments. Like Mollet over Algeria, Wilson was capitulating to what he supposed the most reactionary of his working-class supporters wanted. Such wishes were echoed by one of Wilson’s ministers, Bob Mellish, who told Labour Party Conference of immigrants arriving at Victoria station with no home to go to, and enquired: Was he as a parliamentary secretary to go to Lambeth which had a waiting list of 10,000 of its own people and ask them to give preference to the coloured people who had come in? ‘If you ask me to do that and say that this is a socialist approach I say to you frankly and firmly I shall be asking Lambeth to create the most grievous racial disturbances we have ever seen in London.’16

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Labour was thus opening up an auction in which the only winners could be the racist demagogues who would demand ever tighter controls, a total ban on immigration, repatriation ... By April 1968, when Labour’s policies had caused huge demoralisation among its traditional support, Enoch Powell was able to speak out for openly racist policies and win small but significant expressions of workingclass backing, notably from London dockers. Labour’s own traditional base was now under direct political attack from the extreme right; but the Labour Party was now so embroiled in the racist logic, so remote from the grass-roots, that it was unable to mount a campaign in opposition to Powellism. For a fortnight after Powell’s first sensation-seeking speech Wilson and other Labour leaders kept silent, not seeking television or radio time to answer Powell, and leaving the issue in the hands of David Ennals, a junior minister at the Home Office. One left MP, Ian Mikardo, who spoke out against racism, was physically assaulted by constituents; many others preferred not to push the issue. Bob Mellish found this an appropriate time to call publicly for the deportation to Pakistan of Tariq Ali, a revolutionary socialist activist.17 Such resistance as there was to Powell’s ideas had to come from the independent left, notably the International Socialists. When the Tories returned to power in 1970 Britain had a Labour Party demoralised at the grass-roots, a Labour left in disarray and a working class whose militancy had been mainly exercised against its ‘own’ government. West Germany In West Germany the Christian Democrats ruled uninterruptedly, often in association with the Free Democrats (FDP), from the founda¬ tion of the Federal Republic until 1966. The difference between the two major parties was getting less and less. The Christian Democrats were already committed to the development of a welfare state; in 1966, before the SPD came into government, West German taxation took a higher proportion of GNP than British, and West Germany had a more developed welfare state, with for example more generous pensions, than Britain. On the other hand the Bad Godesberg Pro¬ gramme had eliminated the last vestiges of class politics from the SPD. What did still differentiate the two parties was the fact that the SPD maintained, despite disagreements on specifics, close links with the trade union bureaucracy, and that it exercised almost complete hegemony over the German left. (In the 1965 elections the illegal Communist Party campaigned for a vote in the SPD.) By 1966 the boom was beginning to reveal some of its contradic-

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tions; in particular profits were threatened by a tendency towards increasing inflation. When the rather jaded team of Christian Demo¬ crats under Erhard proved incapable of responding to this situation, there was pressure from within the ruling class for the SPD to be brought into government. As the Industrielkurier, which expressed the views of big industry, put it: The

SPD

must fulfil a very special function within the government . . .

Its close contacts with the trade unions, which have hitherto served as a means for the trade unions to influence the welfare policies of the must now, on the contrary, serve as a means for the

SPD

SPD,

to influence the

trade union leaders. Both the governing parties must closely adhere to their decision to avoid all spending that would serve to promote con¬ sumption and thus reduce the reservoir out of which investments are financed.18

In November 1966 the SPD agreed to enter a coalition with the Christian Democrats, leaving only a handful of Free Democrats to constitute the parliamentary opposition. The new chancellor (prime minister) was to be a Christian Democrat, Kiesinger, who had been a Nazi supporter from 1933 right through until 1945. The SPD got almost half the ministries, and in particular had considerable control over economic matters. As Willy Brandt, the SPD leader, put it in an interview: What is decisive in Germany is where money is earned and whether in the coming years we can create the preconditions for more money to be earned, so that stability and growth in the economy are correctly combined.19

In the same interview Brandt was asked whether he had not in fact, by agreeing to serve in a coalition with the Christian Democrats (when he could have stayed in opposition or possibly formed a govern¬ ment with the FDP) given a ‘life-saving blood transfusion’ to a party that was on the brink of disintegration. Brandt replied: ‘On no account can I have an interest in seeing the Christian Democratic Party disintegrate.’20 The decision to form what became known as the ‘Great Coalition’ also revealed how far the SPD had ceased to be a mass party and had become dominated by its parliamentary leadership. The negotiations for the new coalition were carried on with virtually no consultation with the party membership outside parliament. In many areas local party officials reported protests from rank-and-file members, with some tearing up their membership cards. From all over the country there were reports of telephone calls, telegrams and protest meetings.21 BOS-H

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Bailing out the System

But there was no organised left in the party to act as a focus; more than fifty SPD members of parliament voted against the coalition; none of them was willing to lead a campaign. Brandt rode out the storm and the protest wave quickly subsided. Perhaps the key figure of the Great Coalition was the Social Democratic economics minister Karl Schiller. Schiller stood on the right of the party and was essentially a Keynesian. There were two key themes to his policy. The first was the so-called ‘stabilisation law’, which aimed to avert recession through state intervention in the economy, especially through taxation policy and the establishment of government spending programmes over a period of several years. The second, even more crucial, was his success in getting the trade unions to agree to voluntary guidelines for wages. Schiller’s measures succeeded, temporarily, in averting the re¬ cession that was threatening the West German economy; they were policies which could probably not have been implemented by a Christian Democrat, yet they in no way challenged the free market economy. Schiller’s success became a major electoral asset to the SPD. The Great Coalition was also able to introduce the controversial Emergency Laws, which prior to the SPD’s entry into government had been the target of strong trade union opposition. The Emergency Laws allowed for suspension of democratic rights in the case of such ‘emergencies’ as civil disorder, and were a threat to working-class organisation, notably to the right to strike. The fact that the Social Democrats had established their antiCommunist credentials meant that the new government was able to take advantage of detente by moving tentatively towards closer rela¬ tions with the Eastern bloc. Such moves had a clear economic base in a period when Italian and French car firms were establishing links with Eastern Europe. Immediately after the establishment of diplomatic relations with Rumania, an agreement was made for a Volkswagen assembly plant there. The Great Coalition’s policies did not permanently succeed in controlling the working class. In the autumn of 1969 came a wave of strikes by miners, steelworkers and engineers. As one West German journal put it: With consternation industrial bosses and union bureaucrats, party leaders and electorate discovered that their apparently healthy world of prosper¬ ity and good conduct — formed by Erhard, concerted by Schiller — was not so healthy.22

Despite — perhaps even because of — this upsurge of militancy, the SPD saw its vote increased at the 1969 election, rising for the first

‘I Want To Be Elected’

US

time to over 40 per cent. The SPD was now able to do a deal with the Free Democrats and form a coalition under Brandt as chancellor, in which the Social Democrats were the dominant partner. For the first time since the Second World War the Christian Democrats found themselves in opposition. The Free Democrats were able to demand their price — the dropping of SPD proposals for workers’ participation in management, a capitulation which caused some discontent among the party’s trade union allies. The SPD had worked its passage back. After twenty years of concession and responsibility, the red-haters of the West German ruling class had pronounced it fit to govern. France Once the Algerian war was over, de Gaulle’s grip on French political life became less firm. The very presidential system he had created tended to encourage the opposition to seek broad unity. Sections of the ruling class began to detach themselves from de Gaulle, as was shown by the substantial 16 per cent vote for the centre candidate in the 1965 presidential election, Lecanuet. Many of the reformists who had been discredited in 1958 began to emerge from the woodwork and start sniffing around. The SFIO, and the reformists still hanging around outside it, now had a strategic decision to make. If the French left was to be recon¬ structed there were two possibilities. One was to base a new alliance on co-operation with the PCF, which still controlled more than 20 per cent of the electorate. The other was to seek a deal with the antiGaullist centre, creating a centre-left bloc, which would then attract PCF votes without any formal deal. Before the 1965 presidential election an attempt was made to adopt the latter course. Gaston Defferre, the yacht-owning SFIO mayor of Marseilles, organised a vast publicity exercise to launch himself as the candidate of the centre-left. The Defferre project was effectively sabotaged by Mollet, who saw a new broad alliance as a threat to the SFIO apparatus. The way was now clear for Frangois Mitterrand to pick up the pieces. Mitterrand had clean hands in the sense that he had never been a member of the SFIO (if in no other sense). He was able to win SFIO and PCF support and get enough votes to give de Gaulle quite a close race on the second ballot. The SFIO now established a formal union with the Radicals and others, known as the Federation of the Left, which in the 1967 elections made a formal agreement with the PCF. A regroupment of the reformist left was under way, but it was soon to be blown off course by an unexpected upheaval.

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Bailing out the System

Greece For ten years and more after the civil war Greece was ruled by the hard right. Greek politicians were cajoled and threatened by American officials, notably Ambassador John Peurifoy — who later organised a right-wing coup in Guatemala before dying mysteriously in South East Asia. The Communist Party remained banned, with many of its leading members imprisoned under brutal conditions. The left, however, would not simply go away. The illegal Com¬ munist Party succeeded in organising a legal electoral front, the Union of the Democratic Left (EDA), which took 25 per cent of the vote in the 1958 elections. These voters were not, of course, all hard-line Stalin¬ ists, but they turned to EDA in the absence of any remotely radical alternative; for no significant social democratic current existed in Greece which could win the support of this left electorate. In the autumn of 1961 George Papandreou, who had been Churchill’s puppet back in 1944, attempted to remedy this situation by creating a new alliance, the Centre Union, which brought together the Liberals, the Democratic Union, the Progressive Party and the Popular Social Party. Making allowances for the specificities of Greek politics, the Centre Union can be seen as an attempt to create a Greek Centre-Left. The United States recognised Papandreou as a valuable second string to its bow. When the Centre Union achieved 33.5 per cent of the vote in the 1961 election, US Ambassador Briggs com¬ mented that ‘the elections have given concrete proof of the Greek people’s faith in the ideals of individual freedom and human dignity. ’23 Over the next couple of years the need for an alternative party of government became even clearer. 1962 saw demonstrations by stud¬ ents, riots by sultana and tobacco producers, and a strike of building workers which led to clashes with the police. In 1963 there were strikes, not only by dockers and teachers, but by doctors and lawyers. Meanwhile, following a dispute with the King, the key figure of the right, Karamanlis, had resigned as prime minister and gone to Paris. At elections held in November 1963 the Centre Union emerged as the leading party and Papandreou became prime minister. He could have ruled in conjunction with EDA, but preferred to take the gamble of calling fresh elections only three months later to get an absolute majority, an aim in which he succeeded. EDA was cut down to less than half the size it had been five years earlier. Papandreou’s economic policies were essentially Keynesian. Measures were taken, through agricultural subsidies and higher mini¬ mum wages, to redistribute wealth to workers and peasants. The consequent increase in consumption led to industrial expansion, something which gave the Greek bourgeoisie no grounds for com-

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plaint. For despite the use of some economic planning measures, there was to be no attack on the free market. Papandreou also brought in measures to modernise Greece’s educational system. A new univer¬ sity was opened and two more planned; compulsory schooling was extended from six to nine years, and free school meals were introduced in primary schools. The success of the Centre Union had a considerable impact on EDA, which saw its support being eroded. Increasingly it began to adapt its policies to those of the Centre Union. The logic of a CentreLeft strategy would have led Papandreou to try to co-opt EDA, which would have strengthened his base against the attacks being prepared on the right, but Papandreou’s pathological anti-Communism pre¬ vented him from following this logic. A sympathetic American visitor who met Papandreou in 1960 describes how he was totally closed to a strategy of including the left: Over dinner, I mentioned the failure of liberal politicians like himself to get together and offer the people a viable programme for social reform. I argued that by default they permitted the extreme polarisation of Greek politics, and that a young man with a liberal orientation had no choice but to move to the Left. George Papandreou became livid, ignored the substance of my comment, and began recounting the atrocities committed by the Communists during the civil war of 1946-49. Rational discussion of the problem was impossible.24

While Papandreou was hesitant to make friends on the left, his enemies on the right were regrouping. One right-wing politician, George Rallis, described him as ‘the Kremlin’s agent in Greece’.25 In July 1965 George Papandreou was forced to resign after the right had exploited the pretext of an alleged conspiracy in the army involving his son Andreas. The situation remained unstable. 1966 saw a massive strike wave in which half a million workers took part. The Centre Union was far from homogeneous; many on the left looked to Andreas Papandreou, who was increasingly calling for radical measures of state intervention in the economy. With the backing of about forty deputies, Andreas publicly criticised his father and was threatened with expulsion from the party. But Andreas backed off from the prospect of an open breach with his father and the creation of a new party. The Centre Union had managed to irritate the dominant forces in Greek politics, but had not been bold enough to provide a viable alternative to them. In the spring of 1967 new elections were scheduled, and the Centre Union was again tipped to win. But the elections were never held. The army took power, imprisoning its opponents and

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Bailing out the System

suppressing all civil rights; to do so it used the secret Prometheus Plan drawn up by NATO for use in the event of a Communist coup. The dictatorship was to continue for seven years, suppressing all forms of parliamentary politics. If there had been a genuine social democratic current in Greek politics, things might have gone differently. A mass party of the reformist left could have co-opted the forces to its left and effectively blocked the military right, while at the same time showing that it was no real threat to Greek capitalism. George Papandreou’s right-wing past and frenetic anti-Communism made the Centre Union unable to play such a role. His son learnt the lesson, and it was from the ashes of the military regime that a Greek social democracy was at last to rise.

Chapter 11 Riders on the storm

1968 STILL APPEARS as a crucial turning-point in post-war history, even if the euphoria of the time now looks a little excessive. On a world scale 1968 saw the Tet offensive which confirmed the inevitability of US defeat in Vietnam, and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia which destroyed for ever the possibility of a monolithic Communist movement. These events began to create space for political ideas independent of both Washington and Moscow. In France the biggest general strike in human history, involving ten million workers, re¬ affirmed the historic potential of the working class. In virtually every country in Europe student militants challenged the existing order and brought revolutionary theory out of the backrooms and into the broad light of day. Various factors came together to make 1968 an explosive year for Western Europe. Ever since the Second World War reformers of every hue had encouraged the expansion of higher education as a means of both technological advance and equalisation of opportunity. To the new generation of students, who were often crammed into inadequate premises, the picture did not look the same. For pre-war students graduation had been a passport to privilege; now it merely made them part of an educated proletariat. The outdated syllabuses and authoritar¬ ian methods of the universities seemed quite irrelevant to them. In the late sixties radical ideas began to spread like wildfire among students. In itself, student militancy posed no threat to the system. In May 1968 that highly non-revolutionary journal The Economist published an editorial entitled ‘Hello Anarchists!’, in which it declared: ‘Student protest should be encouraged, to preach, to march, to diagnose, to throw stones, to be absurd. That is what we pay students for.’1 In other circumstances the system could have easily absorbed the student

revolt. However, at the same time the first cracks were beginning to appear in the post-war boom. The American economy was under

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Bailing out the System

pressure from the Vietnam War, and the effects were beginning to be felt elsewhere. The ruling class was starting to recognise the need to roll back some of the gains made since the fifties. With full employ¬ ment still scarcely threatened, and with a new generation of workers who did not remember the defeats of the thirties or even the privations of wartime, this was not an easy task. There was a huge reserve of unbroken self-confidence and militancy. In addition, there was the question of developments inside the left itself. During the fifties and sixties the traditional working-class parties, Communist and social democratic, had moved steadily right¬ wards, preparing themselves to exercise power inside the framework of the existing system. This drift to the right had created a vacuum on the left. Whereas in the forties and fifties the traditional parties were the natural point of reference for anyone disgusted with capitalist society, there was now a whole layer of students and young workers looking for a political alternative. France Six years after the end of the Algerian war French society was riddled with contradictions. De Gaulle had succeeded in modernising French capitalism; living standards had risen to the same level as Britain’s; education, especially the universities, had been massively expanded. But low pay was still widespread and unemployment, by boom standards, was high, particularly among young people. Union membership was low and the unions weak; but festering discontent was beginning to make itself felt; in 1967 and early 1968 there was a wave of strikes among engineers and car workers, and in the steel and textile industries. On top of this came the blossoming of the French student move¬ ment in the spring of 1968. This had several sources; deep dissatisfac¬ tion at overcrowding and poor facilities in the universities (the fruit of over-rapid expansion); protest at antiquated and authoritarian college regulations; and militant opposition to the US war in Vietnam. In the early days of May 1968 there were sharp confrontations between students and police in Paris, culminating on the night of 10 May with the building of barricades. The determined resistance by the students led to the release of imprisoned militants. This small step back by the regime had a momentous effect. For ten years the authoritarian Gaullist government had seemed invincible; now that it had been seen to retreat a large flood of pent-up militancy broke out. On 13 May the main unions — CGT and CFDT — called a one-day strike, hoping this would act as a safety-valve and allow them to regain control of the situation; the following day workers at the

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Sud-Aviation aircraft factory in Nantes decided to continue the strike indefinitely and to occupy their workplace. The example was quickly followed, and within days some ten million workers were involved in occupations. In the Sud-Aviation factory, workers locked up some twenty members of management in their offices for a fortnight . A loudspeaker played the Intemationale as ‘an effective way for the bosses to learn the Internationale without ideological effort’.2 Similar scenes, which chal¬ lenged the whole structure of management rule, occurred in thousands of workplaces. A strike on such a scale cannot remain limited to the factories. The issue of control is posed in society as a whole. In the town of Nantes in the last week of May 1968, a central strike committee took over the town hall. Road blocks were set up on the main approach roads, and the strike committee controlled communications by issuing travel permits and petrol rations. Workers’ committees negotiated direct with local peasants and organised food supplies at prices con¬ siderably lower than normal retail levels, while the unions controlled shop prices to prevent profiteering. Striking teachers ran nurseries for strikers’ children. In many other places action committees were set up in the com¬ munities which dealt with practical tasks (clearing rubbish, food sup¬ plies) as well as with propaganda and political agitation. The embryo of an alternative society seemed to have come briefly into being. The involvement of millions of workers and the grasp for control in the workplace revealed magnificently the potential for revolution in modern capitalist society. Yet May 1968 fell short of revolution. If a revolutionary organisation with some real base had already existed, if the embryonic elements of workers’ power had been encouraged and developed rather than stifled by bureaucrats, then the balance of class forces could have been fundamentally shifted and the road to revolution opened up within a relatively short time. This was not to be. For a fortnight at the end of May the Gaullist regime was in disarray and close to panic; at the end of May de Gaulle himself disappeared for a day — according to some accounts demoralised and on the verge of resignation. There were many reports of discontent in the police and armed forces. But a movement that fails to go forward inevitably slides back, and the regime was given time to pull itself together; in June it acted decisively. The strike movement was bought off with (quite substantial) economic gains in the form of wages and holidays; the revolutionary left was made illegal; and elections were called. By the time of the polls the left was demoralised while the frightened right flocked to de Gaulle’s banner. Order was restored.

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The events of May were both a surprise and an embarrassment to the reformist left. Their scenario had been that the left would slowly move towards unity, contesting elections until at last the public wearied of Gaullism. Masses on the streets, a stark posing of the question of power, were the last thing they wanted. For the Communist Party the problem was particularly great. Over the previous four or five years they had begun to work their way back into the mainstream of political life through electoral alliances with the reformist left. They still faced enormous distrust, and were constantly accused of being wolves in sheep’s clothing. Amid the cataclysm of May, a monumental effort was required to prove that they really were sheep. First of all the PCF had to dissociate itself totally, and in as scurrilous language as possible, from the revolutionary groupings among the students. There was to be no confusion between the students’ Marxism and that of the PCF. At the beginning of May one Georges Marchais (an aspiring hack with a great future ahead of him) wrote, under the headline ‘Unmask the Pseudo-Revolutionaries’: These false revolutionaries must be energetically unmasked; for, objec¬ tively, they serve the interests of the Gaullist government . . . they are generally the children of big bourgeois, contemptuous of students of working-class origins, who will soon dampen their ‘revolutionary flame’ to go and run papa’s business and exploit the workers in the best traditions of capitalism.3 In the factories a more subtle approach was required. Wherever the PCF-controlled CGT was the dominant union, it took the lead of the movement in order not to be outflanked by it. The PCF leaders knew that if they simply opposed the strike it would develop outside their control. At the same time they used every possible device to defuse the potential of the movement. There were very few genuine democratic strike committees; in most places committees were appointed from above, based on the existing union apparatus, with no place for the large percentage of non-unionised workers, many of whom were becoming actively involved. The strike committees took control of the occupations and sent rank-and-file workers home, where they would be exposed to the pressures of newspapers and television. In the negotiations the CGT insisted on confining the strike demands to economic questions, saying that political matters were properly dealt with through the ballot box. Finally, the CGT helped to organise an ‘orderly’ return to work.

For the various social democrats the problem was somewhat different. Having less of a base than the PCF they had less to lose, and

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they didn’t have to prove to anyone that they weren’t revolutionaries. The old hacks of the SFIO had nothing to worry about; the mass movement would ignore them. When the massive demonstration in Paris on 13 May passed the SFIO headquarters there was a chant of ‘Guy Mollet, to the museum’. And when Francois Mitterrand an¬ nounced to the world at a press conference on 28 May that he was intending to present himself as a candidate for the presidency, he caused scarcely a ripple of interest; far more exciting things were going on on the streets. However, Mitterrand did recognise that the student revolution¬ aries had a base which could not simply be ignored. As he commented the following year about the student leaders: Their audience among the young was bigger than ours. I can’t blame them for using it against us.4

The most subtle approach was that taken by ex-prime minister Pierre Mendes-France. Mendes-France was a member of the PSU,* and had a consistent record of opposition to de Gaulle. He was probably the most respected of the traditional left leaders. Mendes-France recog¬ nised even more clearly than Mitterrand that the events of May were throwing up a new radicalised generation, and that the traditional left faced the choice of co-opting them or being replaced by them. Claude Estier recalls a discussion between Mitterrand and Mendes-France at the end of May. Mendes-France declared his inten¬ tion of appealing at his forthcoming press conference to everyone including the extreme left. Mitterrand replied: ‘You know very well that would mean a break with the Communist Party’; Mendes-France responded: ‘We can’t cut ourselves off from those who represent youth.’5 Unfortunately opportunism sometimes points in two direc¬ tions at the same time. On Monday 27 May a rally was held at the Charlety stadium. This was an attempt by the PSU and others to regroup all forces to the left of the Communist Party. Mendes-France made a point of being seen to be present at this rally, much to the annoyance of the PCF and to the embarrassment of Mitterand, who was advocating that MendesFrance should be prime minister. In an interview some years later Mendes-France explained why he had gone to Charlety. There were two reasons, he claimed. Firstly his preoccupation with youth: he wanted to know ‘what they were thinking’. Secondly, since there was talk of banning the rally, which would have provoked violence, he wanted to show which side he was on. Above all he was impressed by Based on a left split from the SFIO — see chapter 19.

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Bailing out the System

the fact that Charlety was ‘seventy thousand demonstrators’ seeking ‘a new life . . . more justice . . . less selfishness and misunderstanding.’6 In general Mendes-France’s role was that of a conciliator. During May 1968 he was active in trying to persuade government ministers not to allow the police to use fire-arms against the students, and at the same time urging student leaders not to be guilty of‘provocation’.7 In June 1968 he tried — and failed — to fix an electoral agreement between the Left Federation and the PSU. Mendes-France had no interest in the revolutionary potential of 1968 — but every interest in keeping the lines open to the far left. The crowd that gathered at Charlety could have been the basis for a new revolutionary current in French politics; it was also the potential basis for the regeneration of social democracy. Mendes-France wanted to make sure that the latter alternative prevailed. May 1968 also saw the emergence of a new revolutionary left in France. The various groupuscules (small groups) of Maoists, Trotskyists and anarchists were now numbered in hundreds, even thousands, rather than tens; although their main base was still in the student world, they made some impact on workers’ consciousness. The map of the left was redrawn by May. But the revolutionaries were too weak to give a real lead. More¬ over, many of the groupuscules tended to ultra-leftism; they denounced reformism vigorously, but denunciation alone could not break its grip. They were unable to apply a united front tactic that might have weakened the bureaucrats’ hold. So, in the long run, it was the reformists who picked up the pieces and claimed the heritage of May 1968. One interesting and sympto¬ matic aspect of this was the development of the idea of autogestion (self-management). May 1968 challenged all the assumptions of re¬ formism by showing that it was possible for people to take control of their own lives. The concept of autogestion came to the very centre of political debate. But in the hands of those who picked it up, the term autogestion was to become extremely vague; in different mouths it could mean anything from full-blooded soviet power to a couple of union representatives on a consultative committee. As a result almost anybody could pay lip-service to autogestion. Another body that played a crucial role in re-establishing a reformist grip on the movement was the formerly Catholic union federation the CFDT. The CFDT was smaller than the Communistcontrolled CGT, which kept the strike firmly under bureaucratic control in the main factories. As a result the CFDT was often able to stand to the left of the CGT. It took a more militant line on some issues, in some cases opposed the return to work, was much more friendly

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towards the student revolutionaries, and made much play with the concept of autogestion. In some factories the most militant workers left the CGT to join the CFDT. At Renault Billancourt there was one shop where before the strike the PCF and the CGT were so dominant that it was known as ‘the Kremlin’; after the strike the CFDT had as many members as the CGT. The CFDT was able to do this for two reasons. Firstly its history as a Catholic non-party union meant that it had nothing to prove; it could afford to be less respectable than the CGT. Secondly, since it was generally the minority union, it was able to support more militant policies without actually having to carry the can by implementing them. In those workplaces where the CFDT had the majority it often found itself to the right of the CGT. All in all the CFDT came out of 1968 with an increased influence and a reputation for leftism. In the seventies the CFDT was to play a crucial role in re-establishing the industrial credibility of the new Socialist Party. West Germany The student upheaval affected every country in Western Europe to a greater or lesser extent, but nowhere else did it have such an impact on the working-class movement and political life generally as in France. The West German student revolt focussed on the SDS, the Socialist Student Association. The SDS was founded as the SPD’s official student organisation, but it was expelled from the party in 1960 at the time of the sharp move to the right after the Bad Godesberg Conference.* Since the banning of the West German Communist Party in 1956, the SPD, however right-wing it might be, was the most left-wing thing going and so it remained the only focus for the left. In this situation the SDS was relatively small and confined to the student milieu. It was the entry of the SPD into the Great Coalition in 1966, and especially its support for the repressive Emergency Laws** which began to change things. The SDS was now able to grow more rapidly and to become a focus for left opponents of the Great Coalition. The SDS grew most rapidly in West Berlin, a city politically dominated by the SPD (Willy Brandt was for many years its mayor) and where anti-Communism was the central ideology. Since here the SPD was in fact the established right, there was plenty of room for left development and the SDS grew, notably after July 1967 when a student, Benno Ohnesorg, was murdered by police during a demon¬ stration against the Shah of Iran. *See chapter 8. **See chapter 10.

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Bailing out the System

In the following year the SDS’s influence spread to the rest of West Germany; when, in April 1968, a fascist attempted to murder one of the SDS’s leaders, Rudi Dutschke, demonstrations reached almost insurrectionary proportions. However the long years of anti-Communist propaganda and the continuing prosperity of the German economy meant that the SDS made no significant impact on the working class. Its own politics — largely geared to anti-imperialist campaigns — helped to reinforce this isolation; eventually the SDS gave birth to an array of revolutionary groupings, mainly Maoist or anarchist in complexion. The explosion of far left activity seems to have had little impact on the SPD’s remorseless rise to the status of ruling party. Italy In Italy, too, higher education was in deep crisis. The universities were overcrowded; students queued for hours to attend lectures and graduate unemployment was high. Professors clung on to their tradi¬ tional and authoritarian privileges. But in Italy, unlike Germany, the students’ militancy rapidly spread to the working class. In 1969 Italy went through what was sometimes described as ‘May in slow motion’ — a level of struggle often as high as that in France, but not focussed by a general strike. Factory discipline was on the verge of breakdown, and the action of rank-and-file militants moved totally out of the control of the unions; indeed many workers were openly hostile, not just to the union bureaucrats, but to the unions as such. In Turin in July 1969 workers’ struggle almost spilled over into insurrection. In some plants workers developed what was known as ‘the snake’ — a flying mass picket operating inside the factory and moving from shop to shop stopping production. Physical violence against managers was widespread. A new revolutionary left began to develop, consisting mainly of various brands or more or less orthodox Maoism. The PSI was to have little impact on events. Still buried inside an Centre-Left government, it tried to stem the tide by introducing legislation extending trade union rights. It was also caught up in the process of an internal split, and in any case was far too remote from the mood and language of the struggle to have any influence. The PCI had taken a more sympathetic attitude to the students than its French counterpart; it now took a more flexible and pragmatic attitude to the workers’ movement, which enabled it to ride the storm; by 1971 the party and its associated union the CGIL had largely regained their influence on the shopfloor. The PCI’s ability not to be

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outflanked in 1968-69 largely accounted for the fact that it maintained and even increased its influence during the seventies when Communist Parties elsewhere were going into crisis. Britain In Britain the student movement began with the occupation of the London School of Economics in 1967 and developed into a wave of occupations in the summer of 1968. This was paralleled by a growth of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, which mobilised tens of thousands of people in vigorous street demonstrations. All this coincided with a period of deep demoralisation in the Labour Party, when thousands were moving leftwards out of the organisation in disgust at Wilson’s sell-outs. As a result a revolutionary current of some thousands was able to emerge, largely student in composition, but with at least a periphery in the working class. Trotskyism had always kept a toehold in the British labour movement, and it became the dominant influence; several groups grew rapidly, the largest being the International Socialists. The Labour leaders had little sympathy for the student militants. Edward Short, Labour’s secretary of state for education and science, attacked them in terms very similar to those used by Georges Marchais: These people are not socialists. They are not even respectable Marxists. They are a new brand of anarchists, very different from the endearing characters many of us knew . . . Their weapons are lies, misrepresenta¬ tion, defamation, character assassination, intimidation and, more recently, physical violence . . . they are doing untold harm to the educational chances of the vast majority of students who are just as idealistic and just as bright and decent as they ever were.8

Only a few Labour leaders recognised the significance of what was going on in Britain and France, and the need to relate to it; for example, Tony Benn: If adjustments are not made to the parliamentary system, discontent expressing itself in despairing apathy or violent protest could engulf us all in bloodshed.9 '

Student radicalism in Britain did not have a direct impact on the working-class movement, although the use of occupations pioneered by students was picked up by workers threatened with redundancies and closures. But when Labour lost the 1970 election and a Tory government under Edward Heath was returned, the stage was set for a higher level of struggle. Whereas in 1951 the Tories had not set out to undo any major part of Attlee’s reforms, Heath faced a situation in

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Bailing out the System

which Britain’s growth rates were far slower than those of its inter¬ national rivals, while inflation was increasing and profit margins narrowing. As a result he had to adopt a much more aggressive approach. His strategy had several prongs — taxation changes, cuts in welfare, massive increases in council rents, and the deliberate encour¬ agement of unemployment as a means of re-establishing labour disci¬ pline. The Industrial Relations Act imposed legal shackles on trade unions. Most crucially of all, Heath sought to control wages, initially by confrontation with workers in the nationalised industries, and when that failed, by the use of statutory incomes policy. British workers had built up strong shopfloor organisation in the fifties, and the Wilson government’s measures had already prepared the trade union movement for political confrontation. The last years of the Wilson government had seen many groups of workers with no tradition of militancy taking industrial action for the first time. The response to Heath’s offensive was a wave of working-class struggle unprecedented in post-war British history. Early in 1972 a miners’ strike defeated the government over wages, primarily due to the assistance of ten thousand engineering workers who joined a mass picket at Saltley coke depot in Birmingham. In June of the same year five dockers were sent to jail for illegal picketing under the new industrial relations laws. Protest strikes by many sections of workers began to snowball, and the TUC itself threatened to call a general strike, because otherwise — in the words of left bureaucrat Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union — ‘unofficial bodies would assume leadership’.10 The government rapidly invented a legal pretext to free the dockers. Finally in late 1973 miners launched an overtime ban; since this posed a threat to power supplies, Heath responded by putting all British industry on a three-day week. When the miners moved to all-out strike action, Heath called a general election on the theme ‘who governs?’ There was a distinct air of panic in the British ruling class; The Economist drew parallels with Germany before Hitler and Latin American political instability: A surrender now would make unlawful force seem the normal way of conducting the business of earning Britain’s living. There is not just a sniff of Weimar in Britain. There is a smell of Argentina.11

Apart from the sheer level of militancy, two things were note¬ worthy about this strike wave. Firstly, the breakdown of sectionalism, with practical solidarity being shown across different groups of

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workers. Secondly, the attempts by the government to control wages and limit trade union rights were breaking down the barriers between industrial and political issues; in a sense statutory incomes policy meant every struggle for wages became a political struggle. Equally noteworthy was the way the Labour Party ran away from this process. Just because of the Labour Party’s organic links with the trade union bureaucracy, official Labour ideology always drew a strict line between the political and the industrial. Far from taking ad¬ vantage of the situation to inject more politics into the struggles, most Labour leaders stood back from the strike wave and did not try to intervene. When workers occupied Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in Glasgow in 1971, Wilson refused support on the grounds that the action was illegal. But a section of the Labour left, headed by Tony Benn, recognised the importance of the industrial struggle for Labour’s base. Benn publicly backed the Glasgow shipbuilders and the miners. In the early seventies there was the potential for a new kind of politics, a politics that recognised the need for generalisation while at the same time basing itself on self-reliance and self-activity. But the revolutionary left, though growing, was still tiny and unable to provide a focus for the new politics. When it came to the crunch, most class-conscious workers saw no other option than to turn back to Labour. The wave of militancy had an undoubted effect on the Labour Party. Many Labour-controlled councils campaigned against the government’s policy of forcing up council house rents, and that at Clay Cross in Derbyshire openly defied the law. Labour Party Con¬ ferences in 1972 and 1973 adopted a range of radical left-wing policies, in particular calling for the closure of nuclear bases and a major extension of public ownership. Even the Labour right felt the time was ripe for some radical rhetoric; Denis Healey promised tax changes that would produce ‘howls of anguish from the rich’ and ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.’12 The general election of February 1974 took place in an atmosphere of crisis. The Tories recognised clearly that this was a trial of strength between classes. Over the past four years the class nature of the law had been made ever clearer. The Labour leaders clung obsessively to legality. During the election period, the vice-president of the Mineworkers Union, Mick McGahey, made a rousing speech saying that if troops were used to break the miners’ strike the union would call on them to disobey orders. In face of the inevitable press clamour, 111 Labour MPs signed a statement attacking McGahey. BOS-1

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The election result was scarcely a triumph for Labour, which got half a million votes less than it had in 1970, and — with almost 6 per cent less of the poll — had its smallest share of the vote at any election since 1931. Yet Labour got the largest number ofMPs, and was able to form a minority government because some three million extra voters — many of them frightened or demoralised Tories — had voted Liberal. ★

★

★

Throughout Europe, 1968 and its aftermath produced a new generation of political radicals. For social democracy, the task was to co-opt and integrate this new generation, to lure them away from the temptations of revolution and give their radicalism a framework. This would necessarily mean internal changes for the social democratic parties, a replacement of old habits and old bureaucrats. There were storms ahead to be faced.

Part 5

1973-1985:

The crisis returns

Chapter 12 Working for the clampdown

BY 1973 it was clear that the long boom had come to an end. The Middle East war of that year, and the ensuing oil crisis, seem to have finally knocked it on the head. The emergence of a new recession, which was to last through into the eighties, brought about a major change in the role of social democracy. Before examining this in detail, it is necessary to outline the main changes that were going on in the world. Arms spending had ceased to stave off crisis; the continuing arms race had made the new crisis less catastrophic than that of the thirties, but more protracted. Capitalism’s only escape from the crisis was to cut labour costs in order to restore its profit rate. But behind the abstraction of ‘cutting labour costs’ stood the brute reality of forcing the organised working class to pay for the crisis. The return of mass unemployment showed up the hollowness of the perspectives of social democrats in the fifties and sixties. The per¬ manent full employment envisaged by the likes of Anthony Crosland now seemed a bitter joke. National states — whether governed by left or right — began to try to solve their problems by cutting back their expenditure on social welfare (while maintaining that on police and arms). The gains of the post-war period were threatened, and the very essence of reformist politics — to achieve improvement through wel¬ fare and distribution rather than expropriation — was under attack. Rising unemployment, cuts in the social wage, attacks on trade union rights — all represented a massive attack on the confidence and organisation of the labour movement. When the boom first began to falter, around 1970, workers defended their position with great vigour; but as time went by and unemployment rose there was a clear indication of a downturn in working-class confidence. This was uneven, and the downturn continued to be punctuated by sharp and militant sectional struggles. By the end of the seventies no country in Western Europe was exempt from its effects.

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Bailing out the System

Workers were not reconciled with the system; the signs of decay were all too visible. But it is confidence — rather than simply con¬ sciousness — that determines workers’ willingness to fight, and often that confidence was lacking. The working class was not defeated; its organisations remained intact. Both sides seemed to be embroiled in a protracted trench warfare, without the ability to make a significant breakthrough. Yet minorities of workers still continued to fight, often with surprising courage and tenacity. Those unpredictable struggles that did take place offered opportunities for revolutionary socialists to continue their fight. Chile 1973 was also the year of the bloody overthrow of the Allende governent in Chile — a grim warning of the new stage the struggle was entering. Allende, the candidate of the Popular Unity — an alliance of Socialists, Communists and others — was elected president of Chile in the autumn of 1970. He owed his success to divisions among the traditional ruling parties, and was voted in with only 36 per cent of the total poll. Nonetheless he consolidated that support, and in the 1971 municipal elections the Popular Unity obtained over 50 per cent. For the first year Allende seemed to be the very model of a successful reformist. Certainly his policies were Keynesian, not Marx¬ ist; but the copper mines were nationalised and a major land reform carried out; wages rose and unemployment fell. The defeated and divided right had not yet regrouped. Allende’s socialism had nothing to do with the self-activity of the working class. He guaranteed, on taking power, to respect the existing state machine, in particular not to interfere with the autonomy of the police and armed forces. No forms of workers’ militia or self-defence were to be permitted: ‘There will be no armed forces here other than those stipulated by the constitution, that is to say, the army, the navy and the air force. I shall eliminate any others if they appear.’1 In April 1973 copper-miners, a group whose relatively high wages were the product of decades of militancy, struck in defence of a cost-of-living agreement. Allende denounced them, and when they took to the streets they were met by police with tear-gas and water cannon. By 1972 many workers were recognising the need for independent organisation. In particular in the suburbs of Santiago were established what became known as cordones — bodies linking factories in certain areas and based on factory assemblies. Such bodies could have provided the best possible defence against any threat from the right. Meanwhile the right was regrouping — middle-class housewives and lorry-owners demonstrated against the regime. Allende’s response was on the level

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of governmental combinations — he brought Army leaders into the government, and scraped together new cabinets as the crisis got deeper. On 23 August 1973 he appointed General Pinochet as the new commander-in-chief of the army. Many workers — the copper-miners and the militants of the cordones — were becoming disaffected with the Allende government. But despite the vigour of local organisation, there was no alternative political focus. The Socialist Party had a left wing with a significant working-class base which spoke of extra-parliamentary action, ‘con¬ quest of power’ and the necessity for ‘revolutionary violence’. But it was not willing to break from the Popular Unity to form an independent revolutionary organisation.2 Even the MIR (Movement of the Revolu¬ tionary Left), which had a separate organisation, did not clearly reject the attempt to transform the Popular Unity in favour of building an independent revolutionary leadership. Allende had succeeded in co¬ opting the whole of the Chilean left — and in so doing he had demobilised it. The initiative now lay with the army, which carried out a success¬ ful coup on 11 September 1973. Allende died — allegedly by his own hand — and while there was some heroic resistance it was now too late for mass working-class mobilisation. Trade unions and left parties were made illegal; thousands of workers and leftists were rounded up, herded into football stadiums and murdered or imprisoned. Many thousands more were hounded from their jobs. The fate of Allende sent a tremor of fear down the spines of reformists in Europe. A few years earlier they had managed to largely disregard the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians. After all, in the eyes of the reformist leaders, they were only Asian Communists, and the massacre enabled the British Labour govern¬ ment to pull its troops out of Malaysia. Chile was different. Allende was one of them, a political fixer, an adept manoeuvrer. When the London Times wrote: . . . whether or not the armed forces were right to do what they have done, the circumstances were such that a reasonable military man could in good faith have thought it his constitutional duty to intervene.3

. . . then anxious reformists began to worry whether the rules of the game they had so loyally played were being changed. Chile therefore provoked an earnest and extensive debate in many parts of the European left. But the lessons of Chile were not clear-cut; different sections of the left interpreted the events in very different ways. For some there was a danger of overestimating the Chilean coup. A military coup remains one of the bourgeoisie’s available

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strategies, but it is far from the only one. For one thing, the Chilean coup could hardly be accounted a complete success even by the most ardent defenders of capitalism. The excesses of the Pinochet regime were something of an embarrassment to a West whose ideology made great play of ‘free nations’ and ‘human rights’. Moreover, Pinochet’s Chile provides a crushing refutation of the argument that greedy trade unionists cause rising prices. With no free unions and a ban on strikes, it had one of the highest inflation rates in the world — coupled with massive unemployment. By the tenth anniversary of the coup, the working-class opposition to the regime was showing signs of revival. Furthermore, an overemphasis on the Chilean experience could lead to strategic errors on the left. After the fall of the dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, many on the left believed that the United States would intervene against the rising tide of working-class struggle in Portugal with a Chilean-tvpe coup. Such a perspective may have helped to divert attention from dangers within the ranks of the left — in particular the insidious role of Mario Soares and the Socialist Party.* For both Communists and social democrats, Chile provided an excuse to move to the right. They deduced that there was nothing wrong with Allende’s willingness to compromise — he just hadn’t done it quite well enough. As Eric Hobsbawm put it: Allende failed not simply because his Popular Unity was unable techni¬ cally to defeat the military, but because it alienated large sectors of the population which it ought to have carried with it.4

A few more concessions, a bit less class-based politics, and he might have made it. In particular this line was developed by the Italian Communist Party, which drew from the Chilean experience the idea of what came to be known as the ‘historic compromise’ — the theory that the advance to socialism must take place at a pace acceptable to its opponents.** Chile also caused some soul-searching for the social democrats. Francois Mitterrand noted that Chile showed the dangers that could come from the left as well as the right. ‘Salvador Allende was thwarted by the Marxist Socialist Party. Not by the Communist Party, which from first to last gave him loyal support.’5 It also led him to consider what attitude the left should have to the army. He concluded as follows:

*See chapter 14. **See chapter 13.

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The young man who chooses a career in the armed forces is responding to an aspiration which is foreign to the world around him, of which the supreme law, the rule of existence, the final end is and remains cash. I can’t imagine him getting annoyed because the nation reclaims the wealth of the mines or the armaments industry rather than leaving their use and the profit that comes from them to a few powerful individuals . . . The duty and the interest of the left converge; it must explain that the policies it is proposing tend precisely to preserve French property from enemy occupation, I mean the grabbing of our resources, which has already begun, by multinational capitalism. Which of our generals would go to the battlements for love of ITT?6

In short, providing that ‘socialists’ put the national interest first, the army will support them. Against all this, revolutionary socialists have argued that the events in Chile showed that reformism does not work; that the only alternative would have been to build a revolutionary party rooted in the cordones and with the clear perspective, not of doing deals with the state machine, but of smashing it. They understood that Pinochet’s coup was an example — just as fascism before the Second World War had been — of the measures the ruling class will resort to if it is under sufficient threat. A coup of the Chilean type remains the ultimate sanction to be employed against a left that gets out of hand, but which hesitates to seize its opportunities quickly enough. World in crisis The emerging economic crisis threw the world into a state of political upheaval. In the decade following 1973 the forces of world imperialism suffered a serious setback. The three states of Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — achieved national independence; the Portuguese empire, the last relic of old-style European colonial¬ ism, collapsed, bringing independence to Mozambique and Angola; Zimbabwe achieved independence from Britain and black majority rule; while in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Iran and Nicaragua the old despotisms were removed. Yet now that the boom was over, the meaning of‘independence’ in the Third World was increasingly questionable. China had wel¬ comed Richard Nixon to Peking at a time when the bombs were still falling on Vietnam; and once Mao was dead even the ideological packaging of the Cultural Revolution was brushed under the carpet as China dropped its revolutionary rhetoric and strengthened its links with Western capitalism. Cuba was ever more obviously in pawn to Russia; its ‘independent revolutionary role’ was now confined to

138

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sending troops to Africa when it would be politically embarrassing for the Russians to intervene directly. The exodus of Vietnamese ‘boatpeople’ and the mass slaughter in Cambodia scarcely inspired con¬ fidence in an alternative Indochinese road, while the famine in Ethiopia showed yet again that it was impossible for the Third World to emancipate itself without smashing the imperialist system. By the end of the seventies Vietnam had invaded Cambodia and China had invaded Vietnam. If there were any Third Worldists left they must have felt extremely bemused. Initially Iran and Nicaragua seemed to have more promise. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran in January 1979 was the result of a mass movement based in the cities and using the general strike as a weapon. Here there was the potential for working-class revolution; but in the absence of a revolutionary party the movement was deflected into the hands of a reactionary religious clique. In July 1979 in Nicaragua the Sandinista Front overthrew the corrupt and brutal dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza; but the new regime walked a precarious tight¬ rope, failing to move firmly against the old ruling class or US interests, and at times suppressing independent working-class organisation. Nor was there much inspiration to be derived from the allegedly socialist regimes of the Eastern bloc. The rise of Solidarity in Poland in 1980 showed more clearly even than Hungary in 1956 that the so-called workers’ states in no sense represented the power of the real living working class. In the face of a democratic mass movement of ten million workers the myths of Stalinism crumbled fast. When Jaruzelski moved to crush Solidarity in December 1981 his only supporters on the Western left were a few motley sectlets of ex-Maoists, exTrotskyists and ageing Russia-worshippers. (Jaruzelski also got discreet but sincere support from Western bankers who were glad to see someone standing up to the working class and protecting the money they had loaned.) The distance travelled since 1956 was plain for all to see. The Polish crisis also revealed the underlying symmetry between East and West. At the root of Poland’s problems lay the huge sum of 24 billion dollars owed to Western banks. In 1982 Mexico was to declare its inability to pay debts of some 80 billion dollars. As in Poland the result could only be a massive attack on workers’ living standards. The advanced world reflected the new instability. The year after Allende’s fall saw the collapse of the dictatorships in Portugal and Greece; the corrupt Nixon was ousted from the US presidency; and Edward Heath and Willy Brandt were both removed from national leadership. The demise of president Pompidou of France can be attri¬ buted to nature rather than economics; but his death conveniently

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marked the end of Gaullist rule and the return of French government to the centre under Giscard d’Estaing. It might have seemed that the withering of the illusions of the sixties would have left the way clear for a non-Stalinist, non-Third Worldist revolutionary current based on working-class self-activity. Unfortunately history does not unfold in such a simple manner. Unless an alternative is available, not only in programme but in practice, the disillusioned will turn to ‘realism’. As the seventies proceeded, the children of 1968 flocked in their thousands into the reformist parties, some priding themselves on a new-found maturity, others kidding themselves that they were simply ‘entering’ in the name of their revolutionary principles. At the same time the crisis was reinforcing the plausibility of reformism. As the recession went on, and one futile financial summit succeeded another, many people began to feel that there must be some rational way out, that planning and state intervention, on a national or international level, must offer some alternative. Social democracy was seen, not as a means of changing the system, but as a way of papering over some of the cracks. Electoral success in Britain, France, Portugal, Spain and Greece reflected this hope. Increasingly the ruling class found it necessary to have two strings to its bow. On the one hand an aggressive monetarist right, typified by Margaret Thatcher in Britain; on the other, a responsible social democracy, committed to reflation, typified by Mitterrand in France. Neither had a way out of the crisis; but the availability of both helped to preserve the political stability of the system. If one side provoked too much popular discontent, the other could simply slide in to replace it. Despite its abject failure to deliver the goods, social democracy seemed set to survive for as long as the crisis. It was to be an age of reformism — without reforms. The New Cold War Further evidence of the depth of the crisis, and of the bankruptcy of the system, was provided by the onset at the end of the seventies of what came to be known as the New Cold War. The detente that had existed between Russia and America since the Cuba crisis of 1962 was not working; as the world economic crisis got deeper, both major powers found themselves with growing debts and shrinking markets. Competition began to intensity between all units of capital in the world system — including the state capitalist countries of the Eastern bloc. The main form of competition between East and West remained the arms race. For both sides the arms race was built into the very fabric of their

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economies. The American economy was so geared to arms production that any serious cutback would turn the recession into an unmanage¬ able slump. Yet an uncontrolled arms race would produce devastating inflation. Hence the ‘stop-go’ approach to arms that characterised both the Carter and Reagan administrations: one week scraping the barrel for anti-Communist abuse to justify yet more missile deploy¬ ment; the next week proposing some hesitant formula for more dis¬ armament talks. Russia too was ensnared in the arms race. The underdevelopment of Russian agriculture — which meant that sixty years after 1917 Russia was still importing Western grain — was a direct product of the heavy arms bill. Hence Russia’s much-professed desire for disarma¬ ment talks. Yet the whole Russian economy was just as much geared to the nuclear arms race as those of the Western powers; the Russian leaders had long ago abandoned proletarian internationalism in favour of a defence policy based on the threat of mass destruction. As a result, Russia too was incapable of any real initiative towards disarmament. A further contradiction lay at the heart of the arms race. The Eastern and Western blocs were increasingly in competition with each other; but they were also increasingly interdependent. Trade, fuel supplies, joint manufacturing enterprises tied East and West together and prevented total political confrontation. Clearly neither side actually wanted a nuclear exchange; both sides were aware that a nuclear war cannot actually be ‘won’. But the economic and political logic of armaments and competition made them both willing to run the risk of holocaust, through technological accident or political miscalculation. (Just as the individual capitalist does not want his factory to be destroyed by fire or explosion, but will skimp safety precautions to protect profits, especially at a time of intense competition.) As with the first Cold War of the forties and fifties, an essential component of the New Cold War was the use of anti-Communism as a weapon against the working class. But in one important respect the attack was different from that of the fifties. Then the boom had allowed the mass of workers to be incorporated, while the minority of militants were isolated. The second time round there were few carrots left; the sticks would have to do the work. ★

★

★

The long crisis that opened up after 1973 presented new possibili¬ ties for social democracy, but also new problems. The attack on gains built up during the boom led to working-class resistance, and in many

Working for the Clampdown

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cases it was only a social democratic government that could contain and appease that resistance. But the crisis gave such governments little room for manoeuvre; they had few new reforms to offer, and often found themselves dismantling reforms won in the past. Neces¬ sarily they disappointed the expectations of those who had put them in power. This is the sad story which — with national variations — we shall see acted out in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Britain and France.

Chapter 13 Nowhere to run

THE WORD ‘Eurocommunism’ was coined by a Yugoslav journalist in

1975, and adopted the following year by Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer. The term rapidly gained currency and became the focus of a heated debate about whether Communist Parties had really changed their nature. In fact, what was described as ‘Eurocommunism’ was no more than a symptom of the historic decline of the Communist Parties, and referred to a process that had begun some twenty years earlier. Back in the fifties forces had been at work undermining the grip that the Communist Parties once had on the labour movement. From being a central tool of Russian foreign policy, the world’s Communist Parties had become no more than an adjunct to the Russian public relations effort. The dethroning of Stalin, followed by the split between Russia and China, had quite destroyed the attraction that the Kremlin had once exercised. The long boom made the psychological need for a socialist paradise largely redundant. The crisis came to a head in 1968 with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1956 virtually every Communist Party in the world had backed Kruschev’s butchery of the Hungarian revolution. In 1968 Brezhnev was backed only by those parties which either had to work illegally and therefore needed a base in Eastern Europe, or were little more than an annexe to the local Russian Embassy. Those parties which had some real electoral base, and which were seeking political alliances with social democratic parties, had to demonstrate in practice that they were not Kremlin puppets. The Italian party, following the logic that went back to 1956, was most forthright in its condemnation. The French Communist Party criticised the Russians much more reluctantly — while a minority of the leadership, including the widow of former party leader Maurice Thorez, publicly backed Brezhnev. In general, however, the Russians did not seem excessively worried by this disloyalty; only in the

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sensitively-situated Austrian Communist Party did they make a heavy intervention. Eurocommunism, then, was a response to the declining attractive power of Moscow; but it was also a product of the growing attractive power of social democracy. For a Communist Party that had accepted the parliamentary road to socialism, and which sought to achieve governmental power, alliance with its local social democratic party was a necessity. The Communist Parties, above all in France and Italy, had some important bargaining counters — especially their electorate and their ability to mobilise industrial struggle. Nonetheless in the last resort the social democrats called the tune. To prove themselves as viable partners the Communists had to demonstrate that they had broken with even the rhetoric of the revolutionary tradition, and that they were genuinely committed to the ‘national interest’. Above all they had to show that they had totally abandoned their policies of the Cold War period; the key tokens in this respect were support for NATO and the Common Market. In practice Eurocommunism often helped the social democrats more than it helped the Communist Parties. In Spain and Portugal, the Communists had been the strongest component of the labour movement under illegality; with the transition to bourgeois democracy they nurtured small social democratic parties until these cuckoos grew too large for the nest and the Communist Parties were pushed aside. In France, where the Socialist Party had to rebuild from scratch at the beginning of the seventies, alliance with the PCF was a vital contribu¬ tion to the Socialists’ growth; as Georges Marchais of the PCF wrily noted after the 1973 elections: ‘For the first time, unity is to our partners’ advantage and not ours, or more to theirs than ours.’1 Even the West German SPD, which exercised considerable politi¬ cal — and financial — influence over social democratic parties in Western Europe, recognised that Eurocommunism was something to be adapted to and if possible manipulated. Horst Ehmke, one of Brandt’s advisers, declared that ‘we shouldn’t judge this evolution negatively . . . Socialists must take account in their policy of the signs of change visible among Communists’; and SPD leader Helmut Schmidt commented that the admission of Communists to the Italian govern¬ ment would be ‘a dangerous development which nonetheless we must prepare our minds for’.2 The Eurocommunist evolution was not smooth and without upheavals. Often sections of the parties found the new ideas hard to take and clung to the old formulations. But monolithic discipline was another casualty of the new line. If the Communist Parties were to show that they accepted social democratic politics, they had to make

Bailing out the System

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concessions to social democratic modes of internal organisation. They could no longer purge and vilify dissident minorities as they had done in the past. Public debate — often through the channels of the bourgeois press — erupted in many previously Stalinist parties, though there were relatively few splits. The Greek Communist Party had divided as early as 1968, with the so-called Party of the Interior adopting what might be called a premature form of Eurocommunism; and in the seventies there were small pro-Moscow splits from the Spanish and British Communist Parties. Eurocommunism was a tactical response to a set of political circumstances, not a new stage of Marxist thought. This fact seems to have evaded many otherwise learned commentators who spent much time dissecting what the Eurocommunists said, instead of looking at what they were doing. For example, the debate about the retention or abandonment of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was completely vacuous, since no Communist Party in Europe had actually believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat (rule by workers’ councils) since the twenties. Despite the numerous references to Gramsci or Althusser, there was no body of homogeneous or even coherent Eurocommunist theory, and it becomes something of a problem to define what the issues at stake were. One attempt at a definition came from the pen of Spanish Com¬ munist Party leader Santiago Carrillo: The parties included in the ‘Eurocommunist’ trend are agreed on the need to advance to socialism with democracy, a multi-party system, parliaments and representative institutions, sovereignty of the people regularly exercised through universal suffrage, trade unions in¬ dependent of the state and of the parties, freedom for cultural, scientific, and artistic creation, and the development of the broadest forms of popular participation at all levels and in all branches of social activity.3

Little is clarified by this ragbag of reformist cliches. What is clear is that Eurocommunism quite explicitly rejects any idea of a revolution¬ ary smashing of the state machine. Carrillo, for example, writes of ‘democratising the capitalist state apparatus . . . without its forcible total destruction.’4 The framework leaves room for variants. Some Eurocommunists see a place for extraparlimentary activity, even for mass mobilisation as a means of pressure. What they cannot accept is a politics based on working-class self-activity, which declares that the smallest strike that actually involves workers organising themselves is more important than the most elaborate abstract programme. Such a view is dismissed

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with the most damning term in the Eurocommunist dictionary — ‘economisin'. The essence of Eurocommunism was openly reformist politics and freedom from control by Moscow. It thus necessarily adapted itself to national conditions and can best be understood by taking a closer look at the different forms it took in different national contexts. Italy The Italian Communist Party is the strongest and most successful in Western Europe, and as a result has often been hailed as a model, not only by Communists, but also by left social democrats; Eric Heffer, for example, has called for closer collaboration between the PCI and the Socialist International.5 From the fifties the PCI had begun to pursue political indepen¬ dence of Moscow, and from the same period its political practice became more and more openly reformist, abandoning even the rhetoric of revolution. The party aimed to recruit members and sympathisers among small businessmen, and in areas where it was strong would act as mediator in disputes where both bosses and workers were aligned with the PCI. By the early seventies the PCI had come to the conclusion that since it could not hope to hold power alone or in alliance with the PSI, it must seek some sort of accommodation with the Christian Demo¬ crats. In 1973 PCI Senator Ugo Pecchioli made a promise of non¬ aggression towards the Christian Democrats (DC) which is quite astounding coming from an openly electoralist party discussing its main rival: Far be it from us even to think of taking away votes and members from

the DC. We are not interested in electoral rivalry with the DC, but in finding meeting points for resolving the problems of the country.6

After the fall of Allende in Chile this willingness to seek com¬ promise — in the form of governmental coalition — with the DC was christened the ‘historic compromise’. Over the next few years the policy was to be put into practice, providing the key test for the whole ‘Eurocommunist’ strategy. By 1976 a very high level of militancy had developed in Italian society. The struggle in the factories was paralleled by community struggles around fares and prices, with workers often taking control into their own hands. A vigorous but politically unstable revolutionary left had grown up and launched no fewer than three daily newspapers. It began to look as though, after thirty years of rule by the Christian Democrats, the right was no longer capable of governing Italy. The BOS-J

Bailing out the System

146

1976 election results, which gave the PCI 34.4 per cent of the vote, and the DC only a little more with 38.7 per cent, seemed to confirm this. The Christian Democrats, steeped in decades of anti-Commumsm, were not willing to form a coalition with the PCI. Instead they agreed to a deal whereby the PCI would support the government from the outside. The Communists were given to understand that if they showed their loyalty by restraining working-class militancy they might eventually get the ministerial offices they lusted after. The PCI kept their side of the bargain. Their support for the government’s economic policy went far beyond being a mere tactical concession; they actually developed a theory of austerity as a positive value. Thus a party policy document argued: Austerity is an unavoidable necessity if we are to deal with the present economic difficulties.7

while a statement of 1977 seemed almost Thatcherite in its enthusiasm for capitalist values: The abandonment of ‘assistance’ policies — of outlays of public money and credit to sustain inefficient businesses — is the condition for a revival of management, for the reaffirmation of the responsibility of the business¬ man, for the achievement of a healthy and active running of the factories, for the true appreciation of the spirit of enterprise of public and private managers.8

The PCI also presented itself as a party wholly loyal to the bourgeois state machine. In 1977 there were street demonstrations of students and unemployed youth against the government’s austerity programme, often leading to clashes with the police. The PCI stressed its commitment to ‘law and order’, denounced the militancy of the left, and even accused the DC of not being tough enough in the struggle against terrorism. In an interview, Berlinguer defended Italian membership of NATO by saying that an Italian road to socialism would not be subject to the same pressures as those applied to the Czechs in 1968, adding,‘I also feel safer being on this side of the fence . . .’9Such a confession that he feared intervention by the Russians more than by the Americans was indeed novel for a Communist leader; it was also naive, in the light of US interference with the 1948 Italian elections. In the spring of 1978, following a massive strike and demonstra¬ tion by engineering workers, the PCI again began to demand cabinet participation. But the Christian Democrats now felt strong enough to ditch the PCI, and a new government was formed consisting entirely of Christian Democrats. The PCI had not even sold out — it had given its services free of charge.

Nowhere to Run

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In the 1979 elections the PCI saw its vote fall. To some extent there was a shift to the left; in 1980, for example, Berlinguer pledged support for a workers occupation at Fiat, and the ‘historic com¬ promise line was formally dropped. But the PCI had no real alternative strategy. Increasingly it sought to repudiate its specifically ‘commun¬ ist nature and to establish itself as simply a broad party of the left. If it could do this (assisted by the relative weakness of the PSI) and trans¬ form itself into the Italian equivalent of the British Labour Party, then it would at last achieve its goal of becoming an acceptable party of government. To this end the PCI began to develop its links with European social democracy. Shortly after a dispute divided the Union of the Left in France in 1977, Berlnguer had a formal meeting with Francois Mitterrand — much to the annoyance of the French Communist Party. In March 1980 Berlinguer met Willy Brandt in Strasbourg. (Brandt was a leading member of the West German SPD, which at the time was pursuing a policy of persecuting public employees who sympathised with the West German Communist Party.) After General Jaruzelski’s coup in Poland in 1981, the PCI moved to distance itself yet further from ‘communism’ of any sort, and Berlinguer now developed the argument that the world had entered a ‘third phase’ revealing the limitations of both social democracy and Communism.10 The Italian Communist Party remains immensely strong. Despite some demoralisation, its electoral base is largely unscathed. Yet its future is bleak. The ‘historic compromise’ has produced decidedly meagre results, and leaves the party with an insoluble dilemma. If it mobilises its working-class base against the regime, it shows itself to be irresponsible and unfit to govern. If it does not threaten the regime, it cannot convince the Christian Democrats to take the risky step of allowing it to share power. Meanwhile the PSI is able to outmanoeuvre it on a parliamentary level, and rank-and-file militants become in¬ creasingly distrustful of it. Yet Italy was the country in which circumstances were most favour¬ able to the Eurocommunist project of a Communist Party actually transforming itself into a full-blooded social democratic party. If it cannot be done in Italy, then it cannot be done anywhere. Spain In Spain the fruits of Eurocommunism were even more bitter. The Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was one of the earliest to begin to detach itself from Moscow. In 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslo¬ vakia, general secretary Santiago Carrillo and Dolores Ibarruri — the

148

Bailing out the System

legendary Pasionaria of the Spanish Civil War — protested in person to Mikhail Suslov of the Russian Politburo. They got short shrift. Under Franco the PCE’s disciplined organisation and courageous cadre made it the strongest current in the labour movement; but with Franco’s death and the transition to bourgeois democracy, the Carrillo leadership had to make great efforts to prove that the party was committed to the new political regime. At the first party congress after Franco’s death, in April 1978, the PCE declared itself to be no longer a ‘Leninist’ party, stating that ‘there is no room for any such restrictive conception as that defining Leninism as the Marxism of our day’.11 Carrillo explicitly defended the monarchy as ‘a powerfully persuasive and moderating influence’.12 To prove his loyalty to the ‘national interest’ Carrillo declared that ‘life shows that vitality of national sentiment is a factor of enor¬ mous force’.13 (Other Marxists before Senor Carrillo had, of course, recognised the strength of nationalism — mainly by the fact that they devoted their lives to fighting tooth and nail against it.) All these concessions were self-defeating. For the more the PCE tried to prove that it was a loyal reformist party, the more it found itself competing on the terrain of the PSOE (the Spanish Socialist Party).* Carrillo’s strategy gave the initiative to the PSOE, which was able to effectively outmanoeuvre the PCE. The result was a catastrophic organisational decline. In 1977 the PCE’s membership was 240,000; by 1982 it had fallen to 40,000, though it may have risen a little since then. In 1980 the party’s paper ceased to appear on a daily basis, and in the 1982 elections it lost 19 of its 23 parliamentary seats.14 Such a decline naturally produced demoralisation, which expressed itself in the form of continuing factional conflict. Carrillo, having retired as general secretary, returned to a pro-Moscow position, while his successor, Gerardo Iglesias, plodded on with the Eurocommunist line. A pro-Russian group claiming 20,000 sup¬ porters split away in 1983; and in 1985 came the crowning irony when Santiago Carrillo himself — party leader from 1960 to 1982 — was removed from the central committee and returned to the status of rank-and-file member. Carrillo now accused Iglesias of trying to liquidate the PCE into a broad electoral front. Sadly, the PCE’s collapse into factional irrelevance came just at a time when a clear left opposition to the government of Felipe Gonzalez was most needed.

See chapter 14.

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France The French Communist Party was in some ways comparable to that of Italy a party with a mass electoral, industrial and municipal base, but excluded from governmental power since 1947. There were two major differences. Firstly, while the PCI had been one of the first to dissociate itself from the heritage of Stalin, the PCF ‘destalinised’ slowly and reluctantly, and it condemned the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in distinctly half-hearted terms. Secondly, while the Italians pursued the ‘historic compromise’, the French saw the only way out of the ghetto as being unity of the left-wing parties. None the less there were powerful forces pushing the PCF in a social democratic direction in the seventies. The new party programme issued in 1971 made clear its repudiation of the Leninist view of the state in such clauses as: The army will be relieved of tasks involving the maintenance of public order, which is the function of a police force quite separate from the army . . ,15

While the party had quite a successful period of recruitment in the mid-seventies, the new members who joined after the experience of 1968 never had any illusions that the PCF was a revolutionary party, and slowly the character of the party changed. Above all, the signature of a Common Programme with the Socialist Party in June 1972 forced the PCF to conform more and more to a social democratic mould. This entailed a breaking down of the old Stalinist structures of the party, and the creation of a bright new democratic image. In 1977 posters invited people to ‘Come and Discuss it with the Communists’, and journalists were even admitted to cell meetings.16 This had the added inconvenience of making it impossible to deal with the growing number of dissidents in the party, many of whom openly flaunted their views in the bourgeois press. The historian Jean Elleinstein, for example, who took an openly social democratic position about the transition to socialism, and whose criticisms of Russia went far beyond the accepted party line, actually published his views in Paris-Match, a weekly picture magazine notorious for its trivialisation and rightwing politics. Party discipline held no terrors for Elleinstein; after being excluded from the PCF he called on voters to back Mitterrand against the PCF candidate in the 1981 presidential election.17 By the autumn of 1977 the PCF was finding that the Socialist Party was becoming the dominant partner in the alliance. The PCF had to reassert itself, but by doing so — demanding an increased number of nationalisations — it broke up the Union of the Left. Largely as a result of this the right won the 1978 elections. This caused further

Bailing out the System

ISO

estrangement between the PCF and the Socialists; the PCF blamed its former partners, but could not develop a proper critique as this would have meant subjecting its own past to close analysis. The PCF now had to re-establish its distinctive place in the market — and the only way its leaders knew of doing this was by going back to Mother Russia. While never reverting totally to the Moscow-worship of the 1950s, the PCF took a more and more uncritical view of Russian policy, in particular supporting the invasion of Afghanistan. This was paralleled by a revival of a certain revolutionary rhetoric. In 1979 PCF leader Marchais told a press conference: You can expect to see an extremely combative Communist Party — and I add: extremely hard ... I promise the regime that it will have some bad moments.18

One key theme persisted through both ‘right’ and ‘left’ phases. The PCF was determined to prove that it was above all a ‘national’ party; to do so it indulged in some of the worst excesses of nationalism. As a leading party member, Charles Fiterman, put it: The French nation today — we may say it with gravity — is threatened with a slow disintegration, a progressive dissolution into a West European and Atlantic conglomerate . . . No, the nation is not an outdated frame¬ work! No, independence and sovereignty are not old-fashioned! The nation has its economic coherence, its history, its culture. It is strong on the basis of all that, it can draw thence the means of new and great steps forward. Moreover, national sovereignty is an essential dimension of liberty. Liberty for the French people to choose its own destiny, its road towards a new society.19

The PCF issued posters showing maps of France superimposed with the words: ‘I Love my Country — I’m joining the French Communist Party’. Behind the rhetoric this meant an economic policy based on import controls, more investment in France, and the attempt to exclude Spain from the EEC (even though the Spanish Communist Party supported EEC membership).

There is a thin line between patriotism and racism, and at times the PCF stepped over it. In December 1980 the Communist mayor of Vitry-sur-Seine led a physical attack with a bulldozer with the aim of making a hostel inhabited by three hundred African workers unus¬ able.20 The PCF argued that immigrants should be dispersed instead of being concentrated in PCF municipalities (since most immigrants are workers, and most PCF-controlled councils are in working-class areas, it is hardly surprising that they have the highest numbers of immigrants — but the whole PCF strategy sees immigrants as part of

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the problem rather than as allies in fighting for the solution). Despite its various patriotic and leftist contortions, the PCF faced a long-term electoral and organisational decline. The Socialist Party remorselessly took away the PCF’s electorate, which fell from over 20 per cent to below 10 per cent in the 1986 elections. In the mid¬ seventies the PCF claimed a significant growth in membership, rising to over 700,000. But the sales of L’Humanite-Dimanche, the party’s most pushed weekly publication, made by party members (which were about 85 per cent of the total sales) peaked at 245,000 in 1978 and were down to 175,000 by 1982.21 So either the membership figures were overstated, or many of the ‘militants’ were not militant enough to read the party’s main publication. By the time of the 1981 presidential election the Socialists held all the cards. Mitterrand refused any deal with the PCF; after the elections he took Communist ministers into his government, but made it clear that this was a matter of grace and favour, not an agreement between equals. The PCF could not refuse, since to do so would have called into question their whole strategy since the fifties. As a minority within Mitterrand’s government the PCF had little control over policy, yet had to take the blame for anti-working-class measures. As Mitterrand moved to the right* the PCF saw its base further eroded. In the 1983 municipal elections it lost control of a number of towns which it considered as its ‘territory’. Meanwhile the opposition to Mitterrand was being channelled by the right and even the neo-fascist racists. In the summer of 1984 the PCF finally decided to abandon the foundering ship. But exit from the cabinet offered no obvious perspective of regaining its base. The prospect was one of continuing decline. Elsewhere Outside the mass parties of Spain, Italy and France Euro¬ communism had less significance. In Britain the Communist Party was in sharp decline by the 1970s, and Eurocommunism could do nothing to restore its influence in the working class. The Euro¬ communist preoccupation with ‘ideological struggle’ had a certain vogue among intellectuals; party academics could indulge in semiotics or psychoanalysis and pretend it had something to do with Marxism. The annual Communist University of London was a considerable success among academics until the pro-Russian wing of the party forced its abandonment in 1982, and the party’s review Marxism Today had some influence in Labour Party circles, notably among the supporters of Neil Kinnock. The continuing tension between the See chapter 15.

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152

Eurocommunist leadership of the party and the pro-Russians who controlled the party’s daily paper, The Morning Star, led to a complete break between the two wings in 1985, by which time the party seemed to be in terminal decline. In Finland the Communist Party entered a coalition government in 1966, and immediately found itself imposing an incomes policy. This led to conflict with the party’s own industrial militants, and the dispute soon polarised the party into two wings, with the opponents of incomes policy adopting a hard pro-Russian stance. Internal conflict continued over nearly twenty years until the pro-Russians were ex¬ pelled in 1985. Meanwhile the party’s vote fell from 23 per cent in 1958 to 14 per cent in 1983. The main beneficiary of this decline was the Finnish Social Democratic Party, whose scandalous history had included a pro-Nazi position during the Second World War and links with the CIA in the fifties. Two Communist Parties which swam against the general Euro¬ communist tide were those in Greece and Portugal, both countries which saw major political upheavals in the seventies. While Greece’s small Eurocommunist party was essentially a left liberal organisation with little base, the pro-Moscow KKE was a more substantial political force. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), with some 200,000 members in the mid-eighties, was even stronger. Its credibility owed much to the courage and dedication of its members under the fascist dictatorship, and its staunchly pro-Russian position was at least partly attributable to the fact that its top leaders spent many years exiled in Eastern Europe before 1974. ★

★

★

By 1984 all three of the homelands of Eurocommunism, Spain, France and Italy, had Socialist prime ministers. In each case social democrats were gaining electorally at the expense of the Communist Parties. In each case, too, governments were pursuing right-wing policies and there was a crying need for the organisation of militant opposition. But parties that had been steeped in years of Euro¬ communism had become incapable of mobilising effective opposition. As a meaningful political current Eurocommunism was all but dead; it had served as a rung on the ladder by which social democrats came to power.

Chapter 14 Stepping stones

Chapter Fourteen: Stepping-Stones AT THE BEGINNING of 1974 Europe had three authoritarian regimes

where parliamentary democracy was non-existent and working-class organisation was illegal. Two — Franco’s Spain and Caetano’s Portugal — dated back to the thirties; the third, Greece, had been ruled by a military junta since the coup of 1967. In each case significant sections of the bourgeoisie wanted to see a transition back to parliamentary democracy. The authoritarian states were no longer serving the needs of the ruling class. In Portugal the regime had become embroiled in disastrous colonial wars; in Greece the economy was in a mess. Worker opposition was growing, and with no legal labour movement there was no force to mediate between labour and capital and stave off confrontation. Moreover, without parliamentary democracy the three countries would not be able to enter the Common Market. The dismantling of the old regimes posed problems. Too rapid a purge of the state machine might produce instability and allow working-class demands to rise in.an uncontrollable way. In the summer of 1975 working-class struggle brought Portugal to the brink of civil war, while Franco lay on his death-bed leaving no clear road ahead for his successors; to many it seemed that the whole Iberian peninsula might explode into revolution. That it did not do so can be explained largely by the intervention of organised reformism. Portugal It was the legacy of empire which provoked crisis in Portugal. While the rest of Europe had shed its colonies, the dictator Salazar and his successor Caetano had clung on to Portugal’s possessions in Africa, even at the price of long and destructive wars of national liberation. Portugal was the poorest country in Western Europe, and its economy was dominated by foreign capital and the multinationals. A growing section of the Portuguese ruling class wanted to get rid of the colonies and the regime that was committed to holding on to them. In April

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1974 a section of the army, backed by part of the bourgeoisie, over¬ threw the Caetano regime, promised elections within a year, and established a provisional government. The coup unleashed a massive wave of hope and enthusiasm. Once working people had seen that change could actually happen, their fear and sense of impotence began to evaporate. A dynamic that could have led to revolution began to develop. As in Europe at the end of the Second World War, the key question was the dismantling of the state machine. The new rulers had to make some moves towards purging those who had served Caetano — especially the much-hated secret police. They embarked on a process of what became known as saneamento (purging). But saneamento could only be partial; to purge every bureaucrat, every manager who had bolstered up the fascist regime, would have left a gaping vacuum that could be filled only by workers’ power. The extent of the purge became a vital issue in confrontations between workers and employers, with workers demanding the removal of all pro-fascist management. At the same time workers began to challenge the low pay and poor conditions which had been the lot of Portuguese employees under the dictatorship. Demands for substantial wage increases, longer holidays, free medical care, and so on, were raised and in the first few months often won. The workers’ weapon was not merely the strike but the factory occupation; in many cases workers not only occupied but set up workers’ committees which took over the management of the factory. The movement for occupation was not confined to the workplaces; it spilled over into the community. Slum-dwellers took over housing estates that were being kept empty by profiteers; empty buildings, luxury hotels and the mansions of the rich were taken over and converted into children’s nurseries, community centres and clinics. The balance of power was therefore very uneasy. On two occa¬ sions, in September 1974 and March 1975, right-wing elements tried to regain control of the situation. Both times they were foiled by huge mobilisations of workers. Mass demonstrations and strikes were called, and workers took over control of access to the towns, blocking the roads with barricades defended by armed guards. For a year and a half, from April 1974 to November 1975, when the right wing in the army reasserted its control, the future of Portugal hung in the balance. The situation did not rise to the level of dual power, for workers’ councils or soviets on the 1917 model did not develop. But the potential for such development was clearly there in the workers’ self-organisation in the factories and communities, and on the streets. The situation was made even more volatile by the fact

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that, after forty years of fascism, there was no tradition of reformist organisation, no labour bureaucracy to control the rank and file and bargain with the bourgeoisie. The strongest working-class organisation in April 1974 was the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). This had an unbroken tradition of clandestine organisation going back to the twenties. Its militants had gained considerable popular respect for the way they had held their organisation together in face of death, torture, imprisonment and exile. As an illegal party the PCP had depended heavily on assistance from Eastern Europe, and thus took a hard pro-Moscow line. When the dictatorship fell it had some five thousand members — a substantial figure for an illegal organisation in a country of nine million people. The Socialist Party (PSP) was a very different matter. It had been formed in July 1972 (at a conference in West Germany, with the encouragement of Willy Brandt) from a regroupment of various social democratic currents. It had no working-class base and its members were a handful of doctors and lawyers. Its leader, Mario Soares, had a long reputation as a personally courageous opponent of fascism; he had been imprisoned twelve times. The first Provisional Government, established in May 1974, contained Communists and Socialists. Initially it was the PCP which played the crucial role. In the same way as Communist Parties had done in France and Italy in 1944-45, it used its anti-fascist reputation to damp down working-class spontaneity. Workers who went on strike in the spring and summer of 1974 found themselves denounced by the PCP and even accused of being ‘fascists’. The PCP was committed to a Popular Front strategy, and for that it needed the Socialist Party — much more than the Socialist Party needed it. In the months after April 1974 the PCP actively worked to strengthen the Socialist Party and give it credibility — precisely because Communists did not wish to take the risk of being the sole working-class party, but preferred to act as part of a left bloc. In some cases this situation allowed the PSP to outflank the PCP to the left; since it had a smaller working-class base, it was less visible as a strike¬ breaker; and since it was a less centralised and disciplined party than the PCP, its local branches could support strikes while its leaders served in the government. Under the conditions of political freedom and social upheaval, both the PCP and the PSP grew rapidly. The Socialist Party, however, failed to develop an industrial base. It had significant support among white-collar trade unionists in banking, insurance and the post office, but little influence in industries such as the shipyards. An eye-witness account of a Socialist Party demonstration in 1975 described it as

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‘middle class to the backbone’, being made up of doctors, lawyers and bank managers in expensive suits.1 The mood in 1974 was such that the PSP had to indulge in a certain amount of left demagogy. The party’s programme, adopted in 1974, states: ‘Aware that capitalism is a brutal and oppressive force, the Socialist Party fights for its total destruction’, and ‘The Socialist Party rejects the path of those movements who, call¬ ing themselves social-democratic or even socialist, end up pre¬ serving, deliberately or de facto, the structures of capitalism and serving the interests of imperialism’. Yet at the same time Soares was able to sell himself to the middle class as a ‘responsible’ and ‘moder¬ ate’ figure. The Socialist Party made effective use of its ideological flexibility; during the 1975 election campaign Soares made left-wing speeches in the industrial areas of Lisbon, but in the more con¬ servative North — where fascist attacks on Communist Party offices were commonplace — he accommodated to the mood by adopting a more right-wing style. (Perhaps the prize for two-facedness goes to Raul Rego, who as minister of information in 1974 fined the paper Republica, of which he himself was the publisher, for its reporting of a strike.) Such demagogy and the efforts of its cadre enabled the Socialist Party to mobilise mass support during 1975. It has been claimed that the PSP rally in Oporto on 25 October 1975 drew as many as two hundred thousand people.2 In the 1975 elections the PSP ran a subtle and effective campaign: The most sophisticated campaign was certainly that planned by the Socialist Party. Since 15 February the Portuguese Public Opinion Institute had carried out three polls, and the Socialists based their strategy on its findings. Three factors emerged as crucial. First, among those who would admit their voting choice to the pollsters (most would not) the Socialist leader, Mario Soares, was by far the most popular figure in Portugal. Second, the Communist leader, Alvaro Cunhal, though far less popular than Soares, was more closely identified with his own party than Soares was with the Socialists. Third, the electorate’s main concern, after the cost of living, was not with the industrial aspect of the revolution — how well the workers were running industry, for example — but with the provision of a national health service and a proper pension scheme. Neither existed in Portugal before the coup.3

(Of course, Soares would not be able to deliver these ‘realistic’ pro¬ mises. By the late seventies the Portuguese economy would be totally subjected to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund and living standards would be falling; doctors would strike to block the

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proposed health service and by the eighties hospitals would be closed through shortage of funds.) In developing his campaign, Soares was not left to pull ideas out of the back of his own skull. He had a multitude of friends and advisers in the social democratic parties of Western Europe, notably in the West German SPD. (On the day Caetano was overthrown, Soares was dining in Bonn with the SPD minister of defence.)4 And in the elections of April 1975 the Socialist Party took 37.87 per cent of the vote, a clear 10 per cent ahead of any other party. On 31 May 1975 Soares addressed a meeting in Milan organised by the Italian Socialist Party. With him on the platform were Frangois Mitterrand, Andreas Papandreou, Felipe Gonzalez of the Spanish Socialist Party and Carlos Altimirano of the Chilean Socialist Party. Gigs like this undoubtedly boosted his prestige; and to be associated with ruling social democratic parties in propserous countries such as Sweden and West Germany was doubtless good for his image. Soares also got money from abroad; the Socialist Party is said to have received more than two and a half million pounds from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. This body — named after the man who helped to strangle the German revolution of 1919 — is run by the West German SPD, but receives large donations from industry.5 According to former CIA agent Philip Agee, the CIA was giving money to the Socialist Party in Portugal — as well as to the Popular Democratic Party and two Christian Democratic parties.6 But all this political and financial aid from abroad must be seen as subsidiary; Soares got the support because he showed that he was able to do the job required. In fact Soares succeeded because of the failure of the alternative. After 25 April 1974 a multitude of revolutionary groups blossomed; but the revolutionary left was deeply divided; many groups were sectarian or dogmatic, and even the best were not able to shake off the habits of clandestinity quickly enough to build a revolutionary leadership rooted in the day-to-day struggles of the working class. The Communist Party did have a substantial workingclass base, but its manipulative politics and its loyalty to Moscow ensured that it would not try to seize power. Soares succeeded on the basis of his rivals’ defects. The tide turned on 25 November 1975, when right-wing officers disarmed the left-wing soldiers in and around Lisbon, encountering little resistance. This clampdown was masterminded by the ‘moderate’ general Eanes. Following further electoral success for the Socialists in April 1976, Soares did a deal with Eanes. The general was elected president of Portugal with Socialist Party suport, and Soares became prime minister.

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Soares’ task was now to reverse the gains made by working-class militancy in 1974-75. This had to be done slowly and carefully, and often provoked opposition from the PSP’s own left wing. Soares went to the International Monetary Fund for a loan, the condition for which was an austerity programme. Wages were frozen, while un¬ employment rose and inflation went up to around 30 per cent. As Octavio Teixeira of the Communist Party commented: It clearly suits the members of the IMF to have Portugal governed by socialists who serve their purpose by keeping the allegiance of a large proportion of the working and middle classes.7

Soares could not solve the problems of Portuguese capitalism. The world crisis was now much too deep to allow any such solution, and the reforms Soares had promised were revealed as no more than utopian dreams. Investment fell and foreign debts rose. By 1978 it was safe for the right-wing parties to rule in their own name. The revolutionary upsurge had been well and truly strangled. Soares was kept in the wings as a loyal opposition. In 1983 he returned as prime minister. By now the defeat of the working class had turned to a rout. Thousands of workers in state-run industries received no pay, sometimes for as long as a year. When workers demonstrated outside Soares’ residence in April 1984, 285 were arrested. Soares’ rule was now described by The Economist as ‘blue socialism’, and he was commended for giving Portugal ‘a rare taste of firm government’.8 In the summer of 1985 the coalition collapsed, and Soares, who had now fallen out with his old ally President Eanes, went back into opposition. In the election of October 1985 the Socialists lost nearly half their parliamentary seats, but early in 1986 Soares himself bounced back yet again to become Eanes’ successor as president. The PCP remained strong, taking 18 per cent of the vote in the 1983 elections and about 15 per cent in 1985. In a country as poor as Portugal, the Eurocommunist line lacks plausibility, and the PCP has been able to mobilise militant strikes against Socialist-led govern¬ ments. The PCP undoubtedly continues to hold the loyalty of a large chunk of the working class, but it has no real alternative to offer. A party that failed to take advantage of the massive wave of struggle in 1974-75 had little hope of achieving anything when that level of militancy had declined. Ten years on from the fall of fascism Portugal was still a bitterly poor country, with the lowest wages and the highest infant mortality rate in Western Europe. Missed opportunities are not offered again, and the Portuguese working class paid a harsh price for failing to take their chance of power in 1975. The adeptness of Soares in picking up

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the pieces provided an example to be followed in Spain and Greece. Spain Franco s victory in the Spanish Civil War was a historic defeat for the working class. It ensured the Spanish ruling class three decades of secure power. By the late sixties the ruling clique was becoming disoriented, with no clear perspective for the future after Franco’s death. At the same time the working class was regaining confidence and there were many militant strikes, which passed right outside the official state-controlled unions (sindicatos) whose task was supposedly to reconcile capital and labour. As a result some sections of the bourgeoisie began to believe that the time was ripe to allow independent trade unions; this would make available a labour bureaucracy which could be negotiated with. In the course of the strikes during the sixties illegal bodies called Workers’ Commissions had come into existence. Initially these had been ad hoc organisations existing for the duration of a strike, but by the late sixties they had become more structured organisations; some employers were openly talking of‘dialogue’ with them on the grounds that they were the authentic representatives of the workers.9 Moreover many sections of the bourgeoisie were anxious to prepare for entry into the Common Market; it was clear that for ideological reasons this would be impossible until Spain had a form of parliamentary democracy and an independent trade union movement. It was under these conditions that the Spanish labour movement began to reorganise itself in the sixties. Of the major parties from the pre-Franco period, the Communist Party had survived best, thanks to its tight discipline, which made it more suited to clandestine work, and to the courage of its members. It became the dominant political influence within the Workers’ Commissions. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) was considerably weaker and in the sixties more or less an empty shell. To some extent its growth during the seventies can be explained by financial support from abroad. The PSOE was a member of the Socialist International, which launched an appeal for funds on its behalf. The PSOE received money from the West German SPD, and also from Venezuela. The American trade unions provided some funds for social democratic and anarchosyndicalist trade union groups in an attempt to provide an alternative to the Communist Party. Nor did the PSOE have any strong theoretical identity, treating its own Marxist tradition in a highly ambiguous manner. In the seventies it swam with the tide of general radicalisation by declaring itself Marxist. (As one congress delegate put it: ‘Franco was against Marx¬ ism, so there must be something good in it.’)10 In 1975, shortly before

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Franco’s death, party leader Felipe Gonzalez neady hedged his bets: ... we are a Marxist party. Get me right: we believe in Marxism as a method of analysing reality. But we are not Marxist dogmatists. We are a workers’ party which believes in the class struggle.11

By 1979 Marxism was again shunted to one side. Nor was the PSOE in any real sense a workers’ party. Under Franco such base as it had was largely among civil servants, teachers and some white-collar workers. Even with the rapid growth that came after legalisation early in 1977 this situation did not change radically. At the PSOE congress in September 1979, 23 per cent of the delegates were civil servants, 15 per cent lawyers and other professionals, 7 per cent skilled workers and only 1 per cent unskilled workers. In May 1979 Felipe Gonzalez himself described the PSOE as ‘a party of frus¬ trated petit-bourgeois’.12 When Franco died in November 1975, and cautious liberalisation began under the new king, Juan Carlos, the PSOE’s lack of clear theoretical orientation and social base became a positive advantage, giving it the flexibility it needed for political manoeuvring. Gonzalez made it clear that class collaboration was quite acceptable: The fact of believing in the class struggle is not incompatible with the search for a united platform. The working class can ally with the bour¬ geoisie when it coincides with it on certain minimum objectives, that is to say when there is a common struggle to achieve a democratic break with a prospect of finishing with the dictatorship.13

In practice this meant the PSOE participating in the Democratic Convergence, a body which contained Christian Democrats, Basque Nationalists and Carlists (anti-Franco monarchists and self-styled socialists), and some of the participants in which were former fascists. The Democratic Convergence was established as an alternative to the Democratic Junta, a Popular Front body initiated by the Communist Party. At times there was close co-operation between the Junta and the Convergence. For the ruling class, which was trying to negotiate a smooth transition from dictatorship to some form of parliamentary demo¬ cracy, the PSOE was clearly a much safer bet than the PCE (and one less likely to antagonise the still deeply anti-Communist elements in the army). This view was reinforced by the success of Soares in Portugal. The ruling class would probably have preferred a situation in which the PSOE but not the PCE was legalised. Indeed, in the last period of the dictatorship, while the opposition was still illegal, some parties were less illegal than others. The police were ordered not to

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arrest Felipe Gonzalez, and he was even given a passport in order to attend the West German SPD Congress. The PSOE, however, resisted the attempt to separate it from the PCE, insisting that the PCE be legalised as well (which it was in April 1977). Had it not done so, its credentials as a radical organisation would have been seriously undermined. At the same time the PSOE was beginning to take the initiative away from the PCE. As in Portugal, the Communist Party needed a strong Socialist Party in order to make its Popular Front strategy plausible. In particular the PCE is said to have assisted with the building of the UGT, the General Workers’ Union, which was linked to the PSOE and which came out of the years of Franco’s dictatorship with very little base. The death of Franco unleashed a massive wave of working-class struggle. Between December 1975 and February 1976 Spain saw action that reached the proportions of a general strike, with demands for both economic improvements and democratic rights. While the movement was largely under the control of the Communist Party, it nonetheless showed the determination of Spanish workers to make radical changes in society. Violent confrontations with the state machine continued. In Vitoria in March 1976, after a long strike, police opened fire on a workers’ assembly, killing three and wounding many others. The confidence of workers was high; in one factory in Madrid three thousand workers went on strike for the reinstatement of 125 workers sacked eleven years earlier. Strikes and mass demon¬ strations continued into 1977. At the beginning of October 1977 half a million people marched through Madrid to protest at inflation and unemployment. The first free elections, held in June 1977, gave victory to the Union of the Democratic Centre, led by Adolfo Suarez. But the left as a whole gained more than 40 per cent of the vote, and the PSOE emerged as Spain’s second strongest party in parliament. The turning-point came later that year. By September 1977 Suarez was in trouble. Spain faced a deep economic crisis, with inflation running at 30 per cent. The government was divided and demoralised, and popular discontent widespread; opinion polls showed that support for Suarez’s party had fallen from 34 per cent to 17 per cent since the elections. The extreme right was intensifying street violence and organising in the army. If the left had worked to maintain the momentum of struggle developed over the two previous years, the right could have been isolated and the whole balance of power shifted to the left. Instead the left parties bailed out the system by making a deal with Suarez — the so-called Pact of Moncloa. The Pact was signed by Felipe Gonzalez, BOS-K

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Santiago Carrillo and representatives of all the major political parties. Its content was scarcely original: wage controls; devaluation; cuts in public spending; an economic policy that would maintain a high level of unemployment. In return certain reforms were promised: the expansion of education and the extension of unemployment benefit to categories of workers not already entitled to it. All in all, it was a very traditional austerity package. Yet Felipe Gonzalez actually claimed it ‘would bring Spain closer to the socialist perspective’.14 Gonzalez also said that he expected the Pact to lead to real change: ‘To tighten our belts without a modernisation of the economy would have no meaning for a Marxist party.’ (Tightening workers’ belts in order to modernise the economy is certainly a novel definition of Marxism.) ‘With more schools, with better housing, better hospitals, better public services and an economy in the service of society and not of particular groups,’ Gonzalez claimed, the Spanish people would be better off as a result of the Pact.15 The reality was rather different. In 1977-78 the share of wages in the national economy actually fell for the first time in many years. In the five years following the Pact, while the UGT constantly sought to moderate militant action by workers, the cost of living rose by 155 per cent, and unemployment doubled to around 17 per cent of the active population. Small wonder that when the Pact was signed the news magazine Cambio 16 hailed it in an ecstatic editorial: This magnificent news, this palpable demonstration of the fact that the political forces in Spain are willing to support the democratic regime in this country, even at the price of undoubted sacrifices, allows us to open afresh the doors to hope.16 The Pact did not get automatic acceptance from the working class. There were mass demonstrations against it — a hundred thous¬ and in Barcelona, a hundred and fifty thousand in Bilbao. But even the left of the PSOE was prepared to swallow the Pact, and the revolutionary left alone did not have the base to give a focus to the movement. The Communist Party supported the Pact, and as a tightly disciplined party it required all its members to carry this line in the Workers’ Commissions. The PSOE’s union, the UGT, was able to pursue a much more flexible line. While it made no attempt to run a mass campaign against the Pact, it allowed its militants greater freedom than the PCE could. As a result, the UGT’s credibility was enhanced, and it won over a considerable degree of membership and support from the Workers’ Commissions. This in turn helped to strengthen the PSOE. Since no alternative leadership willing to fight the Pact existed in

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the working class, the mass movement was rapidly defused. Gonzalez was now able to establish a firm grip on his own party and to break its left wing. The crunch came at the party congress in May 1979. Gonzalez, anxious to reassure the ruling class that a PSOE government would be reliable, wanted to drop the party’s commitment to Marxism. The congress rejected this, and carried by a vote of 61 per cent a resolution defining the party as ‘class-based, of the masses, Marxist, democratic and federal.’ Thereupon Gonzalez offered his resignation as secretary-general of the party. This threw the left into disarray. One of the leaders of the pro-Marxist left, Francisco Bustelo, had denounced Gonzalez’ strategy to the congress, declaring: Today they put a little water in the old wine, tomorrow they’ll put more, and in five or six years time there’ll be no wine left.

But when Gonzalez resigned, the left had no candidate for the job. ‘Felipe Gonzalez’ departure took us by surprise; we hadn’t thought of an alternative team’, complained the same Bustelo.17 Gonzalez’ blackmail worked easily against such an inept opposi¬ tion. He had, moreover, the backing of virtually all the PSOE’s nearly two hundred members of parliament. At the end of September a recall congress was held; Gonzalez won 85.9 per cent of the votes, and his chief left-wing rival got no more than 6.9 per cent. The left were now completely in tow behind Gonzalez’ leadership. A fudge formulation was devised on the question of‘Marxism’, but since Gonzalez patently neither knew nor cared what Marxism was, the matter was of little importance. There was to be one more hurdle before the winning-post. In February 1981 a group of pro-fascist army officers staged an attempted coup. This collapsed fairly quickly, but it created considerable con¬ sternation. The main parties of the left — PCE and PSOE — went on the defensive. The PSOE actually offered to form a coalition with the Union of the Democratic Centre — although in the past they had firmly pledged never to join a government with bourgeois parties. When the officers who had staged the coup went on trial, the PSOE agreed with other parties a ‘pact of silence’ — that is, they promised to make no criticism of either the army or the trial proceedings. The best defence against an extreme-right come-back would, of course, have been maximum mobilisation of the working class. But it did not suit Gonzalez’ book to invite workers to take things into their own hands. In any case, though the army old guard were undoubtedly reactionary and ruthless, a successful coup was not a likely scenario — it would have taken the Spanish ruling class back into the situation from which they had just extricated themselves, and screwed up their

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hopes of EEC entry into the bargain. By thus stressing the right-wing threat, the PSOE leaders were obscuring the real problems facing Spanish workers. Having silenced his own rank and file and assured the bourgeoisie of his reliability, Gonzalez was now ready for the elections of October 1982, which the PSOE won convincingly. The PSOE’s programme was not a substantial one; it promised virtually nothing. There was to be no reform of the army, no challenge to the large private education sector, no attempt to remove US bases from Spanish soil. Economic policy was designed to strengthen Spanish capitalism — where necessary at workers’ expense. Gonzalez was aiming to avoid selling out on his pledges by the simple device of not making any. As he told Denis MacShane, commenting on the recently elected Mitterrand govern¬ ment in France:* I don’t think he is spelling out the problem. Expectations are being raised too high. Workers cannot get everything at once if there is to be a long-term restructuring of French economy and society.18

It is important to be clear about why the PSOE came to power. Effectively it won by default; the Union of the Democratic Centre was politically bankrupt and disintegrating into factional strife; neither the right nor the Communist Party offered any viable alternative. The election of the PSOE did not, unfortunately, mean that millions of Spanish workers wanted the pure milk of socialism, and that when they failed to get it, they would turn to more radical alternatives. Rather the election of Gonzalez meant that the fight for socialism had to begin again at the grassroots. Gonzalez’ practice was even worse than his programme. His main aim was to encourage investment in the private sector. This meant wage controls aimed at cutting purchasing power, and a reduc¬ tion in unemployment benefit. The steel industry was to be rationalised at the cost of thousands of jobs. The unions — especially the UGT — were to be encouraged to sacrifice workers’ interests to the needs of the capitalist economy. Competition was to be positively encouraged; as The Economist reported: Spain’s Socialist government is exposing a long-protected economy to foreign competition. The prime minister, Mr Felipe Gonzalez, knows that unless he can make industry fitter, the shock of membership of Europe’s common market . . . could do Spanish business more harm than good.19

*See chapter 15.

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The 1984 budget provided for massive increases in income tax and firm controls on public sector wages. Small wonder that veteran Socialist Tierno Galvan, mayor of Madrid, could compare Gonzalez’ economic policy to that of Margaret Thatcher in Britain.20 The major issue facing Spanish workers when the PSOE took power was that of unemployment. At the time of the election the jobless total was already around two million, some 14.5 per cent of the active population. One of the few promises Gonzalez did make during the election campaign was to create 800,000 new jobs during the government’s four years in office. This was a modest enough aim; it would not even have halved the jobless total.21 Even this figure bears little relevance to the actual policies of the PSOE in power. By early 1985 unemployment had risen by 648,000 to 21.6 per cent of the active population — the highest jobless rate in the Western world. In some places, such as the ship-building areas of Galicia, the proportion was one in three. Three out of four unemployed workers got no dole payments. The government’s main concern now was to push ahead with further cuts in industries such as steel and shipbuilding. Under Franco workers had no trade union rights, but they did have (as part of the myth of harmony between labour and capital) a certain job security; workers had a legal right not to be dismissed, except of course for disciplinary offences such as political activity. Since Franco’s death such defences had been systematically dis¬ mantled, and Gonzalez set about finishing off the job. The government aimed to encourage more and more temporary work contracts; one ministry of labour official advanced the novel thesis that reducing job security was a weapon against unemployment: We must encourage firms to take on workers at the first signs of an upturn, knowing that they can sack them if the conjuncture changes.22

Ever since 1848 the ‘right to work’ has been a central slogan of the labour movement; for Felipe Gonzalez it appeared to be less important than the employers’ ‘right to sack’. At the same time Gonzalez took measures to control wages. In 1983 public sector wage rises were limited to 6.5 per cent (compared with 8 per cent inflation), and in 1985 the government did a deal with the unions to keep wage rises below the inflation level. The promise of free medical care was dropped, and while a very limited abortion law was brought in, little else was done in the interests of women (there were no women in Gonzalez’ government). Gonzalez carried out the wishes of the Spanish bourgeoisie by negotiating entry to the Common Market, but the long-promised

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referendum on withdrawal from NATO was constantly postponed. When it was finally held early in 1986 Gonzalez — despite widespread opposition to NATO — campaigned vigorously for Spain to stay in the alliance. By manipulating the mass media and by transforming the referendum into what was effectively a vote of confidence in the government, he succeeded in getting a pro-NATO majority. On the question of national rights Gonzalez’ record was no better. Taking a firm line against terrorism was a good method of appeasing the army. In the Basque country, rising unemployment through job losses in steel and shipbuilding gave a new lease of life to the armed struggle by the nationalists of ETA. Gonzalez brought in tighter anti-terrorist laws (including one which said that expressing political support for ETA was an offence) and strengthened the police anti-terrorist unit. It is not surprising that The Economist commented that ‘most Spanish generals have a good reason to admire Mr Gonzalez’ Socialists.’23 The Gonzalez government had a good response from representa¬ tives and friends of the ruling class. The Confederation of Spanish Business Organisations, the employers’ federation, promised ‘dialogue’ and ‘constructive co-operation’,24 and after a year in office Gonzalez was praised by The Economist for not making unemployment a priority; the magazine called his first year ‘a model of rectitude and responsibility’ compared to Mitterrand’s.25 Many workers, however, felt less enthusiastic. In 1984 hundreds of thousands demonstrated against government economic policy, and there were violent clashes with shipyard workers defending jobs. In June 1985 more than two million workers struck against a plan to cut pensions. But the decline of the PCE meant that there was no political focus for the opposition. Twice this century the Spanish working class has gone on to the offensive, showing a magnificent heroism and determination in struggle. The first upsurge was crushed in blood by Franco; the second was co-opted and betrayed by Felipe Gonzalez. Greece When the Greek junta seized power in 1967*, there was no organised social democratic left in Greece. It was during the seven years of the junta that such a current began to emerge. The way in which this happened was very substantially the work of one man — Andreas Papandreou. Andreas was the son of George Papandreou, Churchill’s puppet See chapter 10.

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in the forties and anti-Communist liberal in the sixties. After a flirta¬ tion with Trotskyism in the thirties, Andreas Papandreou worked as an economics lecturer for many years in the USA. He returned to Greece in 1959, and was at the centre of events during his father’s spell as prime minister in the mid-sixties. When the coup came Andreas was arrested immediately, on his return from dinner at the Hilton Hotel. He was harshly treated, and might well have been put to death but for the intervention of his American friends with US president Lyndon Johnson. (Johnson is reported to have said: ‘I just told those Greek bastards to lay off that son of a bitch, whatever his name is.’)26 He was released in December 1967 and shortly afterwards went into exile, where he became leader of the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), an organisation com¬ mitted to the overthrow of the junta. Papandreou was an adept political operator, who had taken a variety of political positions in his time. An American sympathiser commented of him: Competent field work would have shown that Andreas Papandreou had done more to weaken the Communist position in Greece than any other politician, and more so than the repressive police measures of the rightist governments had ever been able to accomplish.27

At the same time Papandreou had a neat line in socialist demagogy when the circumstances were right: Our socialist movement... is based on the principle that we must pass beyond capitalism to a socialist transformation. That is, the social relations of production must be changed fundamentally.28

Papandreou’s leftism was always intertwined with a profound nationalism. While the junta was in power, he argued, despite his own American connections (he became an American citizen during the Second World War, and served in the US navy) that Greece had become an 1 industrial-military satellite of the United States’; as a result of this neo-colonial relation, he argued, the resistance against the junta was ‘increasingly taking on a character of national liberation.’ By 1974 the junta had come to the end of the road. It had failed to solve Greece’s economic problems, especially inflation, and the mili¬ tary regime faced growing opposition from workers, peasants and students. A regime whose only answer to protest was repression seemed likely to provoke a serious social upheaval. The Greek bour¬ geoisie increasingly withdrew support from the army rulers, and in 1974 the junta fell. The restoration of parliamentary democracy did not produce a working-class radicalisation like that in Spain or

168

Bailing out the System

Portugal; but there was a swing to the left, and for the first time Papandreou began to stress the explicitly socialist nature of his politics. PAK had fulfilled its role, and Papandreou took his following into PASOK, the Greek Socialist Movement, which absorbed sections of the old Centre Union. PASOK grew rapidly; in the 1974 elections it took 15 per cent of the vote; in 1977 26 per cent. Initially PASOK continued with the theme of‘national liberation’, developing Third World links, notably with Libya and the Syrian Ba’athists. But in 1980 Papandreou held a two-day formal meeting with Mario Soares, Felipe Gonzalez, Charles Hernu of the French Socialist Party and Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian Socialist Party, thus publicly identifying PASOK with the mainstream of successful European social democratic parties. PASOK failed, however, to develop a significant working-class base. The KKE, the pro-Moscow Communist Party, despite being electorally weaker than PASOK, still held the loyalty of the organised industrial working class, and had a substantial base in the trade union bureaucracy although PASOK had some support among white-collar workers, as well as among small businessmen who had suffered from the effects of the recession. The nature of its base meant that there was a contradiction at the heart of PASOK’s politics. Papandreou promised, like other social democrats, to ‘modernise’ capitalism; but in the Greek context mod¬ ernisation involved, among other things, the squeezing out of small businessmen — the very social group that, having been hurt by previous governments, was looking to PASOK for a solution. At the same time nationalism continued to be a dominant theme. In 1976 Turkey claimed parts of the Aegean near Greece and sent a surveyship, the Sismik, to explore the sea-bed. When Greece’s right-wing prime minister, Karamanlis, referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council, Papandreou argued that the Greek navy should have sunk the Sismik.29 In October 1981 PASOK continued its electoral advance and was trimphally voted into power. The new government proceeded to carry through a number of reforms that decades of right-wing governments had neglected or refused to make, and which had generally been carried out long ago in other parts of Europe. The death penalty was abolished and for the first time civil marriage was permitted — previously all marriages had to take place in church, and adultery was a crime for which one could be jailed. Both these steps were welcome and progressive, but neither was in any sense socialist nor required any significant economic resources. Likewise measures were taken against pollution, which had

Stepping-Stones

169

become particularly grave in Athens; plans were made to start de¬ centralising power, which under previous regimes had been tightly concentrated in the hands of central government; and the government set out to try to improve the country’s lamentably poor standards of health care. For a poor country like Greece with large foreign debts, inter¬ national issues are crucial. When Karamanlis negotiated Greek entry to the Common Market in 1979, PASOK had been strongly opposed. Papandreou argued that the EEC would be harmful to the Greek economy and promised a referendum on the issue; PASOK deputies boycotted the debate in parliament on Greek entry. As power ap¬ proached, Papandreou watered down his position. From demanding complete withdrawal he argued first for a special relationship outside the EEC, then special status inside it, and finally no more than a ‘renegotiation’ of Greece’s terms of membership. The demand for a referendum was dropped, since this could be authorised only by the president — a position now held by right-wing ex-prime minister Karamanlis, who would probably refuse to do so; and Papandreou did not want a constitutional fight on this issue. By 1983, when Greece had assumed the presidency of the EEC, Papandreou was taking a fully constructive and positive attitude to the Common Market. In an interview with an EEC journal he expressed himself in favour of reforming the Community budget to deal with inequalities between rich and poor areas in the EEC, and in favour of speeding up the process of Spanish and Portuguese entry to the Community; he added that he was concerned about the necessity for EEC involvement in the technological revolution, so that Europe should not lag behind Japan and the USA.30 On NATO the story was very similar. Before coming to power PASOK had campaigned against NATO; when they were elected this was shown to be largely a matter of rhetoric. Greece did not withdraw from NATO, and the removal of American bases has been repeatedly pushed off into the remote future. This is undoubtedly connected with Papandreou’s desire to attract new American investment into Greece. At the same time the PASOK government could not exempt Greece from the effects of the world recession. By 1983 the official jobless total had risen to around a quarter of a million, approaching 10 per cent of the active population. In 1982 wage control laws were passed imposing a maximum level on wage and salary increases during 1983. Necessarily, a government which took on the job of managing the recession found itself coming into head-on conflict with the trade

no

Bailing out the System

union movement. In paticular the government put forward the socalled ‘socialisation law’, which imposed legal limits on the right to strike. Notably it required that all union decisions to strike must have the support of over 50 per cent of the membership; members who were unable or unwilling to vote were automatically counted as voting against. The Economist very aptly commented: Those who thought of Mr Andreas Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, as a typical left-wing socialist had better look at the bill he presented to parliament this week. Designed to impose severe limitations on the right of public-sector workers to go on strike, it is much more radical than the mild limitations on trade unions proposed by Mrs Thatcher in Britain.31

There was also direct state interference with the unions. Just after the elections PASOK members went to the law courts in an attempt to reverse the results of elections to the GSEE, the Greek Trade Union Federation; they were successful, and a new governing body with a strong PASOK majority was installed by the courts.32 Despite his tough line, Papandreou did not have an easy ride. By 1983 the government found itself confronting a wave of strikes and mass demonstrations against unemployment. Disillusion with Papandreou did not all redound to the credit of the right; the KKE was able to act as a focus for some of the discontent. In the municipal elections of 1982, held just one year after PASOK’s great victory, the KKE took 20 per cent of the vote in Athens, on a position clearly to the left of PASOK. But the KKE’s aim was to get itself included in Papandreou’s government; while it could use its substantial trade union base to launch struggles against the government, these were seen as a means of pressure rather than an all-out mobilisation. In the last resort the KKE shared the same framework of parliamentarism and nationalism as PASOK. Moreover, its Russian mentors were not at all anxious to see Papandreou ousted, since they saw his foreign policy as basically positive. In the spring of 1985 Papandreou seemed to have caused a constitutional crisis by manoeuvring to replace the conservative president Karamanlis with a president sympathetic to PASOK. The move was widely popular on the left. Papandreou now took the gamble of calling an early election and won a clear, if reduced, majority. Having thus consolidated his base, Papandreou went on to deal with the economic problems caused by massive foreign debts in the only way he knew — by imposing austerity on workers. A two-year wage freeze was introduced, meaning that in real terms the average Greek worker would suffer a 10 per cent wage cut. There were to be

Stepping-Stones

111

public spending cuts and sackings in the public sector to add to a jobless figure already over 9 per cent. There was an explosion of working-class anger, leading to two 24-hour general strikes. These were met with police brutality, and a school student was killed. PASOK union leaders who backed the strikes were summarily expelled from the party. Papandreou had shown himself in his true colours. The slogan on which Papandreou fought the election in 1981 was allaghi (change). Unfortunately the story of PASOK in power does not make much of a change — either from what went on in Greece before, or from the stories of the Spanish and Portuguese Socialist governments.

Chapter 15 Time for truth

IT WAS NOT only on the Mediterranean fringes of Europe that social democracy had to take on the task of bailing out the system. In the heartlands of capitalist Europe — Britain, France and Italy — the working-class threat was less dramatic, but here too social demo¬ cratic leaders were called on to manage the crisis in the interests of capitalism.

Britain In February 1974 the Labour Party was catapulted into forming a minority government by a miners’ strike; in a second election in October 1974 it gained a tiny overall majority. As we have seen,* Labour had adopted some radical policies while in opposition to the Tory government of Edward Heath, and on taking power it initially adopted a left face, symbolised by Cabinet appointments for left¬ wingers Michael Foot and Tony Benn, the latter taking the crucial Department of Industry. But Labour had come to power in a world where recession was just beginning to bite. The early radicalism soon wore thin in face of the inexorable pressures of the international economy. In the first couple of years in office the second Wilson government did introduce some legislation favourable to trade union interests. The rapid repeal of the Tory anti-union legislation was a necessary precondition for doing any deals with the union bureaucracy. The Employment Pro¬ tection Act strengthened the rights of individual workers and of union organisation; but it patently did not protect employment, since the jobless total rocketed upwards under Labour. The Health and Safety at Work Act and the Sex Discrimination Act made some useful additions to workers’ legal rights; but they contained loopholes that made them of little use unless backed up by strong organisation in the Chapter 11.

Time for Truth

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workplace. Unfortunately the whole thrust of Labour policy was to weaken workplace organisation. Of necessity economic policy was to dominate the five years of Labour government, first under Harold Wilson, then under James Callaghan who succeeded him in 1976. In order to save British capital¬ ism Labour had to achieve a redistribution of income away from the working class greater than anything achieved by any Tory government since the Second World War. The main obstacle was, of course, the working class. Labour’s accession to power had defused the generalised working-class offen¬ sive. Under the Tories in 1971 and 1972 more than three-quarters of all days spent in strike action were official; but in the ten months of Labour rule in 1974 nearly 90 per cent of strike days resulted from unofficial action. Militancy had not been dissipated; on the contrary, the defeat of Heath had initially increased workers’ confidence. The most militant response came in the autumn of 1974 in Scotland, one of the areas hardest hit by recession. Here so many disputes came together that there was almost a general strike. There was a widespread lorry-drivers’ strike, with effective use of flying pickets; a strike by sewage workers and dustmen in Glasgow, leaving ten thousand tons of rubbish rotting on the streets; and strikes by train drivers, bus workers, tugboatmen, teachers and slaughterhouse workers; and all this despite virtually unanimous opposition from trade union leaders. Jack Jones, general secretary of the Transport Union, told workers: ‘A vote for Labour is as good as a wage claim.’1 When a further dustcart drivers’ strike took place in Glasgow in March 1975, the Labour government sent troops to break the strike, with scarcely a whimper of protest from trade union bureaucrats or left-wing Labour MPs. On coming to power, Wilson had made great play of what was called the ‘Social Contract’ — a voluntary agreement between govern¬ ment and trade union bureaucrats that wages should not rise faster than prices. This was deliberately vague; the last thing Wilson wanted was a generalised confrontation that could repoliticise the wages struggle. Without the focus of a government incomes policy militancy became sectional and fragmented. In the meantime Wilson humiliated his own party’s left wing by staging a referendum on membership of the Common Market, and getting a massive majority in favour of the policy supported by Tories and right-wing Labour. Benn was removed from the Department of Industry to a more minor post. The time was now ripe for firmer measures. In the summer of 1975 the Labour government enforced a maximum limit of six pounds a week on all wage increases over the coming year. The decision to make the limit flat-rate instead of a percentage was claimed as a

Bailing out the System

174

gesture in favour of the lower-paid; in fact, as The Economist cal¬ culated: A married man with two young children will be worse off, after tax and inflation, unless he is earning under about £22 a week. Fewer than IV2 million employees fall into this bracket (and most of them young, single or working part-time). Everybody else will suffer a sharp cut in his standard of life.2

Again, the Social Contract was supposed to be fair to all, and therefore included dividend restraint; but as Tim Simon, chairman of the Association of Unit Trust Managers, frankly admitted: The dividend restraint is purely a cosmetic device, drawn up to fool the public and placate certain ignorant members of the tuc.3

In fact, there could be little doubt on which side of the class lines Wilson now stood. At the beginning of the year he had had the accolade of The Economist: This government of Labour men and consensus measures could prove to be the least bad government Britain could have for this bad year of 1975.4

Events were to bear this out. The ruling class welcomed the new stage of the Social Contract in the most sincere way it knew, with ‘the most spectacular one-day leap in the stock market that most people can remember.’5 Shares rose by £2,000 million on the Tuesday after¬ noon that Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey announced the new deal. The tiny majority Labour had gained in 1974 was soon eroded in by-elections as Labour policies estranged more and more voters. But as long as the Social Contract worked, the Tories were in no hurry to oust the government. Labour stayed in power by cobbling up deals with the Liberals and later the Ulster Unionists. Only in 1979, when Labour proved unable to prevent a wave of strikes, did the Tories go for Callaghan’s throat and force an election. The key factor in the success of the Social Contract was the role of the trade union bureaucracy. The militancy that had brought down Heath and produced the Scottish strike wave had not simply evapor¬ ated. But militants knew that to challenge the government they needed co-ordinated national action; in the absence of an alternative rank-and-file leadership only the existing bureaucracy could lead such action. The trade union bureaucrats had no interest in unleashing a struggle which could have called the whole social framework into question, and with it their own position as negotiators between labour and capital. They preferred a government with which they could do

Time for Truth

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deals and which would listen to their advice even if it did not follow it. The key figure in selling the Social Contract to the working class was Jack Jones, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. Jones, a Spanish Civil War veteran, with a record as a militant union district secretary in Coventry, had been considered one of the most left-wing of the trade union leaders in the early seventies. He vigorously defended the six-pound limit on wage rises, telling the Trades Union Congress: Socialist ideals are fine. But that is not on the agenda for today ... We should always remember that our movement could be crushed under the falling edifice of capitalism.6

The bureaucrats sold the deal so successfully that twelve months later in 1976 Chancellor Healey was able to come back for a second bite. This time he offered the unions certain tax concessions if they would agree to a new wage limit, smaller than the previous year’s (5 per cent, with flat rates for certain low-paid and high-paid categories). The unions accepted; despite right-wing claims that the unions were ‘running the country’, the Labour government was acting unambigu¬ ously in the interests of capital. The results of the Social Contract were dramatic. Under the previous Wilson government and under Heath, real wages had con¬ tinued to rise. Between 1964 and 1970 the average annual increase in real wages was 2.5 per cent; under the Heath government the average was 3.5 per cent. After 1974 real wages began to decline. Between March 1974 and March 1975 real wages fell by 2 per cent, the following year by 4 per cent, and the year after by 5 per cent. Only in the last two years did real wages rise again. In March 1979 the real wage of an employed worker was only 1 per cent higher than when Labour had come to power.7 Even this marginal gain leaves two other aspects out of account. Firstly, un¬ employment had risen, so many who had wages in 1974 were on the dole in 1979; secondly, cuts in social services led to an overall decline in the standard of living. As a whole the working class was undoubtedly worse off after five years of Labour government. Spending cuts were the other prong of Labour’s economic policy. Every time the pound faced difficulties on the international money markets, the Labour government responded with further cuts in public expenditure. The cuts affected staffing and levels of service in all the main areas of provision on which working people were dependent — education, health, welfare, housing, pensions. They were an open attack on services which people had legitimately come to believe, since 1945, were part of the standard of living to which they were entitled.

176

Bailing out the System

Beyond this the cuts undermined the very legitimacy of the Labour government. For it was the creation of the Health Service and other welfare services that was the one indubitable gain established by Labour rule; now Labour in power was threatening this achievement. Indeed, Labour’s policies were paving the way for the more vicious spending cuts to be made by the Tories after 1979. By the autumn of 1975 unemployment had risen to over one million (in reality, including unregistered jobless, it was over one and a half million). Unemployment was not the deliberate creation of the Wilson government; it was a product of the world recession, but a government committed to managing the crisis could do little to prevent it. And a policy geared to cutting consumption through wage controls and reducing expenditure on public services could scarcely lead any¬ where other than to longer dole queues. Fear of unemployment undoubtedly made workers less keen to fight on the wages issue, while the Social Contract clearly sapped workers’ will to resist unemployment. The union leaders could not plead for co-operation with the government on wages and at the same time encourage the only effective tactic against sackings and closure — occupation. By 1978 government wage norms were getting far less support, and the Callaghan government was compelled to base its economic policy on cuts and squeezing the money supply. Throughout the whole sorry story the Labour left remained divided and impotent. The Tribune group of MPs was permanently split on the main issues of cuts and wage control; two acknowledged leaders of the left, Michael Foot and Tony Benn, served in the cabinet from 1974 right through to 1979; while Foot gradually broke his links with the Labour left, Benn apparently tried to fight for alternative policies in the cabinet. But even Benn was forced to back government policy in public, and did not find any of Labour’s policies to be grounds for resignation — a course which so many had taken under the previous Wilson government. After this abject record it is scarcely surprising that Labour was de¬ feated in the 1979 General Election. The fruit of Labour’s five years of compromise and evasion was a Tory government of the aggressive right, led by Margaret Thatcher and more determined than any since 1945 to fight for the interests of its class. Unemployment was encouraged to rise to more than three million; there were vicious attacks on public ser¬ vices; while unemployment made incomes policies as such unneces¬ sary, there were tight limits imposed on public sector wage rises. Yet despite the bitterness of the Thatcher government’s attack, there was an undoubted continuity of policy between Labour and Tory administrations. The use of spending cuts as a major instrument

Time for Truth

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of economic policy was the clearest example of this. In introducing legislation to limit the rights of trade unions Thatcher was simply developing an approach initiated by Wilson in the sixties. More generally, what Labour had done apologetically, the Tories were now doing with enthusiasm. As veteran Labour MP Ian Mikardo pointed out — after the 1979 election: We now know . . . that during Jim Callaghan’s premiership . . . the rich got rich and the poor got poorer, as they do under Tory governments. When that shift is organised by a Geoffrey Howe, our supporters expect it; but when it is organised by a Denis Healey they feel let down and are angry about it.8

Despite the demoralisation felt by many workers, there was resistance to the Tory policies, in the form of strikes and mass demonstrations. But the Labour Party was unable to spearhead the struggle. Not only was it discredited by its record in office, it was hampered by its status as possible future government. Labour MPs could not encourage direct action and defiance of the government when their dearest ambition was to be back in power, where they would have to impose very similar policies. The same logic was even more starkly visible in the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Thousands of rank-and-file Labour Party members poured their energies into active support for the miners. But the Labour leaders — anxious above all to ingratiate themselves with the press so as to win the favour of ‘public opinion’ — equivocated all down the line. Labour’s new leader, Neil Kinnock, criticised police violence — but only in the context of equating it with the alleged violence of pickets; he went so far as to boast that ‘I condemn all violence without fear or favour’.9 Kinnock’s moralism provided the perfect excuse for the trade union leaders, who mouthed support for the miners, but failed to deliver the much-needed solidarity action. A period of opposition usually strengthens the Labour left, but the two or three years after 1979 saw the biggest shift to the left since the unilateralist victory in 1960. The disastrous record of the WilsonCallaghan years led many Labour Party members to look for a more radical critique, and the downturn in industrial struggle meant that trade union militants often turned to Labour Party activity. The party began to grow for the first time in some years, and its conferences adopted a string of radical policies, including unilateral nuclear dis¬ armament and withdrawal from the Common Market. Tony Benn became the focal figure for the Labour left; in 1981 he challenged Denis Healey for the deputy leadership of the party and came within 1 per cent of beating him. BOS-L

178

Bailing out the System

However, in the period after 1979 the Labour left gave priority, not to concrete struggles against the Tories, but to an internal struggle about party democracy. There was, of course, a certain logic to this. Time after time Labour governments had betrayed their election promises, ignored Labour Party policy and scorned party conference decisions. The demand that Labour candidates should be re-selected before each general election was a clear step forward from the prevail¬ ing situation where one rigged selection meeting could give someone a job for life (though re-selection was still a long way short of the soviet principle of the right of recall). But the project ignores the fact that Labour MPs can move rightwards and sell out far quicker than they can be re-selected. Trying to transform the Labour Party through re-selection is rather like trying to transform a swamp by throwing in handfuls of dry earth. Likewise the campaign to get the party leader elected by the whole party, rather than just by MPs, led to a debate of byzantine complexity about the weighting of the electoral college; and the eventual result of the new system was to give Neil Kinnock a stronger position as leader than any of his predecessors had enjoyed. With such a record of equivocation and internal wrangling Labour was ill-prepared for the 1983 general election. The result was less than a total triumph for the Tories, who got more seats with a smaller share of the poll. But it was an unmitigated disaster for Labour, which got a worse vote than at any election since the Second World War. The long crisis in the Labour Party caused some degree of alarm among friends of the ruling class. Nobody (except perhaps a few retired colonels) really believed that the ‘Marxist left’ was going to capture the Labour Party and proceed to ‘sovietise’ Britain. A more realistic estimate was that the two-party system would cease to func¬ tion. Parliamentary democracy requires the existence of a viable alternative which will not challenge the basic principles of the social order. Italy serves as a permanent reminder of the problems of a parliamentary democracy with no alternative on offer — corruption and stagnation in the ruling party and spasmodic violence from the non-integrated opposition. Right-wing Labour politicians saw the dangers, but were divided as to possible solutions. Some were determined to carry on the fight to recapture the Labour Party for moderation; others believed the time had come to create a new party. In 1981, four former Labour ministers — David Owen, William Rodgers, Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins — founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The new party won some sensational by-election victories, getting Jenkins and Williams into parliament; recruited a number of right-wing Labour MPs who

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feared they might not be re-selected by their constituencies; and joined the Liberal Party in an electoral alliance which, in the 1983 election, took 26 per cent of the poll (excluding Northern Ireland), just 2 per cent behind Labour. The SDP was not so much a crusade as a manoeuvre, and it is hard to disentangle any coherent political doctrine in its policies and pro¬ nouncements. When Shirley Williams declared in 1980 that ‘we believe that a centre party would have no roots, no principles, no philosophy and no values’10 she seems to have accurately predicted the SDP. David Owen professes admiration for the social democratic parties of Sweden, Austria and West Germany,* while Shirley Williams finds inspiration in Karl Kautsky, Robert Owen and R H Tawney.11 In fact the essence of SDP politics seems to be nostalgia for the politics of consensus, for the days of‘Mr Butskell’. But the consensus politics of moderation was the politics of the boom, when the right could permit reforms and the left did not need to attack the social order. In an age of crisis moderation is an illusion. In practice the SDP found itself devoting most of its energies to attacking those it had just broken with. Shirley Williams forecast ‘blood on the streets’ if Labour won another election, and claimed the SDP was ‘the last chance for Britain to find a democratic, moderate but radical alternative to revolution’.12 This produced a situation at some by-elections where the SDP was drawing far more Tory votes than Labour — not at all what had been intended by some of the SDP’s sponsors, who were aiming to replace Labour as the main party of the left. The Economist, which in late 1981 was acting as recruiting sergeant for the SDP,13 put its finger on the problem. It pointed out that the British electoral system did not favour parties of the centre, and observed ‘. . . the SDP represents a new dawn in British politics only in so far as it can oust Labour as the natural majority party of the left of centre.’14 Only if the SDP was a party of the left — albeit the ‘sensible left’ — could it fulfil its role of co-opting radicalism. An SDP too far to the right would leave a gap in the political spectrum for a party of the extreme left, not large enough to achieve power, but quite big enough to provoke social disorder. Yet without links with the trade union bureaucracy — which it never looked like getting — the SDP had little chance of replacing Labour. The future of the SDP is as yet undetermined. It may hold the balance in a ‘hung’ parliament or even provide a safe alternative to an unpopular Tory government. What is already clear is its role in proSee chapter 16.

180

Bailing out the System

viding an attractive force pulling Labour back to the centre. The SDP was the ideal bogey-man for the Labour right to wave in the faces of the left as it called them to order. The Labour left, unfortunately, had no real answer to this threat. The logic of electoral politics necessarily implied an attempt to win the votes of the ‘middle ground’, to compete with the SDP by trying to resemble them. As long as the Labour left accepted the framework of the parliamentary road, it was bound to be pulled to the right. The North of Ireland One political situation which has shown itself totally impervious to social democratic solutions is the long crisis in Britain’s colony in Northern Ireland. The Labour Party’s record is unambiguously re¬ actionary. In 1969 it was the Labour Party which decided to use troops to keep order in Northern Ireland; their role rapidly became one of preventing the oppressed Catholic community from organising and arming to defend itself. In 1974, after twenty people were killed by IRA bombs in Birmingham, Labour rushed through the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allowed suspected ‘terrorists’ to be held for seven days without contact with families or lawyers, and without any charges being made; prisoners could also be deported to Ireland. It was to be used as a systematic means of harassing Irish working-class militants. When Irish political prisoners staged a hunger strike in 1981, Labour spokespersons scrupulously refused to suggest that a future Labour government would meet the prisoners’ demands. Such a pledge would at the least have shown up Thatcher’s callousness, and might conceivably have provided the leverage that would have made a partial victory possible. The greatest indictment of Labour’s policy is that it has system¬ atically obstructed the development of any solidarity with the Irish struggle in the British labour movement. It is the absence of such solidarity which has allowed the Provisional IRA to follow its policy of bombings and terrorism — a legitimate struggle against imperialism, but one that cannot lead to the mass mobilisation necessary for victory. Those who wanted to argue against the Provisionals’ tactics would have been immeasurably strengthened by any display of solid¬ arity from British workers. Those Labour and trade union bureaucrats who have obstructed such solidarity and then condemn IRA ‘terrorism’ stand convicted of hypocrisy. The Labour Party had an obvious interest in trying to defuse the situation in Northern Ireland. To their minds the best way of so doing was to create a reformist organisation in the six counties. In December 1969 five politicians from Northern Ireland — John Hume, Ivan

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Cooper, Austin Currie, Paddy Devlin and Gerry Fitt — visited London and had a meeting at the St Irvine’s Hotel with Arthur Skeffington, the chairman of the Labour Party, Tom McNally, secretary of Labour’s overseas department, and Maurice Foley, who held junior office in the Wilson government. They were persuaded of the need for a social democratic party in Northern Ireland.15 The logic behind it has been explained by Eamonn McCann: In the period after 1969 it was, from the British point of view, necessary to have an organisation which could speak plausibly for the Catholic community in the North, which would be willing to accept, and capable of leading the community as a whole to accept, a reformist solution in the British interest.16

In August 1970 the Social Democratic and Labour Party was founded in order to play exactly this role. A statement of aims was issued, consisting almost entirely of anodyne platitudes (‘to secure a just and adequate distribution of wealth’); on the national question it produced a formulation that only a fanatical Unionist could reject: To promote co-operation, friendship and understanding between North and South with a view to the eventual reunification of Ireland through the consent of the majority of the people in the North and in the South.

Despite the new party’s title, the statement of aims does not contain either the word ‘republican’ or the word ‘socialist’.17 Michael Farrell, of the People’s Democracy, clearly identified the political manoeuvre behind the establishment of the SDLP. He argued that the new party was backed by Harold Wilson and by the government of the Irish Republic because the ineptitude of the parlia¬ mentary opposition to Unionism was allowing leadership of the antiUnionist forces to slip into the hands of extra-parliamentary and even socialist elements. The SDLP would serve as a stabilising factor.18 Eamonn McCann, a revolutionary socialist and at the time chair¬ man of the Derry Labour Party, was even more scathing about the political insincerity of the new party: The reported conversion of Northern Opposition

mps

to ‘left of centre

politics’ must be the greatest mass conversion in history since General Kim Li Tsung baptised a regiment of Chinese soldiers into Christianity with a fire hose.19

Certainly the team who led the new party did not inspire con¬ fidence as to their socialist credentials. Gerry Fitt was a Westminster MP who had aligned himself with the Tribune group but never com¬ mitted himself on issues such as Vietnam or the Industrial Relations

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Bailing out the System

Act. John Hume was an ex-factory manager, known to argue in private that shop stewards who led unofficial strikes should be jailed. Ivan Cooper, former Unionist and Liberal, was director of a building firm which refused to employ union labour. Paddy Devlin, who had more radical politics and had been interned by the Unionists in the fifties, acted as a left face for the SDLP,20 from which he was expelled in 1977. But there was no basis for reformism to succeed in the north of Ireland. The ruthlessness of the Unionists on the one side produced the Provisional IRA’s total commitment to armed struggle on the other. In February 1976 the SDLP took a full-page advertisement in the Belfast News-Letter, declaring support for the Royal Ulster Constabulary in upholding the ‘rule of law’. Yet at times they had to indulge in anti-imperialist rhetoric. The SDLP did manage to build a certain electoral base. In June 1973, after a period of direct rule from London, a Northern Ireland Assembly was elected; the SDLP took 23 per cent of the vote and established itself as the main electoral expression of the Catholic community. A joint Unionist-SDLP executive was created, but col¬ lapsed the following year as a result of the Loyalist strike in the summer of 1974. The SDLP could not succeed, however, in co-opting the radical activist minority of the Catholic community who still looked to the Provisionals. At the time of the hunger strikes in 1981 the SDLP had nothing to offer; it kept quiet or expressed a vague concern. Can¬ didates supporting the hunger strikers challenged Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin and removed them from their seats on Belfast City Council. The decision of the political wing of the Republican movement, Sinn Fein, in the early eighties to move into electoral politics — the strategy of the ballot paper in one hand and the rifle in the other — posed fresh problems for the SDLP. For if Sinn Fein was paying them the compliment of joining the reformist game, it soon showed itself to be a serious rival. In the 1983 general election Sinn Fein took a large bite out of the SDLP’s electorate, capturing 43 per cent of the nationalist vote. As reformists with no access to any real power, the SDLP could deliver no reforms and faced a crisis of credibility. Their fortunes may revive in the course of future political manoeuvring; but as long as the north of Ireland continues to suffer from mass unemployment and brutal discrimination, the anti-imperialist struggle will go on. The SDLP have no answers to that situation.

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France The events of 1968 left the French SFIO in total disarray. In 1969 de Gaulle resigned after a referendum defeat, and new presidential elections were called. Various reformists decided to try yet again the strategy of regrouping the left centre and rallied behind a middle-ofthe-road nonentity called Alain Poher, who had no socialist credentials whatever. Gaston Defferre of the SFIO ran in the first round in order to be able to transfer his vote to Poher in the second. The result was a debacle. Defferre got 5.1 per cent of the vote, while Jacques Duclos of the PCF took 21.5 per cent. On the second round the PCF refused to vote for Poher and called very effectively for abstention; Pompidou, the Gaullist candidate, sailed home to victory, leaving the SFIO dis¬ credited and isolated. With the SFIO and the centre-regroupment strategy both in ruins, the way was clear for Francois Mitterrand. Mitterrand had never been in the SFIO, and he had the prestige of his 1965 challenge to de Gaulle behind him. He now worked for a regroupment between the SFIO and his own organisation, the CIR (Convention of Republican Institutions), a rather unstructured collection of political clubs and discussion groups. In particular he appealed to the CERES,* a leftwing current in the SFIO. In June 1971 a new Socialist Party (PS) was founded, with Mitterrand as first secretary and acknowledged leader; Mollet and the old guard of the SFIO were pushed into the back seat. French social democracy had passed its low point; from now on there was nowhere to go but up. Mitterrand recognised that the centre regroupment strategy was finished. He also recognised that he needed the Communist Party. He needed it first and foremost for its votes; five million people still voted for the PCF, and without those votes the left could never come to power. But he needed it for other reasons too. Firstly, the Socialist Party had to become a focus for the whole left, for the various currents that had evolved after 1968. An alliance with the PCF could give the Socialist Party just this sort of attractive power, marginalising any groups that failed to join it. Secondly, the PCF still controlled the main union federation, the CGT. Any left government which came to power against the wishes of the PCF would face industrial upheaval, making it unable to fulfil its programme; as a result it would be unable to satisfy either employers or workers. In June 1972 the Socialist Party signed a Common Programme with the Communist Party, and a little later the Left Radicals also associated themselves with the programme. The day after signing the See chapter 18.

Bailing out the System

184

programme Mitterrand flew to Vienna to attend a Congress of the Socialist International, most of whose members were highly dubious about such an agreement with Communists. To them Mitterrand spelled out, plainly and cynically, the reasons for the agreement. Evoking the 1965 election campaign, he explained: Our fundamental objective is to rebuild a great Socialist Party on the ground occupied by the PCF itself, in order to show that out of five million Communist electors, three million can vote Socialist! That is the reason for this agreement.21

The PCF took this seriously; its paper commented that ‘this wish . . . seems to us to belong to Utopia rather than to reality.’22 Of course Mitterrand also knew how to butter up Communists when the time was right. On 1 December 1972 he addressed a mass meeting of PCF members; he recited at length The Rose and the Mignonette, a famous Resistance poem by the Communist Party’s favourite hack sentimental poet Louis Aragon. The audience were enraptured.23 When it came to serious matters there was no time for sentiment. On Pompidou’s death in 1974 Mitterrand again stood for the presi¬ dency. He refused, however, to make any prior agreements with the PCF. He effectively caught them in a trap; they could either vote for him unconditionally, or refuse to suport him. But if the PCF had taken the latter course, they would have wrecked their own strategy of a united left and any hope of governmental office;24 they were thus compelled to campaign for Mitterrand. In the second round of the election Mitterrand achieved 49.33 per cent of the vote, giving Giscard d’Estaing a knife-edge victory. In the autumn of 1977 the Left Union collapsed. Ostensibly the dispute was about the precise content of the nationalisation pledge contained in the Common Programme; but the reality was that the PCF knew that by staying in the Left Union they would inevitably be forced into a subordinate role.* Mitterrand was also concerned to win over the children of 1968. In his speech at Vienna in 1972 Mitterrand spoke positively of the gauchistes (leftists), saying they expressed the ‘profound needs’ of society;25 he went on, of course, to make the obligatory condemnation of violence and direct action. His main success in drawing in the left was achieved in 1974, when a substantial portion of the PSU, the United Socialist Party which had been born of a left split from the SFIO,** decided to enter *See chapter 13. **See chapter 19.

Time for Truth

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the Socialist Party. The PSU had grown considerably after 1968, and in the 1969 presidential election its candidate, Rocard, had taken 3.7 per cent of the vote (only 1.4 per cent less than the SFIO’s Defferre). Rocard, an effective demagogue, subsequently became one of the more right-wing figures in the Socialist Party, an advocate of economic rigour. During the seventies the Socialist Party was often able to outflank the PCF to its left on various issues. Thus in 1972, when a young Maoist was murdered by an armed guard at the Renault car plant, the Socialist Party associated itself with the massive protest demonstrations while the PCF concentrated on denouncing leftist ‘provocations’. In 1979 the Socialist Party challenged the state monopoly of broadcasting by setting up an illegal radio transmitter; in a police raid several Socialist deputies were roughed up and Mitterrand was threatened with prosecution. The predominantly electoral strategy being pursued by both the Socialist Party and the PCF also had a demobilising effect on trade union struggle. Both the CGT and the CFDT — which was increasingly coming to identify with the Socialist Party — tended to subordinate industrial struggle to the electoral perspective. The party’s successful mix of demagogic leftism and pragmatic moderation enabled it to grow rapidly in influence throughout the 1970s. At its foundation it had fewer than 80,000 members, but doubled this over the next five years. It still lagged far behind the PCF in industrial penetration, but made considerable efforts to catch up. In terms of votes — for the Socialist Party the decisive factor — things were more favourable. An opinion poll of March 1976 showed that 36 per cent of industrial workers would vote Socialist and only 34 per cent for the PCF. The Socialist Party also gained a decisive lead among young voters. While developing a working-class base the party was sufficiently two-faced to gain support also among some groups of managers and employers. During the seventies some CFDT militants were disciplined for having allegedly produced a poster showing a boss sitting on a worker’s shoulders, and captioned ‘Like your boss, join the Socialist party’. All the while the party remorselessly increased its electoral base at the expense of the PCF. In the 1973 general election the Socialists were only 3 per cent behind the PCF, and in 1978 they were neck and neck. By the 1981 presidential election Mitterrand had 25.8 per cent on the first ballot to Marchais’ 15.3 per cent; the main right-wing candidates, Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Chirac, got 28.3 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. In the second round Mitterrand gained a

186

Bailing out the System

narrow victory, being 3.5 per cent ahead of Giscard. In the parlia¬ mentary elections that followed, the Socialist Party took 37.51 per cent of the vote against the PCF’s 16.17 per cent. Mitterrand’s election was greeted with enthusiasm at home and abroad. In France the left had not even had a sniff of power since the Mollet government in the mid-fifties; no-one younger than middle age could remember a left government. There was dancing in the streets, and workers took champagne into the factories to celebrate. On the international left there were hopes that Mitterrand might make up for previous abject failures of reformism in power and show how it ought to be done. The French ruling class did not show any great alarm at the election. Certainly the Paris Stock Exchange showed a degree of panic on the Monday and Tuesday after the election, when £4,000 million was wiped off share prices; by Thursday all was back to normal again.26 On the day when Mitterrand appointed Communist ministers to his cabinet, prices rose on the Paris Stock Exchange. Mitterrand began his period in office with a number of reforms designed to please and encourage his supporters. The death penalty was abolished, and the repressive Gaullist state security court was done away with. Plans to build a nuclear power station at Plogoff in Britanny were halted (though work on most of the other planned nuclear power stations continued), and the intended extension of the Larzac military camp was dropped. Both Plogoff and Larzac had been symbolic points for left-wing demonstrations in recent years. These measures were progressive, but in no way socialist; moreover they were cheap. The amnesty for many categories of prisoners actually saved money by relieving the pressure on France’s overcrowded jails. Mitterrand appointed as an adviser on foreign policy Regis Debray, a former theoretician of guerrilla warfare, who had been imprisoned in Bolivia in the sixties after joining Che Guevara’s band of guerrillas. (To show how even-handed he was, Mitterrand gave a top job in the Ministry of the Interior to Maurice Grimaud, who had been chief of the Paris police in May 1968, responsible for the riot police used against demonstrating students.) The Mitterrand government also embarked on a substantial nationalisation programme. Thirty-six banks were nationalised as well as five large companies, involved in electronics, chemicals, glass and aluminium. It was a major programme of public ownership, and one which created a considerable amount of controversy, but it was no threat to the French ruling class. Nationalisation, after all, was nothing new. A significant part of the French economy, including many banks, had been nationalised

Time for Truth

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by the post-war coalition government. (The day after Mitterrand’s victory a woman wearing jewellery and a fur-coat rushed into the Credit Lyonnais to withdraw everything from her safe there, explain¬ ing that she was afraid Mitterrand would nationalise the banks. She was told that the Credit Lyonnais was one of the banks that had been nationalised thirty-five years earlier.)27 Moreover, the model of nationalisation used was based on that applied at Renault after the war, giving the nationalised company managerial autonomy. In practice this meant that the same manage¬ ment structures as under private ownership would continue; there were to be no exciting experiments with autogestion, that concept which had meant so much to the Socialist Party in the heady days of opposition. The head of Thomson-Brandt, one of the groups to be taken over, said that nationalisation would be no problem ‘if we are left to work like a private enterprise’.28 The owners of the nationalised firms received extensive com¬ pensation. Mitterrand’s original nationalisation plans were blocked by the Constitutional Council — charged with seeing that all legisla¬ tion is compatible with the Constitution — on the grounds that it infringed the right to property enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789. This was simply a tactic to jack up the level of compensation so that even The Economist could write that ‘the generosity of the new offer has surprised many’.29 The most original feature of the Mitterrand experience was the attempt to solve the problems of the economy by reflation. Other left governments had used the world recession as an excuse for the necessity of cutting public spending. Mitterrand’s alternative was to put more purchasing power into the economy, hoping to enable France to lead the rest of the world into a new boom. Public spending was increased by 27 per cent; there was a 10 per cent increase in the minimum wage and programmes of job creation in the public sector, notably education and the post office. This was far from the socialist paradise. Unemployment continued to rise, despite the new jobs, and passed the two-million mark in the November after Mitterrand’s victory. Within a year of his election inflation had reached an annual rate of 14 per cent, with food prices rising by 16 per cent. An increase in social security contributions hit the poor and unemployed hardest. Nonetheless there were some improvements for workers, and a hope held out of better times ahead. By the late spring of 1982 it was becoming clear that reflation in one country is as utopian as socialism in one country. Mitterrand’s economic policy had fallen flat on its face. Reflation had not stimulated the French economy, but produced a consumer-led import boom. In

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July 1982, for the first time, France imported more than it exported; its deficit on trade with West Germany worsened by 80 per cent in the first quarter of 1982. Just about the only success story was a rise in arms sales. In the first half of 1982 the trade gap was twice as wide as the previous year, and French inflation was double that of West Germany. The massive overseas borrowing which the government undertook provided no solution; it simply accumulated a burden of debt which would make things even worse in the future. So in June 1982 Mitterrand announced a complete U-turn in economic policy. The defence of the franc, the improvement of foreign trade and the fight against inflation were to be the priorities; the attempt to combat unemployment was to take a back seat. The method was a classic one for reformist governments in trouble — a four-month wage and price freeze. Mitterrand had now joined a club of which Harold Wilson was the star member. The wage freeze was total, even nullifying rises already agreed by employers. The price freeze, needless to say, was rather less complete. Many producers covertly raised prices by changing packaging and quantities. Often prices were raised sharply on the very day the freeze came in. The government itself raised postal charges during the freeze; petrol and electricity charges were exempt, as were fresh food prices covered by EEC decisions. It was clear that Mitterrand was following a completely new policy, one that was warmly greeted by The Economist, which stated: He is now taking a line that, price-and-incomes control apart, even Mrs Thatcher might appreciate.30

From now on it was austerity all the way, without even a pretence of acting in workers’ interests. When the freeze was over, the government attempted to impose a wage norm based on the predicted rate of inflation. Taxes were increased, with heavy duties going on alcohol and cigarettes. Sharp cuts were made in health provision. Under the French system the cost of medicines is reimbursed by Social Security, at dif¬ ferent rates according to the type of medicine. In many cases refund rates were cut, from 100 per cent to 70 per cent, and 70 per cent to 40 per cent. In the case of what were designated ‘comfort medicines’ (med¬ icines which the government in its wisdom decided people did not really need) there was to be no refund at all. At the same time the government introduced a payment of around £2 a day for time spent in hospital. One area which escaped austerity was defence spending. Mitterrand, who in the sixties and early seventies had opposed

Time for Truth

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France’s independent nuclear deterrent, ordered a seventh nuclear submarine, something his right-wing predecessor Giscard had been reluctant to do, and continued research into the neutron bomb. In 1982 the Bastille Day military parade was deliberately extravagant, at twice the usual cost. Mitterrand was taking no risk of offending a potential French Pinochet. Mitterrand also allowed no doubt as to his alignment with US imperialism. He publicly welcomed the deployment of American missiles in Europe (something Giscard had been loath to do), and told a German magazine ‘if I condemn neutralism, it is because I believe that peace is linked to the balance of forces in the world’.31 On visiting Washington in 1984 Mitterrand was publicly praised by president Ronald Reagan for his politics in Europe and the Middle East.32 (Just to show he was not completely one-sided, Mitterrand was the first Western head of state to receive General Jaruzelski of Poland.) But the central economic issue remained unemployment. It had been Giscard’s apparent indifference to rising unemployment that had helped Mitterrand to power more than anything else. In the televised pre-election debate between the two candidates Mitterrand waxed eloquent on the issue: If this policy continues we shall have two and a half million unemployed . . . It’s an enormous evil... a dramatic blow against the dignity of men and women.33

As unemployment rose remorselessly above the two million mark, Mitterrand proved as helpless as Giscard. The government’s policies proved ineffective. ‘Solidarity contracts’ — agreements giving com¬ panies government money in return for guarantees on employment — made little impact; firms pocketed the money, gave older workers early retirement, replaced them with young workers on lower wage rates, and boasted that employment levels had been maintained. Before the election much play had been made with the idea of the 35-hour week as a solution to unemployment. In fact even the 39-hour week was introduced only after strikes and strong union pressure, and proposals for further reductions were lost without trace. Indeed the government’s unemployment figures seem to have underestimated the problem. For the figures omitted those seeking part-time or temporary work, youth on low-paid training schemes, other youth classified as ‘seeking training’ rather than ‘seeking work’ and long-term unemployed reclassified as ‘unfit for work’. Such manipulation of figures probably concealed a quarter of a million unemployed. An additional attack on the jobless came in the autumn of 1982,

190

Bailing out the System

with the crisis in UNEDIC, the fund financed by workers’ and em¬ ployers’ contributions which paid unemployment benefit. The fund, set up at a time of low unemployment, could not stand the strain of rising payments, and the employers exerted great pressure to pre¬ vent their contributions being increased. Mitterrand succumbed to the bosses’ blackmail. Now he was following in the steps, not of Harold Wilson, but of Ramsay MacDonald, by cutting unemploy¬ ment benefit. Between October 1983 and October 1984 unemployment rose by more than 16 per cent; France now had one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the industrialised world, and young beggars were increasingly visible in the streets. But Mitterrand talked less and less about socialism, more and more about profitability, and pushed ahead with policies that would mean more job losses in the steel and car industries, shipbuilding and coalmining. The abject back-tracking of the Socialist government could serve only to give new confidence to the right. 1983 saw a wave of demon¬ strations by sections of the middle class — shopkeepers, peasants, right-wing students — while working-class resistance was held back by the unions’ continuing loyalty to the government. With Mitterrand in power the level of industrial struggle declined. The steel industry' had seen a massive fight for jobs in the late seventies; but when the Socialist government announced more sackings in 1983 there was little resistance. Where there was militancy, as in the car factories, the union bureaucrats managed to isolate it and stab it in the back. In a climate of growing demoralisation, by-elections and the 1983 municipal elections showed a strong swing back to the right. An even more alarming result of mass disillusionment with the Socialist government was the rise of the organised racist right which became visible from 1983 onwards. In the 1984 European elections the Front National, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, took 10.95 per cent of the vote (only just less than the Communist Party’s 11.20 per cent). The main axis of Le Pen’s politics was the attack on immigrants — its favourite poster bore the slogan: ‘Two million unemployed, two million immigrants too many’. This was coupled with a rag-bag of right-wing themes: law and order, restoration of capital punishment, defence of private education, denationalisation, limitation of the right to strike. While in the short term Le Pen’s main preoccupation was electoral respectability, the Front National retained the potential of developing into a full-blooded fascist organisation. Le Pen’s electoral success gave the green light to a wave of racist attacks and murders. Initially the Socialist Party proved unwilling to stand up to racism, fearing the electoral consequences. In the 1983 municipal

Time for Truth

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elections Gaston Defferre — who, as well as being mayor of Marseilles, wais Mitterrand’s minister of the interior, in charge of France’s notoriously racist police — plastered the city with posters reading: ‘The right means illegal immigration; the left means controlled immigration’.34 It was left to a body outside of organised left politics, called SOS-Racism, to begin the fightback against Le Pen. When the anti¬ racist movement began to take off — SOS-Racism sold half a million badges in three months — the Socialists jumped on the band-wagon and associated themselves with it. The government helped to finance a huge anti-racist festival organised by SOS-Racism in Paris in June 1985. But by his fifth year in power, Mitterrand could see his electoral popularity plummeting, and he was reduced to scrabbling around for ways of clinging on to power. The introduction of proportional repre¬ sentation could not prevent the election of a right-wing parliamentary majority in March 1986, though it prevented the right from getting a large majority. Proportional representation also gave 35 seats to the racist Front National. Mitterrand was forced to appoint a Gaullist prime minister, Jacques Chirac, and had to ‘cohabit’ with a right-wing government which set to work strengthening police powers and making plans for privatisation. Such was the sorry outcome of five years of the left in power. Italy Mitterrand’s success before 1981, in rebuilding the Socialist Party and outstripping the PCF, provided an example for social demo¬ crats elsewhere. It Italy, however, circumstances were a lot tougher. In the mid-seventies Italy had seen a massive wave of workers’ struggles — over rents, food prices and transport fares; there had been occupa¬ tions of schools and empty buildings, the creation of ‘red health centres’ and prison revolts. The whole country was simmering with rebellion. On the political level there was still stalemate. In the 1976 elections the PCI took 34.4 per cent of the vote and the Christian Democrats 38.7 per cent. The Socialist Party (PSI) seemed to have reached rock bottom, crushed between the two main parties with only 9.6 per cent. The Christian Democrats, corrupt and deeply divided, had ruled Italy for three decades. The ruling class badly needed something like the British Labour Party to pull its chestnuts out of the fire. It was in this situation that the PSI slowly began to pull itself together. It recognised that for the present there was no mileage in the

192

Bailing out the System

centre-left formulation, which simply made it a junior partner to the Christian Democrats. Yet the development of a new strategy contained a basic paradox. An obvious alternative for the PSI was to try to emulate Mitterrand’s Union of the Left and work towards a PSI-PCI government. But if the PSI adopted this strategy it would put itself to the left of the PCI, which was committed to a ‘historic compromise’ with the Christian Democrats.* The PSI thus found itself in the position of simultaneously attack¬ ing the PCI and trying to woo it. In many ways the PSI became more aggressive; it publicly attacked the PCI as Leninist and effectively dissociated itself from its own Marxist past. The hammer-and-sickle symbol which the PSI had used since the time of the Russian Revolu¬ tion was abandoned and replaced by the carnation. The most visible sign of the PSl’s evolution came in July 1976, just after the general election, with the choice of a new general secretary, Bettino Craxi. Craxi was a protege of Pietro Nenni, but he represented a clean break with the party’s old guard. Aged only 42 when he became leader, he could dissociate himself from the party’s unhappy experience in the past — the Stalinism of the late forties or the botched Centre-Left of the sixties. Craxi was adept at political manoeuvring, and knew that the PSl’s position in parliament between the two major parties gave it a degree of leverage out of proportion to its social or electoral base. Craxi argued that any alliance with the PCI must be based on sharp criticism of any residual Stalinism: We are proposing a strategic alternative for the left . . . We therefore stress the progress made by the Communists, but also their silences and ambiguities. We can’t run the risk of being thought of as fellowtravellers.35

Craxi’s perspective was based on the correct presupposition that the historic compromise’ would prove impossible to implement. He was well aware that with only 10 per cent of the popular vote the PSI was far too weak to emulate the French Socialist Party; he also recognised that an aggressive approach was the best way to increase that base: There’s one simple way: be ‘reasonable’, as they say, and enter the government. Or else help the Communists by being their partners. But we’re not prepared to play a subordinate role. And the young cadres of the party are not prepared to do so. We don’t want to be either reasonable or, as the Communists say, unitary.36 *See chapter 13.

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So while the PCI and the Christian Democrats were uniting to sell austerity to a still unruly working class, the Socialist Party was able to stand back, and, on occasion, take an initiative. Thus at the time of the kidnapping of the leading Christian Democrat, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades, the PSI was able to identify with a call for negotiations, while the PCI was still proving its ‘responsibility’ by insisting on no deals with terrorists. In 1978 the Socialists managed to manipulate the log-jam between the main parties in order to get one of their members, Sandro Pertini, elected as president of the republic. In April 1980 the PSI decided the time was ripe for a return to government. In return for their increased political weight they got nine posts out of 27 in Francesco Cossiga’s new cabinet. In June 1983 the PSI vote rose to 11.5 percent — a significant rise from the low point in 1976, but still very small compared with the Christian Democrats’ 33 per cent and the PCI’s 30 per cent. The PSl’s main social base remained limited to a relatively thin social layer of technicians and supervisors. None the less Craxi was able to exploit the stalemate between his larger rivals in such a way that the only political solution was for him to become prime minister. The formula was still Centre-Left — but for the Christian Democrats to abandon the premiership (for only the second time since the forties) was a significant shift of emphasis. Craxi’s policies in power were no more edifying than those of his counterparts elsewhere in Europe. He welcomed American cruise missiles, designed for a possible first nuclear strike against Russian missile sites, into Italy and announced plans to chop 26,500 jobs in the steel industry by 1986. He also put to death one of the liberal measures of the late seventies, the reform of psychiatric hospitals — a reform which had failed for want of funds. At his inauguration Craxi tastefully observed: ‘We must get the lunatics back in the asylums.’37 The crucial issue was wages. One of Craxi’s main tasks was to smash a fundamental component of Italian workers’ living standards — the automatic wage indexation system, which guaranteed workers 75 per cent of any increase in the cost of living. Craxi proposed a reduction which would have cost the equivalent of twelve pounds a month. This provoked mass opposition, with a demonstration involv¬ ing some 700,000 people. Despite support from the two smaller union federations, the CISL and the UIL, Craxi found himself directly confronting the PCI-dominated CGIL. As The Economist reported with glee: One of Europe’s most powerful trade union movements is being pounded to pieces — by a government headed by a Socialist.38 B0S-M

Bailing out the System

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In June 1985 a referendum on the cut in wage indexation was held. The Communist Party and the union it led, the CGIL, had shifted from industrial struggle to electoral confrontation. Craxi won — after threatening to resign if defeated — by a small majority, opening the way to further attacks on the sliding scale. The PCI had suffered a significant defeat, but the Socialist Party still had a very long way to go before it could compete with the PCI’s mass base. Moreover, while Craxi was putting himself in the front line, the Christian Democrats were able to start reorganising them¬ selves to prepare for a return to power. Nonetheless, after two years in office, Craxi and the PSI had done more than any other political force to pull Italian capitalism out of danger. It was not for nothing that in late 1985 Craxi was hailed by The Economist as the ‘Strong Man of Europe’.39 In 1986 Craxi became the first post-war Italian premier to be modelled in Madame Tussaud’s waxworks display. ★

★

★

Callaghan, Mitterrand and Craxi each tried different tactics in different situations; but all ended up doing something very similar — cutting back workers’ standards in order to save the system. Each of them came up against the constraints of a world economic crisis which offers little room for purely national solutions; each of them provided yet one more proof of which side the reformists were on.

Chapter 16 Half-way to paradise?

IF A SOCIAL DEMOCRAT is confronted with the abject record of his colleagues in power, he will generally mutter some excuse about only coming to power in a crisis, or not having a proper parliamentary majority. It is therefore instructive to look at those European countries which have enjoyed (if that is the right word) more than a decade of uninterrupted social democratic rule since 1945. Sweden, Austria and West Germany are all held up as models of what social democracy can achieve; Mitterrand, for example, often waxes lyrical about Austrian ‘socialism’. The reality, as usual, is not quite so glossy.

Sweden Sweden is the dreamland of social democracy. To its friends its achievements prove that revolution is unnecessary; to its enemies its (mythical) suicide rate proves the unviability of socialism. From 1932 to 1976 the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) was in power without interruption (except for three months in 1936), the longest continuous period of social democratic rule in any country; in 1982 and 1985 the SAP again won election victories. It could well be argued that what cannot be done in Sweden cannot be done anywhere. Sweden’s record over the past fifty years has been that of a highly developed welfare state — generous old-age pensions, holidays and sickness insurance are notable features of Swedish society. Sweden has one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, as well as liberal abortion laws. It also enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world, with a higher per capita income than West Germany. But these successes cannot be taken at face value. Sweden’s achievements can be explained not so much by the political will of the SAP (ready on occasions to indulge in a little Marxist rhetoric) as by the fact that Sweden is a particularly suitable environment for social democratic experiment. Sweden is a small nation, with a population of

196

Bailing out the System

around eight million. Its size and geographical position have enabled it to remain neutral in European conflicts. During the Second World War it suffered relatively little; in the post-war period its productive capacity was intact, giving it a good competitive position on the world market. More recently, it has been able to remain free of the direct pressures of the arms race, and Swedish capitalism has been able to make profitable deals with various Third World countries at the expense of the major imperialist powers (having a leftish government with a ‘progressive’ anti-imperialist foreign policy has doubtless helped). Generally, moreover, the SAP has been swimming with the tide of Swedish political life. For much of its time in power it did not rule alone, but in coalition — with all parties during the Second World War, and for most of the fifties with the Agrarian Party (later renamed the Centre Party), which meant, for example, a deal in¬ volving high price supports for agricultural products. The SAP has normally aimed to get the support of opposition parties for its reforms. As a result, when the right was in power from 1976 to 1982 it made no significant attempt to reverse social democratic policies; indeed, the so-called ‘bourgeois’ governments which ruled in this period nationalised more than the SAP had done in the preceding 44 years.1 There is, in fact, no great ideological gap between the SAP and the ‘bourgeois’ parties; the Conservatives advocate a ‘sociallyguided market economy’ and the Centre Party ‘a democratic welfare society’. It is, therefore, no surprise to learn that the SAP has always worked within the framework of a capitalist economy and has never made any challenge to capitalist power. Since the thirties the SAP has worked closely with big capital; during the Second World War many businessmen were given key posts in the war administration. Certainly no attempt has been made to expropriate any significant part of capitalist property. The public sector as a whole accounts for about two-thirds of the national income, and includes public utilities, public transport and mining. But only a small part of manufacturing industry is in state hands. Some powerful individual capitalists sur¬ vived unscathed. When the financier Marcus Wallenberg died in 1982, he had a decisive say in companies whose aggregate annual turnover was equal to projected government revenue for the current fiscal year.2 Nationalisation in itself does not constitute socialism, but there can be no socialism without the expropriation of privately owned property. The SAP has always been concerned to establish co-operation of labour and capital rather than to act for labour against capital. Its

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perspective has been summed up by one of its leading thinkers, Ernst Wigforss: The idea that the change in society that we desire could be assisted by a policy which increases the output of private industry has never been foreign to social democracy. The development of capitalism was supposed to create the conditions necessary for the transition to socialism.3

In the 1985 elections the SAP issued a poster of a smart young executive in a sports car saying: ‘I’m voting social democratic because I want order in the Swedish economy.’4 In the eighties the SAP pushed a new idea for reinforcing harmony of capital and labour, the wage-earner funds. Despite an onslaught of right-wing propaganda, the scheme offered no threat whatever to the capitalist system. It established funds on the boards of which trade union representatives were in a majority and which invested in public companies. Leading Social Democrat Kjell-Olof Feldt stressed their real aim: ‘We want them to be adaptable to a market economy, in which profits are the real source of regeneration.’5 Despite a taxation policy supposedly intended to redistribute in an egalitarian manner, social democratic Sweden has made no dramatic moves towards equality. In the mid-fifties, after twenty years of SAP rule, the top 10 per cent of earners gained 27 per cent of total income after tax; the equivalent figure for Tory Britain at the same time was 24.5 per cent.6 Between the 1940s and the 1960s the income differen¬ tial between blue-collar and white-collar workers actually increased; in the early seventies a government report concluded that ‘the re¬ distribution of income under social policy was a system with no more than negligible redistributive effects.’7 The educational system continued to discriminate in favour of upper-class children.8 The SAP’s claim that it has a policy for sexual equality also needs closer examination. In the 1970s the number of women with full-time jobs actually decreased; by 1979 women were 44 per cent of the workforce, but 55 per cent of the unemployed. Women failed to break into employment areas traditionally dominated by men; thus 90 per cent of school principals are men, while most class teachers are women.9 The main strength of the SAP has been its working-class base. While delivering some reforms to its followers it could also deliver a relatively passive working class to Swedish capitalism. The SAP gets its voting strength from the 60 per cent of Swedes who derive income from the state, and from its close links with the strong and highlyorganised trade union federation (LO). Yet while the SAP passes as a party that acts for the working class, the fact that it does not want the

198

Bailing out the System

working class to act for itself is shown by the labour laws it has introduced and maintained, laws which make it easy for employers to lock out workers, but limit workers’ right to strike, for example by requiring advance notice and imposing legally binding contracts. The myth that Sweden has successfully established a harmony of capital and labour, a virtually strike-free paradise, was rudely shattered at the beginning of 1970, when one of Sweden’s main nationalised corporations, the mining concern LKAB, was hit by an unofficial strike by 5,000 workers. The initial cause of the strike was dissatisfaction with a pay contract, but other complaints soon emerged, notably bad working conditions and autocratic management. The majority of workers, significantly, decided to be represented, not by the bureau¬ cratic union, but by a special strike committee. The strike spread to many other industrial plants in Sweden — and even sparked off unofficial strikes in Denmark and Norway. There was widespread solidarity with the LKAB miners, and collections were held in many factories. In the spring of the following year Sweden was hit by an even bigger strike wave among public employees. Schools were closed and most railway traffic was halted. Even army officers — who are union¬ ised in progressive Sweden — became involved. The government responded by imposing a lock-out. The myth of Swedish industrial peace was rapidly disintegrating. In May 1985 came the biggest ever public sector strike in Sweden. It began with 20,000 public sector workers striking, shutting schools and airports; when customs officials stopped work imports and exports were blocked. The response was a massive lock-out of state employees. Forty-seven years of reformism in power had not made the class struggle go away. The state machine, of course, has remained untouched by SAP rule. Indeed, in 1969 the state security police actually classified Olof Palme — a leading Social Democrat who was soon afterwards to become prime minister — as a security risk because of his involvement in the campaign against the American war in Vietnam.10 Nor has dreamland Sweden been free from the nastier aspects of capitalism in crisis. After the Second World War Swedish employers encouraged immigration, largely from Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia. By the eighties there were around a million people of foreign origin in Sweden. Immigration controls imposed by the government merely served to label immigrant workers as a ‘problem’ and hence a target for hostility. As unemployment began to rise racist violence became increasingly common. In September 1976 the SAP were beaten in the general election. SAP leader Olof Palme’s enthusiastic support for a programme of

Halfway to Paradise?

199

building nuclear power plants was undoubtedly a contributory factor in the defeat. Up to this point Sweden’s marginal position in the structure of world capitalism had enabled it to avoid the worst effects of the recession. But even Sweden could not stay outside the world economy. Slowly but surely the recession began to bite. Unemployment reached a post-war record of 3.6 per cent by 1983; as usual the official figures underestimated the problem. One observer calculated that by adding those who would have looked for jobs if there had been any available, those on special manpower programmes and part-time workers who wanted full-time jobs, the overall total was as high as 13.2 per cent.11 With this onset of recession the time had come for the SAP to play the classic role of social democrats. In September 1982 the SAP was re-elected to power: The Stockholm Stock Exchange surprisingly welcomed the new govern¬ ment with a leap of happiness. In the week following the election it recorded one dazzling all-time high after another.12 Olof Palme formed a new government which proceeded immedi¬ ately to devalue the Swedish currency by 16 per cent to help exports. This was linked to the announcement that the country would have to accept a 4 per cent cut in living standards. Direct taxes were increased by 2 per cent, and the government announced that pensions would not be increased to meet the 6 per cent rise in prices caused by devaluation. To get away with this, Palme had to strengthen his reliance on the SAP’s trade union links. Three leading union bureaucrats were given ministerial appointments. As finance minister Kjell-Olof Feldt put it: We have been told by international organisations to cut the fat out of our economy ... It is a difficult operation but a Social Democrat govern¬ ment has an enormous asset in the support it can call on from the trade unions. We would be irresponsible if we did not try to use this asset, the confidence we have created within the unions over the past half century.13 Feldt made quite clear the pro-capitalist nature of the operation when he urged that ... we must strengthen the competitiveness of industry, accept an increase in company profits, stimulate investment and restrain private consumption.14 After many years as a ‘special case’ the SAP had joined the club.

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Bailing out the System

Austria The Austrian Socialist Party (SPO) came to power in 1970, and in the next three elections it took more than 50 per cent of the vote. Under the leadership of Bruno Kreisky — well-known for his role in the Socialist International and still prone to invoke Marx — Austria was often said to have achieved an ‘economic miracle’ in the seven¬ ties. Certainly there were real reforms — the forty-hour week, family allowances, improvements in the health service and the legalisation of abortion; real wages rose and unemployment was kept low. Like Sweden, Austria is a small country — eight million inhabit¬ ants — which since 1945 has been neutral and free from the direct pressures of the arms race. The so-called ‘economic miracle’ can largely be explained by the fact that in 1970 wage levels were low by European standards, and there was a large influx of foreign capital. Multinationals were encouraged to come to Austria. At the same time exchange rates were used to lessen the effect of international inflation. Austria’s foreign policy had positive economic advantages. Kreisky’s pro-Palestinian position produced valuable economic deals with Arab countries. But Austria’s international stance was not even as ‘pro¬ gressive’ as Sweden’s. Kreisky never criticised the US war in Vietnam; Austria had friendly relations with Iran under the Shah and conducted profitable trade with South Africa. Like its Swedish counterpart, too, the SPO has a long record of co-operation with non-socialist parties. From 1945 to 1966 the SPO served in a coalition with the conservative People’s Party. The fact that Austria has one of the largest public sectors in Western Europe is not the product of specifically socialist policies, but dates back to the bipartisan nationalisation acts of 1946 and 1947.* Kreisky always aimed for support beyond the limits of his own party; one opinion poll showed that 57 per cent of voters for the People’s Party saw Kreisky as the best prime minister.15 When the SPO lost its overall majority in 1983 it formed a coalition with the Freedom Party, which for many years had been a haven for ex-Nazis. Despite occasional Marxist rhetoric, the SPO never posed the remotest threat to Austrian capitalism. Kreisky described the purpose of his government as being to ‘make Austria into a modern industrial state that is ready to be a part of Europe’, and on one occasion stated that ‘May Day represents the integration of workers into the democratic state’.16 One of the SPO’s theoreticians put it as follows: See chapter 5.

Halfway to Paradise?

201

We have been assigned by the voters the task of modernising Austria. We did not seek a mandate for further, more far-reaching measures toward the creation of socialist structures in the sense of our basic programme.17

The SPO s economic policy was never more than an application of Keynesian methods to a market economy. Naturally enough, there was no real move towards equality. One academic showed that during the seventies the share of wages in the national income actually declined. Between 1975 and 1980 the gross income of wage-earners rose by 45 per cent, while taxes on wages rose by 97 per cent.18 The Socialist finance minister, Hannes Androsch, defended a refusal to introduce a more progressive taxation system on the grounds that the present system would enable Austria to attract West German capital.19 The main claim made for Austria was that it had kept its un¬ employment rate low amid a world recession. In particular SPO governments were willing to accept budget deficits in order to keep down the jobless total. As Kreisky put it: A few thousand schillings deficit in the state budget keeps me awake at night much less than a thousand more unemployed.20

What Kreisky did not add was that he did not lie awake at night worrying about the jobs of immigrants; for it was by being able to send unemployed immigrants back to the poverty of their homelands that Austria was able to keep its unemployment rate low. Between 1973 and 1982 the number of immigrant workers fell by 65,000 — more than a quarter of the total. In 1982, among the 162,000 Turkish and Yugoslav workers left in Austria the unemployment rate was 11 per cent.21 The SPO’s real achievement was its ability to damp down the class struggle. It did this through its close links with the trade union bureaucracy. Most of the major union leaders also served as SPO members of parliament and the president of the OGB, the Austrian Trade Union Federation, doubled up as speaker of parliament. A parity commission on wages and prices, containing representatives of unions, employers and government, took on the job of developing an incomes policy. As elsewhere wage controls were much more effective than price controls, and the union machinery was completely co¬ opted into serving the alleged interests of the nation rather than those of the working class. Most unions in Austria are highly bureaucratised, with no oppor¬ tunity for rank-and-file workers to participate; even ordinary branch

Bailing out the System

202

meetings are non-existent. The level of industrial struggle has been extremely low; in 1979 only three workers in every ten thousand were involved in any sort of strike action; averaged over the working population, there were less than eight seconds strike action per worker during the year. But militancy was not totally suppressed; as the world crisis began to affect Austria the potential for workers’ struggle remained. In the meantime there were other expressions of social discontent, notably an upsurge of ecological militancy, particularly in the campaign against the building of a hydro-electric dam on the Danube in 1984. Behind the social democratic facade there are some ugly and brutal features in Austrian society. Immigrant workers who get involved in political activity are rapidly deported. In 1985 a Freedom Party minis¬ ter in the coalition government publicly greeted a Nazi war criminal who had been released from prison in Italy where he had been respon¬ sible for the massacre of several hundred people in 1944. The Socialist prime minister covered up for this to avoid breaking up the coalition. Austria, like Sweden, could not remain permanently isolated from the world recession. In 1982 unemployment rose by nearly 50 per cent over the previous year. The total — 3.6 per cent of the active population — was still low, but Kreisky himself now admited that in a period of economic crisis the maintenance of full employment was impossible.22 In 1985 Austria had its largest ever budget deficit. On top of this came the shock of a huge loss — around £220 million — suffered by the Voest-Alpine Company, Austria’s largest nationalised steel and engineering firm. The gloss was fast rubbing off Austria’s image, and the chances were growing that the so-called ‘social harmony’ would start to wear thin. West Germany Few people are likely to see West Germany as a socialist paradise. Ever since the Bad Godesberg Congress* the SPD has made clear its commitment to preserving private ownership and a market economy. The myth of West Germany is rather one of capitalist prosperity shared by workers who work hard and rarely strike. The SPD’s thirteen years in power, from 1969 to 1982, is generally cited not by those who believe in a reformist road to socialism, but rather by those who are interested in winning elections as an end in itself and not as a means to social change. Nonetheless thirteen years in power is an impressive achieve¬ ment, and the period saw indisputable gains for West German workers. See chapter 8.

Halfway to Paradise?

203

Between 1969 and 1982 the real income of those at work rose by 30 per cent, and that of pensioners by 43 per cent. There were reforms in the divorce and abortion laws. West German workers continued to be among the most prosperous in Europe. The SPD can in fact take little credit for West Germany’s economic strength, which was built up in the post-war period and during the fifties and sixties under Christian Democratic rule. Before the SPD could be trusted to head a government, it had to participate in a coalition with the Christian Democrats from 1966 to 1969. Having proved its truly bipartisan attitudes, the SPD was, from 1969 to 1982, the major party of government in coalition with the Free Democrats, who were very much the junior partners. From the beginning there was no pretence that radical policies would be pursued; Chancellor (prime minister) Brandt made it clear that he would govern from the ‘centre’, telling the 1973 SPD Congress: Our party must not abandon the ‘new centre’ because if you do lose the centre position you are incapable of governing.23

In May 1974 Brandt resigned over the discovery that his personal secretary was an East German agent. Brandt had been regarded by many as too soft on union wage demands and unwilling to stand up to the left, such as it was, in the SPD. He was replaced by a man of the hard right — Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt identified West Germany even more closely with the United States, and in 1980 welcomed Ronald Reagan’s election as US president, saying it would mean ‘a new decisiveness in American leadership’.24 At the time of the 1976 elec¬ tions the New York Times dismissed as ‘ludicrous’ the Christian Democrat slogan ‘Freedom instead of Socialism’, pointing out that Schmidt had . . . dealt harshly with the Social Democratic left wing since he succeeded Willy Brandt in 1974, and . . . directed Western Europe’s most effective anti-inflation and economic recovery programmes, using such respect¬ able conservative instruments as budget cutbacks followed by an $8 billion tax cut and lower interest rates.25

The bipartisan nature of Schmidt’s rule was further shown by the fact that under the SPD government Christian Democrats held the chairs of several of the highly influential parliamentary commissions, in¬ cluding those dealing with defence, foreign affairs and the budget. The one major original achievement of the SPD government was in the field of foreign policy, and this was in no way specifically socialist; on the contrary, it resolved what had been a major contradic¬ tion in West Germany’s international situation. On the one hand

204

Bailing out the System

anti-Communism was central to West German ideology and was a crucial factor in legitimising the existing social and economic order. Yet by 1969 the reunification of Germany, in a situation of nuclear stalemate, had become unimaginable; and it was necessary for West Germany to restore political and economic relations with the Eastern bloc. Brandt led negotiations with Russia, Poland and East Germany to implement what became known as the Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy). This recognised as permanent the frontiers between East and West Germany, and between East Germany and Poland (the Oder-Neisse line), and culminated in a treaty with East Germany signed in November 1972. Brandt had shown that the ideological hang-ups of the Christian Democrats could not be allowed to stand in the way of the development of East-West trade. Defenders of West Germany often argue that it is better to increase all-round prosperity than to insist on egalitarianism in the division of wealth. But without any attack on the structures of class power it was impossible to protect the less favoured, and the ‘poor got poorer’ in classic style. Under the SPD unemployment rose steadily, even though, like Austria, West Germany was able to gain some time by manipulating the jobless rate with a harsh treatment of immigrant workers. In the late seventies, when unemployment was around 1.2 million, it was calculated that without the policy of refusing work permits and jobs to migrant workers, the official employment level would have been over two million and would have reached a higher rate than in Labour Britain.26 By 1982 the jobless total was 1.7 million, the highest figure since 1953. In 1978 The Economist, a publication which had done much to encourage the myth of West Germany as a classless paradise, reported that because of unemployment . . . half a million West German households — some 1.5 million people — are living below the poverty line. Poverty in Germany . . .is generally defined as the level at which a person becomes entitled to social security benefit. The number of people receiving such benefit exceeded two million in 1975 for the first time and is still increasing.27

The SPD had long ago abandoned the rhetoric of class struggle, but its leaders did not lose sight of the reality. Like their comrades in Sweden and Austria, they aimed to integrate the workers’ movement into the capitalist system, in particular maintaining close links with the trade union bureaucracy. The SPD even used its working-class links for political objectives; in 1972, when the Christian Democrats tried to bring down the Brandt government with a vote of confidence on foreign policy, there were mass demonstrations involving 100,000

Halfway to Paradise?

205

workers, including 30,000 on the streets of Bonn. The long years of capitalist prosperity meant that the West German working class remained strong and self-confident, and as the economic miracle’ began to fade into the light of common day, workers more and more started to realise the need to rely on their own strength — as was shown, notably, in the big metal-workers’ strike for the 35-hour week in 1984. Nor did the SPD in power significantly liberalise or humanise West German society. Brandt and Schmidt flaunted their tough atti¬ tude to left-wing ‘terrorism’ and took no steps to give any political rights whatsoever to the four and a half million immigrants living in West Germany. In 1972 — the same year as the culmination of the Ostpolitik — Brandt laid down a policy that all public employees were under an obligation to ‘defend the free democratic order at all times’ and that membership of radical organisations ‘and other forms of support for such parties and organisations’ was incompatible with employment in the public service.28 This ban, which came to be known as the Berufsverbot (professional ban), enabled provincial administrations in West Germany to dismiss or refuse employment to those belonging to or sympathising with the Communist Party or other left organisations. One estimate claimed that a million people had been vetted under the Berufsverbot and four thousand refused jobs.29 Despite its economic strengths. West Germany was not immune from the world recession. By the mid-seventies the notorious ‘economic miracle’ was going sour, and the SPD found itself playing the classic role of managing the crisis. In 1975 a major wave of spending cuts, involving transport, health and education, was introduced. Finally in 1982 the crisis inside the government erupted. The basis of the deal between the SPD and the Free Democrats had been that the former would encourage public spending while the latter encouraged private investment. The recession would no longer permit them to co-exist. The Free Democratic economics minister put forward an alternative economic policy which would have warmed Thatcher’s heart. This included a cut in the level of unemployment benefit, reductions in sick pay and maternity grants, and limits on public sector wages. The SPD was now caught in a cleft stick. If it accepted the proposals — enthusiastically backed by the employers — it would lose any vestige of credibility as a workers’ party. Yet it had already presided over austerity policies to such an extent that it could not mobilise popular support as it had done in 1972. The coalition collapsed and the Free Democrats joined the Christian Democrats in office, an arrangement confirmed by elections some months later. The switch

Bailing out the System

206

confirmed the essentially bipartisan nature of SPD policy; the new government continued SPD foreign policy and shifted from its economic policy only on minor points of detail.

So the SPD returned to opposition, where it could start to rebuild its credibility by improving its links — in the most responsible manner — with the trade unions and the peace movement. In its thirteen years in power it had established impeccable credentials as a reliable party of government. Its services would undoubtedly be needed again in the future. ★

★

★

Other examples of social democracy in power tend to tell a similar story. The Norwegian Labour Party dominated governments from 1935 to 1965, and again from 1971 to 1972 and from 1973 to 1981. But the Labour Party’s policy was always one of reforms within the system. In the post-war period it pursued a policy of class co-operation for reconstruction, expressed in the form of joint production commit¬ tees, a ban on strikes and a commitment to the mixed economy. In 1949 Labour adopted a programme which declared that the party was ‘no longer the representative of a single class or a single group’. When Labour returned to power in the seventies it was able to take advantage of an oil boom which flooded money into the country. Given Norway’s small population of only four million, Labour could allow high wages and good education, health and transport services. But even the oil boom could not let Norway opt out of the world economy; by 1981 inflation was running at 17 per cent, enough to send Labour to electoral defeat. In April 1986 Norway saw its biggest strike for 50 years in defence of workers’ conditions. This brought down the right-wing government and put Labour in power yet again — but with no promise of a solution to the crisis. Scandinavia, West Germany and Austria have given social demo¬ crats elsewhere a classless rhetoric which they can try to copy. But their achievements, such as they are, are unlikely to be copied.

Chapter 17 Ashes to ashes

THE HISTORIC ROLE of social democracy has been to defend the capitalist system. To play this role it has to have a popular base; you can’t sell out if you have nothing to sell. To get this base it must, now and then, deliver reforms; a reformist party that never achieved a reform would be unlikely to romp home at the polls. Workers in the mass are motivated, not by abstract ideas, but by material interest. As long as most workers believe they can gain some improvements within the social system, they will accept it; it is only when the system denies them improvement and even survival that they will move to smash it and replace it with a society run by and for working people. The grip of reformism over the four decades since the Second World War has therefore to be understood as a product of the economic circumstances of the period. The majority of the working class believed that the system had delivered some reforms, and could be made to deliver more. The long post-war boom created a situation in which the nature of reformist consciousness went through a significant transformation. Full employment put workers in a much stronger bargaining position towards their employers. If strike rates seemed low, it was because workers could often win what they wanted without actually stopping work. What this meant was a localisation of the process of reform. Workers relied more on their strength within the individual work¬ place, less on national trade unions or parliamentary representatives. Workers’ earnings came to depend more on local agreements and less on national negotiations; it was sometimes claimed that the most successful strike was one begun and ended before the full-time official was able to intervene. Not only wages but holidays and various ‘fringe benefits’ became the subject of workplace negotiation. Paradoxically workers came to rely more and more on their own self-activity and

208

Bailing out the System

self-organisation, yet at the same time they saw less and less need for ‘politics’, for politics involved a level of generalisation which seemed simply unnecessary. While the specific forms which this process took varied greatly from one country to another, the general consequence was a significant change in the attitudes of the members and voters who made up social democracy’s mass base. The end of the long boom weakened workers’ local strength and forced them to look to more ‘political’ solutions; however, the fun¬ damental changes of the post-war period have not been reversed. Over the same period there has been a change in the nature of the working class. Many observers have claimed that the working class is actually disappearing. In the fifties it was alleged that affluence had reached such a level that class distinctions no longer mattered; in the late seventies and eighties the decline of traditional heavy industry has been identified with the erosion of the proletariat as such. Unfor¬ tunately for its enemies, the working class does not vanish so easily. As every strike shows, when the exploited withdraw their labour the lights go out, the bread is not baked or the supplies delivered. Certainly it is true that there has been a decline in the number of manual workers and a rise in the proportion of so-called ‘white-collar’ workers in the labour force. But the latter category misleadingly covers 2 variety of different forms of work, including a large mass of clerical, technical and professional workers who are an integral part of the working class. The past two or three decades have seen a massive extension of trade union organisation among such workers. While the traditional self-employed middle class has declined, a new middle class, of professional and managerial workers, often products of the massive expansion of higher education, has emerged. Though such people may be salaried employees, and even unionised, their status, attitudes and control over their own work (and often over the work of others) means that they cannot be considered part of the working class (although they may be a potential ally for it). A substan¬ tial proportion of those who make up this new middle class are state employees, and they have a material interest in the expansion of public spending and the growth of the public sector. Many of this layer have therefore been attracted towards social democracy. These various changes led to a complete collapse of the traditional style of social democratic organisation. This had reached its highest point in the Second International before 1914, especially in the German and Austrian parties. The German SPD not only had a million members and ninety daily papers, but it offered a virtual alternative society, with a whole range of economic and cultural institutions for workers, extending to workers’ choirs, sports clubs and stamp-collecting circles.

Ashes to Ashes

209

Since 1945 workers have taken a far more pragmatic attitude towards social democratic parties as a source of reform. The result has been a much greater volatility. The traditional indications of class consciousness — voting figures, party membership, readership of papers — have become less reliable, and this working-class action has become much less predictable. A classic example of such volatility is shown by the work done by sociologist John Goldthorpe on Vauxhall carworkers in Luton in the sixties. After scrupulous investigation he concluded that the workers might well see ‘their relationship with their firm in a generally positive way’ and that most had a ‘co-operative attitude to management’. Within a month of Goldthorpe’s published conclusions hitting the bookstands, The Times reported that ‘near-riot conditions’ had developed at Vauxhall’s Luton plant with two thousand workers singing The Red Flag and calling ‘String him up!’ whenever a direc¬ tor’s name was mentioned.1 On a broader scale we may recall the way in which all observers from left and right alike were taken totally by surprise by the events of May 1968 in France. This volatility has serious implications for revolutionary strategy. When reformists are elected without illusions then disillusion does not follow; in any case all the experience shows that disillusion with the left in power leads not to revolution but to reaction, to a return to conservatism or, even worse, to a search for scapegoats through racism; this seems inevitable unless a revolutionary organisation can offer a real alternative. In the twenties, when there were many illusions and little experi¬ ence of reformism in power, it made sense to demand the election of reformists so that their inadequacies could be exposed. Nowadays such a strategy has far less potential. Reformism cannot be by-passed, and it is still right to call for a vote for reformist parties, but the main emphasis must be on building a revolutionary alternative. Members As far as organised party membership is concerned most social democratic parties have experienced a long-term decline in member¬ ship over the period since 1945. This has been counteracted only partly by periods of growth when parties have been electorally success¬ ful (and thus had more jobs to offer) or when they have swung to the left and therefore seemed to be a more plausible focus for action. The membership of the British Labour Party in 1952 was just over one million individuals (not counting trade union affiliates). While the change in methods of calculation used makes it hard to give precise equivalents, a realistic estimate for 1978 was 284,000, and while by BOS-N

210

Bailing out the System

1985 there had been a significant rise to 320,000, this was still only a third of the figure for the early fifties.2 The French SFIO declined from 335,000 members in 1945 to 70,000 in 1966; in some areas the SFIO had more elected municipal and cantonal councillors than it had registered members.3 The reorganised Socialist Party climbed from 80,000 in 1971 to 180,000 in 1978, still way behind the 1945 figure. If we take the measure of a simple ratio between a social demo¬ cratic party’s voters and its organised members, we find huge variations by the early eighties. In countries where social democracy has been almost permanently in power the figure is high; in Sweden 42.4 members per hundred voters, in Austria 29.7. Where social democratic parties alternate in power the figures are lower — 5.9 per hundred voters in West Germany, 5.7 in Britain — and where there are mass Communist Parties as rival organisers of activists the figures are lower still — 4.5 in Italy and 3.1 in France. In Spain, where the PSOE has had only a few years of legal organisation, the figure is just 1.8 members per hundred voters.4 It is not only a decline in members that is at stake, but also a shift in the class composition of social democratic parties. Statistics in this field are notoriously difficult and contradictory, largely because of the sloppy and inaccurate categories used by most social scientists. It is often hard to distinguish between a shift in membership from manual workers to white-collar workers, reflecting a trend in the working class generally, and a rise in the influence of the ‘new middle class’. But in general there is an unmistakable tendency for social democratic parties to be less and less workers’ parties in any real sense of the word. Thus one study of the French Socialist Party in the seventies shows that 38.2 per cent of its members came from the working class (defined as manual and white-collar workers, technicians, low grade civil servants and primary teachers) — roughly equivalent to the weight of these groups in the population as a whole. The figure for the new middle class (professionals, higher grade teachers, overseers and middle management) was 17.4 per cent against only 5 per cent for this group in the overall population.5 In its attempt to challenge the Communist Party’s industrial base, the French Socialist Party in the seventies made a major effort to establish workplace sections; by 1977 it claimed a thousand of these. But as one commentator noted: ‘Such workplace sections as do exist are frequently middle-class because “workplace” may very likely mean administration (bank, office or whatever) and because in a factory middle management may be the main Socialist recruiting ground.’6 On average 20 per cent of members of Socialist workplace sections are not unionised.7

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By the sixties the Italian Socialist Party was described as having become more and more a party of ‘civil servants and the employees in the semi-state companies’.8 In 1945 the proportion of working-class members in the party was 62 percent; by 1978 it was only 24 percent.9 The West German SPD in 1956 contained 54.4 per cent industrial workers and 19.7 per cent white-collar workers and public employees; by 1971 the figure were 35 per cent industrial workers and 36 per cent white-collar and public employees.10 The proportion of workers was now somewhat lower than in the population as a whole. When we look at the higher echelons of the parties the shift is even more striking. In 1973 the French Socialist Party had 18.1 per cent manual workers in its ranks; but among members of leading bodies the proportion was only 3 per cent.11 As for the British Labour Party, ministers from working-class backgrounds made up about half the membership of Attlee’s cabinets in the forties. Under Wilson the proportion was 26 per cent in 1964 and after the cabinet reshuffle of October 1969 it fell to zero.12 A survey of 441 adopted Labour candidates before the 1983 general election showed 80 manual workers, as against 80 lecturers, 77 teachers, 47 lawyers and 34 managers.13 Social democracy is the politics of passivity, and in general social democratic parties encourage a passive membership. The old pattern of parties providing an alternative culture for their members is now stone dead; the new pattern is one in which a minority of members — mainly those seeking to make careers in national or local government — engage in a high level of activity, while the rest of the members pay subscriptions, attend occasional meetings and do a little campaigning at election times. Above all there is no discipline imposed on members outside of direct party concerns, and especially not in relation to trade union activity. For reformism, politics and economics remain strictly separate. A shop steward leading a strike, a union official trying to sell the strike out — and even the factory manager trying to break it — may all be members of the same party. Of course there are exceptions to the trend, especially when it appears that the left may be making gains in the party. In the early eighties, at the time of the upsurge in the British Labour Party around Tony Benn, there was undoubtedly not only an increase in party membership, but a higher level of membership involvement. Such movements are, however, generally short-lived. European Communist Parties — at least until the sixties and to some extent later — have been parties of activists, able to mobilise their members for non-electoral activities such as demonstrations, pickets and local campaigns. Social democratic parties have generally been weak in the area of non-electoral mobilisation; their activity has

212

Bailing out the System

been overwhelmingly geared to electioneering. In the late seventies, when the French Socialist Party had some 180,000 members, the figure included more than 100,000 who had been elected to some national or local government body.14 (France has an exceptionally large number of small towns and villages with local councils.) If the number of defeated candidates is added, it becomes clear that as a membership body, the French Socialist Party is an organisation of councillors and aspirant councillors. Voters In a sense the obsessive parliamentarism of social democracy is paradoxical, for the whole trend of post-war politics has been to devalue parliamentary institutions. The growing power of capitalist monopolies and multinationals, plus the concentration of decision¬ making (generally secret) as a result of the nuclear arms race, means that there is less and less effective power in the hands of members of parliament or even of ministers. Tony Benn records that though he was minister responsible for atomic research and served in four British cabinets, he was never told the basis on which US nuclear weapons sited in Britain could be fired.15 At the same time there has been a trend for the parliamentary representation of social democratic parties to become more and more autonomous from the rest of the party. The parliamentary party becomes a policy-making body in its own right. A contempt for parliamentary institutions is now widespread among many working people. This in itself is not progressive; it can feed fascism as easily as the left. But it must be recognised as a factor which helps to explain the growing volatility of voting patterns. Increasingly voters choose their party, not on the basis of long¬ standing class or ideological loyalty, but from a short-term pragmatic judgment about policies or leaders. Certainly social democratic votes may increase dramatically; the French Socialist Party went from 12.5 per cent of the poll in 1962 to 20.7 percent in 1973 and 37.8 percent in 1981. But there is no evidence that this spectacular rise reflected any significant shift in attitudes or alignments. Often electoral statistics seem contradictory and unclear in their implications. In 1964, when the British Labour Party won the general election, it gained fewer votes than in 1959, when it lost disastrously, and in the two ‘victories’ of 1974 the Labour vote was lower than at any time since 1935. Voting patterns seem to be ever less determined by class loyalties. Between 1966 and 1979 the percentage of manual workers voting Labour fell from 69 per cent to 50 per cent.16 In the 1969 election there was an 11 per cent swing to the Tories among skilled workers,

Ashes to Ashes

213

but at the same time Labour actually gained votes among professionals and managerial workers (presumably mainly public sector employees apprehensive of Tory spending cuts).17 In 1983 only 39 per cent of trade unionists voted Labour.18 The other side of the coin is shown by the French Socialist Party. Between 1973 and 1981 it increased its share of the manual worker vote from 27 per cent to 44 per cent (largely at the expense of the Communist Party). But this was during a period of general advance for the Socialists, and this advance was not specifically worker-based — during the same period they increased their share of the professional and managerial vote from 7 per cent to 38 per cent.19 Even in Sweden, where the SAP has exceptionally close political and organisational links with the unions, the proportion of trade unionists voting SAP fell from 81 per cent in 1968 to 66 per cent in 1976.20 The main trend that seems apparent here is a substantial and probably increasing volatility in voting behaviour. In Britain since the Second World War there has been a regular pattern, indicated by opinion polls and by-elections, of a sharp swing away from the party in power between elections followed by a swing back to the ruling party at election times. There seems to be little correlation between the size of such mid-term swings and subsequent election results, making it difficult to predict electoral change.21 The implication seems to be that a large part of the electorate distrust whoever happens to be in power, but have little confidence that the alternative will actually do any better. Over the past twenty years approximately one elector in three has changed party allegiance from one election to the next.22 Thus voting patterns do not represent any strong expression of class consciousness or class identification, but are much more a pragmatic response to what seems the best available choice — or more likely the lesser evil — in a given situation. If people were told they could have sex only once every five years, and that then it would last only ten seconds, they would take to the streets. But most people accept this as a reasonable ration of electoral democracy. Voting patterns are unlikely to tell us much about what people really want and will fight to get. The Press At one time social democracy’s control of the press was an essential means of retaining its grip on its base. Before 1914 parties affiliated to the Second International produced some two hundred daily papers. The withering of the active base of social democracy — together with the rise of television and the concentration of press ownership — has meant a universal decline in the social democratic press.

Bailing out the System

214

In Britain the Labour Party was by the sixties unable to continue to support The Daily Herald; the paper was sold and became the reactionary, pro-Tory Sun. The Herald died for want of advertisers, not readers (at the time of its demise its circulation was higher than that of the Guardian, Times and Telegraph combined), but its failure was ultimately the failure of the movement to support it. Various attempts to launch a new Labour daily collapsed ignominiously, and the party’s Labour Weekly sells only around 19,000 copies (to a membership of over 300,000), while the unofficial Tribune sells less than half that,23 and survives only on the basis of trade union advertising (which must blunt its ability to criticise the union bureaucracy). A similar picture emerges elsewhere in Europe. In France in the fifties the SFIO’s Le Populaire was reduced to a single sheet daily; it was produced not for readers, but so that other papers and the radio would quote its editorials.24 The provincial press is still relatively strong in France, and some papers remain under Socialist control, but the national daily most closely aligned to the Socialist Party, Le Matin, saw its circulation fall below 80,000 in 1985. In Greece the pro-PASOK daily Gnomi closed in 1984 with a sale of less than 10,000.25 The Communist Party press, at one time supported by an activist base, has seen a similar decline. The Belgian Communist Party aban¬ doned its daily paper in the 1960s, and for many years both the British and French Communist Parties have waged campaigns to persuade their own members to read the official party paper. Such decline is not inevitable, as is shown by the survival of the revolutionary press in Europe, notably by the fact that Italy in the late seventies had three revolutionary daily papers. But a successful press can be produced only by an organisation committed to selling its paper and fighting for its ideas, not by one steeped in electoralist passivity. Municipal Socialism While parliament has declined in credibility, some places have seen a revival of illusions about local government, and the possibility of building enclaves of ‘municipal socialism’. In practice the logic of local government leads inexorably to reformism. The currently fashionable phrase ‘local state’ is a contradiction in terms. There is only one state; it is based on the national unit of territory and that is where the power lies. In financial terms local government must be dependent on either state finance, or on locally-raised rates or taxes (or a combination of both). If the former is the case, the paymaster will call the tune on

Ashes to Ashes

215

policy. If money is raised locally, there is a greater degree of autonomy, but still a basic dilemma. If local rates or taxes fall mainly on businesspeople, the latter will move to a more hospitable region, causing loss of revenue and unemployment; if they fall on residents, then it will be working people who have to foot the bill. Thus even the most progres¬ sive council cannot redistribute wealth between classes; it can only effect a redivision of workers’ meagre resources. In Britain the rating system works sharply to the disadvantage of the working class. 1981 figures showed that a household with an income of £26 a week paid 7.5 per cent of its income in rates, but one with an income ten times that paid less than 2 per cent (the figures take rebates into account).26 In the fifties and sixties the Communist Parties of France and Italy, excluded from national government, built up their strength in local government. The classic example is Bologna, controlled by the Italian Communist Party since the Second World War (and cited as a model by supporters of the left-wing Greater London Council in the eighties). The Bologna municipality pursued a ‘progressive’ policy, building schools and low-cost housing of a standard unknown in the rest of Italy. It did so within the constraints of a carefully balanced budget. Moreover, the council was a major employer — with several thousand jobs directly in its gift and thousands more under its influ¬ ence. As a result the role of the Communist Party in industrial disputes was normally one of conciliation — between Communist workers and a Communist council — rather than class struggle. The Communist Party’s agreements to support the Italian government in the late seventies limited the autonomy of local government still further. In 1977 the Bologna authority cracked down on a protest by students and unemployed; one militant was shot and dozens jailed. In February 1985 Bologna’s image was tarnished further by the arrest of 23 municipal workers on corruption charges. In the early eighties many on the British left, unable to challenge the Tories on a national level, became enthusiastic about the possibili¬ ties of local government. The new Labour-controlled Greater London Council (GLC), elected in 1981, seemed to offer a fresh model of municipal socialism. But the GLC soon found itself coming up against the limits of the system — and of its own politics. In 1981 the GLC introduced substantial reductions in London Transport bus and tube fares. A series of legal rulings declared that the fares must be raised again. The GLC ran a widespread public campaign and fought further legal actions, and eventually succeeded in introducing fare cuts, though on a smaller scale than the first time. This was a partial victory and clearly contributed to the popularity of the GLC. But it is clear that total strike action by London Transport

216

Bailing out the System

workers could have forced a complete victory in a much shorter space of time. It is, of course, not certain that London Transport workers could have been won for such a programme of action. What is quite certain is that the GLC leaders made no effort to try to mobilise them. Likewise GLC plans (via the Greater London Enterprise Board) to establish workers’ co-operatives often served to divert workers from militant action in defence of jobs. Even the limited achievements of the GLC and other Labour councils were too much for the Tory government, which resolved to crush them. The GLC was to be abolished; other councils were attacked by sharp reductions in government grants, followed by ‘rate-capping’ legislation which forbade them to raise money through local rate increases. The effect of this was to enforce massive cutbacks in spending on welfare and social services; the attack was most severe on councils with the highest expenditure — namely those with the most needy and deprived citizens. Initially Labour councils — whose very justification for existence was under threat — produced a defiant response. But even the most militant councillors remained trapped within the framework of elec¬ toral politics, and few were willing to cross the fateful dividing line between political and economic struggle. As a result there was little attempt to mobilise industrial action against the government attack. Gradually the resistance crumbled. By 1985 the GLC had lost its battle against abolition, and Ken Livingstone and other GLC leaders had agreed a comprehensive budget which avoided confrontation with the Tory government. The longest struggle came in Liverpool. In a city devastated by unemployment a left Labour council had some very real achievements to its credit — notably the building of 3,700 council houses. In 1984, after a long campaign against government financial limits, the council agreed a deal with the government which brought in more money, but meant a 17 per cent rate rise, withdrawal of the tenants’ decoration allowance, and the inability of the council to improve employment and services. What made things worse was that this came in the middle of the 1984-85 miners’ strike; a fight alongside the miners, mobilising industrial action, could have brought results. By the autumn of 1985 the situation was much worse. The Labour council again failed to mobilise industrial action, and were subjected to vicious abuse from the national Labour Party leadership. Isolated, they were forced to accept a compromise that was in reality a major defeat. The prospects for socialism in one borough are no more rosy in other parts of Europe. In France, traditionally, local government has been relatively weak in relation to the central power, which has kept a

Ashes to Ashes

217

tight rein on spending. In 1964 a government-appointed prefect cancelled a school trip organised by the (Communist) council of Saint-Denis. Local authorities do have the power to build schools and libraries, and control the education budget apart from teachers’ salaries. But they face heavy financial problems and in the seventies were forced to make massive rate increases. While local authorities have relatively little margin for making policy, they do have at their disposal large numbers of jobs; this leads at best to political patronage, and at worst to corruption pure and simple. In 1982 the Mitterrand government introduced reforms giving more autonomy to local government. None the less municipal government has always been very im¬ portant for the French Socialist Party. During its long years in opposi¬ tion local government was its main area of activity, and local councillors make up a very high proportion of the party’s base. A typical star of the Socialist Party was Hubert Dubedout, a worker at the Grenoble Nuclear Centre in the sixties who found that the taps in his fourthfloor flat did not work. He and some fellow technocrats launched a campaign for the modernisation of the city’s water supply, which ended with Dubedout becoming mayor of the city. He aimed to create a new technocratic image for local government, and won great prestige by attracting the Winter Olympics to Grenoble. Originally non-party, Dubedout joined the new Socialist Party in the early seventies. A rather less pretty picture is that of Marseilles. For more than thirty years Marseilles was ruled by a Socialist council under the leadership of Gaston Defferre. Defferre won control of the council on the basis of anti-communism — in 1965 his posters showed a hammer and sickle with the caption ‘Never That’ — and kept it by blatant boundary-rigging. After he became Minister of the Interior in 1981 he boasted of sending thousands of extra police to Marseilles. By 1983 more than 25 of his staff were in jail for corruption.27 In Italy the situation is as bad. In 1975 Diego Novelli became Communist mayor of Turin. He concerned himself with local housing problems and set out to promote the interests of small industry. He was widely recognised as being capable and honest and fought to stamp out corruption. In 1983 a deal between the PSI and the Christian Democrats over national politics forced his resignation. Turin was now run by the Socialists in alliance with the Christian Democrats. By 1985 five Socialists (including the former deputy mayor) were facing corruption charges.28 Everywhere the lessons seem to be the same. Municipal socialism can deliver some reforms, but the margin for this gets narrower as the

218

Bailing out the System

crisis gets deeper. At best municipal socialism is an impossible utopia; at worst a swamp of corruption. Trade unions Municipal socialism involves only a small minority of the labour movement; often less than half the electorate bothers even to vote in municipal polls. The main support of reformism in the present period is the trade union bureaucracy — and as the old form of social democratic party organisation vanishes, it is the trade unions which provide the main link between reformist politics and the mass of workers. For trade unions involve the mass of workers at the place where they exercise their strength — the workplace. (Even where the unionisation level is low, as in France, many non-unionised workers look to the unions and support their action.) The trade union bureaucracy are committed to reformism by their position in society. Their function is to mediate between capital and labour, therefore they cannot wish for the definitive victory of either side. At the same time they are anxious to extend their power to as many aspects of social life as possible; hence they welcome political links with parties that are prepared to incorporate them and give them positions of power and influence in the administration of society. There is always a close link between the union bureaucrats and the leadership of social democratic parties, even though the British pattern of a formal organisational link between party and unions is a compara¬ tive rarity in Europe. The West German unions, for example, have no formal connection with the SPD, but virtually all union leaders and very many union officials are SPD members; the unions give electoral support to the SPD and, more covertly, financial support as well. The link is, indeed, primarily ideological rather than organisa¬ tional. Even where whole union federations are controlled by the Communist Party, as in France or Italy, or where important union positions are held by Communists, the logic of their politics is still social democratic. It is the trade union structure and its involvement in policies of co-operation with the employers that more than anything else in¬ corporates workers into the political outlook of reformism and con¬ tinues to bind them to reformist political parties. In France there is a long tradition going back to the first years of the century that insists that unions and parties shall not be formally linked. In the fifties the SFIO worked closely with Force Ouvriere, the product of a right-wing, pro-American split from the CGT union confederation. However, Force Ouvriere’s base was slender, and when the Socialist Party was reorganised in the seventies it developed closer

Ashes to Ashes

219

links with the CFDT, which as an ex-Catholic union confederation had a broader base, especially in the more modern industries, and was not caught up in the old Cold War rhetoric. The general secretaries of both Force Ouvriere and the CFDT are individual members of the Socialist Party. In Spain it was an essential part of the PSOE’s development of credibility that it should establish influence over the Workers’ Com¬ missions. By 1978 60 per cent of Workers’ Commission members were PSOE voters. Felipe Gonzalez then launched the strategy of trying to draw these into the ranks of the PSOE’s own union, the UGT.29 In Italy the PSI used the UIL union federation as a means to strengthen its credibility. The UIL had originated as a right-wing split from the CGIL, but in the seventies it used its links with various Maoist tendencies to develop a left-wing critique of the Communist Party and thus enhance the credibility of the PSI.30 The question of bureaucracy is not simply a matter of a few autocratic leaders. It is a question of thousands of workers being integrated into the administration of the existing system through various positions in the workplaces which involve them spending all or most of their time on trade union work and thus becoming distanced from those they represent. In France the comites d'entreprise (factory committees) are the main means of achieving this integration. They do not, of course, control production, but they administer certain services (canteens, holiday facilities) and in so doing, themselves employ substantial numbers of workers. They are also involved in consultations which encourage the union representatives on the committee to think of the interests of the company rather than the interests of those they represent. Thus a whole layer of workers come to adopt the same reformist outlook as the trade union bureaucracy. In West Germany the works councils are likewise designed to wean workers away from class identification. Legal judgments have determined that dismissal without notice is justified where members of the works council have caused ‘labour trouble’ through agitation for a political party, or distributed leaflets in the workplace attacking the employer. In one case, a member of the works council was dismissed without notice because he attempted to induce non-union employees to join the trade union. The works council has to observe neutrality in any strike conducted by the unions.31 Trade union reformism and parliamentary reformism reinforce each other in another way too. A pattern that can be observed in the history of the labour movement since early in the century is the alternation between syndicalism and parliamentarism. When workers are able to achieve improvements in their conditions through direct

220

Bailing out the System

action in the workplace, they feel little need to generalise or to seek parliamentary representation. If, however, the balance of forces means that industrial struggle is less able to produce results, then there is a tendency to rely more on what can be achieved by getting a left-wing government elected. When such a government fails to deliver the promised reforms, there will be a turn back to direct action. Thus in Britain the fifties there was a parallel development of a strong shop stewards’ organisation and an increasing tendency among workers to vote Conservative. While a good number of stewards were Communists, this was not reflected in any degree of parliamentary support for the Communist Party. By the mid-seventies rising unemployment was undermining the power of shop stewards and leading to a decline in workers’ selfconfidence; to some extent this was expressed by a return to interest in the Labour Party, though not in the form of mass active involvement. This may be one of the reasons why the Labour government was able to sell its ‘social contracts’ to workers in this period. By the end of the Callaghan government in 1979, Labour had proved unable to deliver, and there was a revival of direct action in the so-called ‘winter of discontent’, followed by the Tory election victory. More generally, the experience of the falling level of workers’ struggle and self-confidence in the late seventies may be linked to the revival of European social democracy in the period, although it is important to stress that a parliamentary and electoral revival does not necessarily mean a revival of active involvement. The problem is that the alternation between reformism and syndicalism can become like a permanent pendulum swing; self¬ activity in the workplace without any generalisation of political ideas gives way to abstract political generalisation without self-activity and vice versa. The barrier between politics and economics — one of the mainstays of bourgeois ideology — is left intact. To break the grip of reformism we have to go beyond this sterile alternation. To do that two things must be recalled. Firstly, that ‘politics’ is not a set of abstract formulae — it is simply a generalisation from the experience of specific struggles. Secondly, the real problem is not one of consciousness, but of confidence; it is not that workers like the present system or believe its ideology — rather they lack confidence in their power to change it. Therefore it is necessary to show that there is a viable alternative. Such an alternative must have two components: on the one hand, a generalised account of an alterna¬ tive society based on workers’ democracy; on the other, the building up of workers’ confidence in their own self-activity through piecemeal struggles in the present. To put forward both of these, and to show

Ashes to Ashes

221

that one is rooted in the other by arguing for the politics of generalised self-activity, is the task of a revolutionary party. Until such a party is built, reformism will keep its hold, by default rather than by enthusiasm. To build such a party means exploiting the contradictions of the trade union bureaucracy. For the pressure is constantly on the bureaucracy to tie itself more closely to the policies of social demo¬ cracy — to join governments, to sign ‘social contracts’, to call off strikes which may be electorally damaging. Yet the more they submit to such pressures, the more they visibly fail to represent the interests of their members, and thus open the possibility of an alternative leadership growing inside the unions. It is in the workplace — rather than in the polling booth or the council chamber — that the founda¬ tions of reformist influence are to be found; it is in the workplace that a movement can be built which can shake and undermine those foundations.

Part 6:

Co-opting the left

Chapter 18 Friend or foe

who have read the first five sections of this book will accept the case that has been presented; they will concur in denouncing the Wilsons and the Mollets of this world. They will insist nonetheless that there are many people within the social democratic parties who deplore such leaders and such policies, and that therefore the parties can eventually be transformed. Now it is undoubtedly true that social democratic parties contain many rank-and-file militants who are totally committed to the socialist transformation of society. But history shows that attempts to reform social democracy, from within or from without, have invariably failed. This concluding section will set out some of the evidence for this claim. MANY

★

★

★

Most social democratic parties have a more or less organised left wing, usually organised around a paper, a parliamentary grouping or a well-known leader. In this they differ sharply from Stalinist parties, which try to preserve a monolithic structure; if in more recent times the various Communist Parties have been obliged to tolerate dissidents on their right, they will not permit them on their left. Often the polemics between left and right take on the dramatic tones of confrontation. Aneurin Be van came close to expulsion from the British Labour Party in the 1950s; in 1964 the left wing of the Italian Socialist Party broke away, and a similar split took place in Portugal in 1975. But behind the bluster it is possible to discern a harmony of interests between left and right. Each in a sense reinforces the credibility of the other. When the right denounce the left as ‘Marxists’ or ‘extremists’ they are reassuring the bourgeoisie of their own loyalty to the system. At the same time they are reinforcing the credibility of the left in the eyes of its own rank and file; if they are

Bailing out the System

224

worthy of such criticism, then it is worthwhile to carry on the fight within the party. When the left criticises the right, they convince their own followers that there are real differences; at the same time they consolidate the reputation of the right as ‘responsible’ and ‘moderate’. Traditionally, social democracy has needed a left in order to mobilise its rank and file. The militants that a party needs to stick up posters and canvass for votes in the pouring rain will not usually be inspired by the bland and innocuous pronouncements of the reformist right. Local activists therefore tend to constitute the bulk of the forces of the left. The more recent tendency for elections to be fought primar¬ ily by television rather than by local organisation is one of the factors which has undermined the strength of the social democratic left. In addition the role of the left slots into the electoral cycle. After an electoral defeat the left is often given its head, in order to inspire the rank and file, win new recruits, and convince people that the next spell in power will not be as disastrous as the last one. As the next election looms, the emphasis switches to party unity and the struggle to win the middle ground; unless the left disarms itself, it is cajoled or forced into silence. On occasions the right have been quite candid about the functional role of the left. Thus Harold Lever, a member of the Wilson govern¬ ment (and himself a millionaire) said: . . . businessmen should show less sensitivity and more sense. It is time they realised that a ringing political slogan is often used as a sop to party diehards or as an anaesthetic while doctrinal surgery is being carried out.1

In practice, of course, things are not quite so simple. Both left and right are, after all, fighting to win, so a harmonious balance is not always preserved. But on the few occasions when the left do come out on top, their victory is likely to be a hollow one, for the right simply change the rules of the game. When the British Labour left won a victory on nuclear disarmament in 1960, Hugh Gaitskell and the parliamentary leadership ignored the decision.* Where they can’t bend the rules, they walk out. In 1920 the French Socialist Party voted by a majority of three to one to join the Communist International; the right wing left to form a new party. Right-wing splits from the Italian Socialist Party in the forties or the British Labour Party in the eighties followed the same pattern. On the other hand the right may establish complete dominance. In the West German SPD the very small organised left — mainly among *See chapter 8.

Friend or Foe?

225

the Jusos (Young Socialists) — has been completely marginalised by the party bureaucrats and has no prospect of even a symbolic success. Unlike virtually every other social democratic party, the SPD effectively has no parliamentary left. This may make it seem like a bureaucrats’ dream, but in fact the SPD has paid a price for right-wing orthodoxy. Many of those who in other countries might have joined a social democratic party in order to try to change it have seen no point in going into the SPD. In recent years many such people have turned to the ecological movement, the Greens,* who have had some electoral success at the SPD’s expense. A survey in 1984 showed the Greens getting 21 per cent of the vote in the 18-25 age group2 — a serious threat to the SPD’s support. The SPD found itself obliged to make some gestures to its left and to do deals with forces outside the control of party discipline. A major component of the left social democratic outlook is nationalism. Behind a veneer of internationalist rhetoric, the socialdemocratic left often turns out to be more nationalistic than the right. The explanation is simple. The left seeks to implement more radical economic changes than the right, but it does so within the same framework, namely the national economy. Hence when faced with difficulties, its automatic response is to try to isolate that national economy from the world environment; a whole array of nationalist solutions — import controls, withdrawal from the Common Market, and so on — are invoked. Two examples will show the limitations of the social democratic left. France Ever since its reconstitution in the early seventies, the French Socialist Party has had an organised left current — the Centre d’Etudes, de Recherches et d’Education Socialistes (CERES). The CERES was formed back in 1964 when the tendency’s most prominent leader, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, and a group of his associates joined the SFIO. The SFIO at the time was a discredited rump; most of the interesting left-wing thought and activity was going on among those who had split from the SFIO to form the PSU (United Socialist Party).** But the CERES group got the patronage of the ageing Guy Mollet and bided their time until the regroupment of 1969-71, in which they played a significant role and established themselves as an important component of the new Socialist Party. *See chapter 19. **See chapter 19. BOS-O

226

Bailing out the System

The CERES are often described as being an orthodox reformist left wing, or even as being ‘Marxist’; its leaders tend to indulge in refer¬ ences to Gramsci. Certainly in terms of economic policy they adhere to some classic left social democratic principles. And CERES recognised, early on, the need to win back into reformist politics the generation that had been radicalised by May 1968, and the fact that this could be done within the framework of an alliance of the left; as Chevenement put it: ‘Our role was to marry the spirit of May and the strategy of unity.’3 But the most striking thing about CERES is its very deep-going nationalism. It talks a great deal about national sovereignty and national independence, advocating a renegotiation of the Common Market Treaty in order to preserve France’s sovereignty, and the adoption of protectionism to defend the French economy. This nation¬ alism also extends to defence policy. At the 1983 Socialist Party Congress Chevenement not only defended the French nuclear strike force, but actually went so far as to call for an increase in French nuclear forces.4 Even public ownership is understood primarily as a means to a nationalist end: In our eyes the policy of nationalisations was only one element in a broader strategy aiming to reconquer independence within the national and European framework.5 There was no fundamental difference between CERES and Mitterrand — except that Mitterrand was less given to nationalist rhetoric. CERES found itself in the same situation as other left currents; if it pushed its positions too far or challenged the leadership, it would be put firmly in its place. In 1973 Mitterrand threatened to resign as first secretary of the Socialist Party when the CERES-led Paris Federa¬ tion of the party took a pro-Arab stance on the Middle East. CERES was promptly called to order.6 The CERES use of the rhetoric of unity has in fact meant that it has liquidated its independent political position. At the Socialist Party Congress after the 1981 elections CERES argued that there should be no voting on rival positions.7 In 1981 Chevenement took a government position and settled down to the responsibilities of office. As Mitterrand turned to austerity in the summer of 1982 Chevenement declared that ‘the present objec¬ tive is not socialism’.8 Eventually Mitterrand’s rightward drift forced CERES to voice some sort of opposition, but its task was made more difficult by its initial backing for the government line. In March 1983 Chevenement resigned from the government and CERES began to campaign for a policy of tight import controls and investment in the nationalised industries.

Friend or Foe?

221

Chevenement continued to put nationalism at the centre of his case. He lamented that: Never since the Hundred Years War has our people gone through such a deep identity crisis. Our language, for the first time in history, is threatened with death.9

He called for a policy that would . . . maintain and strengthen the independence of the country, on the technological, cultural and military levels . . . make France into the third scientific power in the world.10

In 1984 Chevenement made his peace with Mitterrand, and re-entered the government as Minister of Education, launching a campaign for more patriotism and discipline in schools, for which he was widely applauded on the right. CERES had served as a launchingpad for Chevenement’s career, but by 1985 there was complete rightwing domination in the Socialist Party. The argument was no longer about alternative policies, but about how to win and cling on to power. After the Socialist defeat in March 1986 CERES was dissolved, and replaced by a new group called ‘Socialism and Republic’. This was openly committed to class collaboration; its draft policy statement advocated the ‘double recognition of the legitimacy of union power and of the necessity for company profits.’11 Britain The focal figure of the British Labour left in the post-war period was Aneurin Bevan. Since his death his name has been constantly invoked, notably by Harold Wilson and Neil Kinnock. Bevan’s roots were in the South Wales mining community, and his political memory went back to the Russian Revolution: I remember the miners, when they read that the Tsarist tyranny had been overthrown, rushing to meet each other with tears streaming down their cheeks, shaking hands and saying: ‘At last it has happened’.12

He thus felt no inhibitions about invoking extra-parliamentary activity. In 1936 he told the House of Commons in a debate on assistance to the unemployed: I hope if the Regulations worsen the conditions of the people in my district, they will behave in such a manner that you will require to send a regular army to keep order ... I am filled with contempt and disgust for the House of Commons.13

In April 1951 Bevan resigned from the Attlee government in

Bailing out the System

228

which he had served for six years in protest at the introduction of health service charges and increased arms expenditure. He was joined by one Harold Wilson. With the Tory victory following the same autumn, Bevan became a natural focus for a Labour left frustrated by six years of right-wing policies. The weekly paper Tribune provided an identity for what rapidly became an organised mass current in the party. A series of Tribune ‘Brains Trusts’ were launched; these were meetings with several speakers, and four or five a week were held in different parts of the country — a campaign described by one com¬ mentator as ‘the biggest, most continuous and widespread propaganda effort ever conducted within the Labour Movement.’14 In 1951 a Tribune pamphlet by Bevan and Wilson sold more than 100,000 copies. Bevan, as we have seen, was not the liberal-hearted parlia¬ mentarian he has been presented as since his death; and Bevanism, for a few years at least, took on the proportions of a mass movement. In 1954 the Bevanites even dared to cross the sacrosanct dividing line between politics and trade unionism by supporting the Steve¬ dores’ Union in a dispute with the Transport and General Workers’ Union, although this can mainly be explained as part of the long struggle between the Labour left and Arthur Deakin, the right-wing leader of the TGWU. Despite their strength and militancy, the Bevanites had no clear strategy. While they had no hope of actually winning the leadership of the party, because of the tight grip of the union bureaucracy, they had no perspective of splitting; yet were uncertain on what terms they would be willing to reintegrate themselves into the party. As Richard Crossman, a leading if cynical Bevanite, confided in his diary on 5 December 1951: The fact is that Bevanism and the Bevanites seem much more important, well-organised and Machiavellian to the rest of the Labour Party, and indeed to the

USA,

than they do to us who are in it, who know that we are

not organised, that Aneurin can never be persuaded to have any consistent and coherent strategy, and that we have not even got the beginnings of a coherent constructive policy.15

The right wing maintained a firm grip on the party machine. Early in 1955 the right on the national executive, led by Deakin and other trade union bosses (who thought they owned the party because their unions were its main source of funds), came within a hair’s breadth of expelling Bevan, who was forced to issue a statement apologising for any ‘difficulties’ he had caused the party leader, Attlee.16

Friend or Foe?

229

In 1957 Bevan broke with the left on the nuclear disarmament issue.* He was rapidly and enthusiastically integrated into the proNATO network, as his wife, Jennie Lee, recounts: ... a number of lectures were arranged for him in America so that he could begin to undo the bogey-man image of him depicted in their press as well as our own . . . Leading bankers and business associations he had addressed wrote letters of thanks to him which went beyond the demands of mere politeness.17

After the 1959 election Bevan became deputy leader of the party, but any further accommodation with the right was ended by his death in July 1960. Without Bevan the Labour left were far less imposing. The hard core of the post-war left, which provided Bevan’s main supporters, had been very ambiguous on class issues; in 1950 they had actually advocated incomes policy; Keeping Left, a pamphlet published in 1950 and signed by Crossman, Ian Mikardo, Barbara Casde and others, argued that: A democratic socialist economy cannot operate successfully if wage¬ fixing is left either to the arbitrary decision of a wage-freeze or to the accidents of unco-ordinated sectional bargaining.

By the time Harold Wilson, an ex-Bevanite, had become prime minis¬ ter, the Labour left was in some disarray, and its performance throughout the period of the Wilson government was spineless, con¬ sisting of little more than symbolic gestures. Tribune, which at the peak of Bevanism had had a circulation of no more than 18,000, went into serious decline; by the early eighties it had a sale of well under 9,000 (considerably less than Socialist Worker).18 The emergence of a new left around Tony Benn in the mid¬ seventies was a different phenomenon. Unlike Bevan, who, despite being relatively wealthy in later years, always retained a certain prole¬ tarian style, Benn had no roots in working-class struggle. Moreover, his career was in sharp contrast to the development of most Labour politicians, who begin as radicals and end up tamed by office. Benn was for many years in the centre of the party, and emerged radicalised after long spells of ministerial office between 1964 and 1970 and again between 1974 and 1979. Benn did not come out of the tradition of the Tribune left, but he responded to the new wave of industrial militancy that emerged in the seventies. He was able to see that the trade union rank and file offered a more significant base than the traditional See chapter 8.

Bailing out the System

230

Labour left, and he began to develop a rhetoric, based on radical democracy rather than anything specifically socialist, which was aimed at this audience. In the period after the 1979 election defeat, Benn rose rapidly to prominence. Systematic attacks on him in the press were paralleled by his great popularity among the activist rank and file of the Labour Party, culminating in his campaign for the deputy leadership in 1981, in which he was defeated by a tiny margin. In a period when industrial victories were very hard to come by, many militants saw changing the Labour Party as the only way forward, and Benn served as a focus for their aspirations. Benn’s actual programme for an alternative to the failures of Wilson and Callaghan was remarkably vague. He advocated public spending to reflate the economy (a Keynesian strategy tried — and abandoned — by Mitterrand); import controls — which apart from being irredeemably nationalist are unlikely to be effective in the integrated world economy of the late twentieth century; planning agreements — a reversion to the old utopia of co-operation between employers, unions and government; and a rather unspecified commit¬ ment to public ownership. This less than radical package was situated in a framework of quite overt nationalism: Democratic self-government and liberation are as legitimate an aspiration for the British people as for the people of Zimbabwe or India or Guyana or anywhere else.19

Benn clearly could not distinguish the nationalism of the imperialists from the nationalism of the oppressed; yet for many years his national¬ ism did not go so far as to advocate Britain’s leaving NATO, a demand he began to raise only in 1985.20 What Benn recognised, however, was the necessity for the Labour Party to draw in the new political currents that had developed since 1968 in order to reconstruct its activist base: The Labour Party must align itself with the women’s movement, the black movement, the environmental movement, the peace movement, the rural radical movement, the religious movements that object to monetarism and militarism, and bring back into the mainstream of the Labour Party those socialists who have been isolated in sectarian loneliness.21

As long as Benn continues to help the Labour Party co-opt to its left, the Labour right will continue to tolerate his presence. What they would not tolerate was any possibility of his emerging from minority status. The peak of Benn’s influence came in 1981,

Friend or Foe?

231

when he came close to winning the deputy leadership of the party. But over the following few years much of his support deserted him in favour of the greater ‘realism’ of Neil Kinnock; by 1985 Kinnock was confident enough to publicly declare that ‘the views of the far left would play no part in the government of the country under Labour.’22 ★

★

★

Social democratic left wings have come and gone and will continue to rise and fall. Their detailed history may depend on stages of the electoral cycle, or on the vagaries of a star performer. But as long as they accept the parliamentary and nationalist framework within which their parent parties operate, they will be powerless to achieve significant change.

Chapter 19

Living in a nowhere land

IF THOSE who have tried to transform social democracy from within have had little success, there have been no greater rewards for those who have tried to constitute organisational alternatives without break¬ ing with the logic of reformism. Ralph Miliband has recently argued that: What is needed, and has been needed for many years, is a socialist party that would bring together a lot of different people, with many different concerns and passions, men and women, young and old, black and white, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, and many others, who would be working in an organisation that was open, democratic and no doubt disputatious, totally committed to the struggle against capitalism, sexism, and racism, and to the struggle against the global counter¬ revolutionary crusade conducted by the

US

and its allies . . .

It would have respect for the demands of women, blacks, peace activists, ecologists and others in progressive social movements; and it would work with them and forge alliances, without trying ever to colonise or use them.1

This dream of a party that is neither social democratic nor Lenin¬ ist, founded on progressive social movements, may seem attractive. But it has already been tried and found wanting. Since the fifties Western Europe has seen the creation of a number of left socialist parties — in Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal, resulting from splits in the Socialist Parties, and in Denmark from a split in the Communist Party. These parties belong to the category that Marxists have tradi¬ tionally described as ‘centrist’. The term ‘centrist’ is often used as little more than an indiscriminate term of abuse; it is correctly used to describe an organisation that vacillates between reformist and revolu¬ tionary politics. Thus centrists will be typically evasive on all the main questions of Marxist politics. They will accept the historic importance

Living in a Nowhere Land

233

of the working class but also stress the need for cross-class alliances. They will recognise the necessity for radical transformation of the state machine but argue that this may be accomplished through parlia¬ mentary action. They will accept the need for a party, but reject centralised discipline and the need for trade union activists to accept party leadership. In examining centrist organisations, it is important to distinguish leaders from members. Centrist leaders are often equivocators and double-dealers, whose role in a revolutionary crisis may amount to treachery. But centrist politics also reflect evolutions in consciousness, especially under the pressure of events. People do not go to bed as reformists and wake up the next morning as revolutionaries; they pass through intermediate stages, often holding confused or contradictory views. Centrism in fact serves as a bridge between reformism and revolution — and it is a bridge on which there is two-way traffic. Some members of centrist parties may be people who have seen the inade¬ quacies of reformism and are groping their way towards revolutionary politics; others may be ex-revolutionaries working their way back to reformism. The vacillations of centrist politics can be observed in examples from France and Italy. France In 1958, following the SFIO’s disgraceful conduct over Algeria and its abject capitulation to de Gaulle,* a section of the party split away to form the Autonomous Socialist Party (PSA). Many of those in the PSA were open reformists who could have happily remained within most other European social democratic parties (the British Labour Party, the Swedish SAP and the West German SPD sent observers to the PSA’s founding congress); they simply could not stomach the excesses and bureaucratic methods of Guy Mollet. In 1960 the PSA merged with other groups, including left Christians, ex-Communists and some old-time Trotskyists, to form the Parti Socialiste Unifie (PSU). The PSU’s programme was based on a typically centrist equivocation about the question of state power: The regime will not become socialist solely from the effect of economic forces or as a result of gradual and limited reforms. The revolutionary act of seizing power by force is therefore absolutely necessary. The PSU holds it possible in present-day France to advance peacefully towards socialism; its role is to accelerate this process. But the

PSU

does not therefore

dismiss the hypothesis of a violent outcome since this depends on the resistance put up by our capitalist adversaries.2 See chapter 9.

234

Bailing out the System

Nonetheless the PSU’s record during the last years of the Algerian war was a creditable one. It organised a number of successful demon¬ strations against the war and rather less successfully tried to set up anti-fascist patrols at the time of activity by the Secret Army Organisa¬ tion, a terrorist body determined to keep Algeria French. Once the Algerian war was over, the PSU lost the focus of its activity and indeed its main reason for existence. Some sections wanted to orient the PSU towards the new technocratic layer in French society, and seminars were held relating to the problems of this group. Often the party became identified with its most celebrated member, former prime minister Pierre Mendes-France, who saw the PSU as the vehicle for his own political ambition to regroup the reformist left outside the SFIO. The events of May 1968 marked a crucial turning-point for the PSU. It was not able to act as the revolutionary party that the situation was crying out for; but it did take a position clearly to the left of the Communist Party, and many of those radicalised by the events who were looking for a political home found it in the PSU. Mendes-France resigned from a party which now seemed to be moving to the left. In the late sixties and early seventies the PSU engaged in joint activities and discussions with several of the groupings of the revolu¬ tionary left. However, the downturn of struggle after 1968 and the emergence of the new Socialist Party and the Union of the Left exercised an irresistible attractive power on sections of the PSU. In 1974 a substantial section of the PSU, led by Michel Rocard, defected to the Socialist Party.* The remaining rump of the PSU suffered a continual identity crisis. On the one hand it was unwilling to liquidate itself totally into the Socialist Party; on the other it failed to develop into an effective political alternative to the latter’s reformism. In 1981 the PSU ran their own candidate for the presidency, Huguette Bouchardeau, in order to show that it did not completely trust Mitterrand. In 1983, at a time when Mitterrand had already moved well down the road of austerity, the same Huguette Bouchardeau accepted junior ministerial office in Mitterrand’s government, giving it what one journalist called ‘an ecological, anti-nuclear, feminist and neutralist touch on a background of nostalgia for May 1968.’3 Bouchardeau’s action in joining the government was condemned by a significant section of the PSU; and two years later, in 1985, Bouchardeau resigned from the party. The stepping-stone had served its purpose. There seemed no future for the PSU except vacillating irrelevance. See chapter 15.

Living in a Nowhere Land

235

The British Labour Party has such preponderant weight in the work¬ ing class that it exercises a powerful gravitational pull on all the rest of the left. The French Socialist Party possesses much less attractive power, and the PSU had greatly assisted it by providing a channel whereby members of the extreme left could pass into the party or come under its influence. By 1986, when the PSU’s membership was down to about one thousand, even this role seemed to have come to an end, and leading figures in the PSU were advocating its dissolution.4 Italy After the formation of the Italian Centre-Left government at the end of 1963,* a section of the PSI left which was opposed to coalition government broke away to form a new party, the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP). One of its leading figures was Lelio Basso, a former general secretary of the PSI and a well-known theoreti¬ cian. Basso engaged in a typically centrist formulation when he described the nature of the new party: I have never believed that there is a compulsory political choice between parliament and the barricades, and I have always thought that the working-class movement should always use parliament as an instrument in its struggle, and should not refuse a priori to use barricades if necessary; but it cannot reduce the struggle for power to a choice between these two methods.5

This sets up a false dichotomy as a red herring to divert attention from the crucial question of the state. In itself it was an academic question — nobody was actually proposing barricades in Italy in 1964. But it led to a strategic confusion. Basso insisted that the PSIUP was neither to the ‘left’ nor to the ‘right’ of the PCI, and in particular that . . . the idea of taking up a position to the left of the

pci,

of gathering

together all forms of rebelliousness, of youthful intolerance, of uniting all the groups and cliques of intellectuals thirsting for insurrection, or, more simply, of becoming a ‘Chinese’ party in Italy is absurd and has been completely rejected.6

Behind the deliberately tendentious language which he uses to describe the option of building a revolutionary party, Basso is here preserving his freedom of manoeuvre. In particular, the PSIUP counted among its members a number of union leaders from the CGIL, including Vittorio Foa, its deputy secretary-general. The positions of such people obviously depended See chapter 10.

Bailing out the System

236

on their being able to work in co-operation with the PCI. In 1965 the PCI took a position of limited support for the Centre-Left’s economic policy. At the CGIL Congress, the PSIUP members voted with the PCI, even though the PSIUP press was condemning the government’s economic policy as pro-capitalist. In its rejection of ‘democratic centralism’ the PSIUP was showing a typical weakness of centrist formations — an inability to control its trade union members. It thus became hard to identify any point of principle which defined the PSIUP. (After all, only a year before the split, Basso himself had written: ‘I consider that a temporary alliance with the Christian Democrats cannot be refused a priori, since it may be useful for the achievement of certain specific reforms.’7 As a result the PSIUP experi¬ ence was relatively short-lived. In the 1968 general election it took 1.4 million votes, 4.5 per cent of the total. But by 1972 its vote had fallen to less than half this, and it failed to win a single parliamentary seat. T wo months later the PSIUP disbanded and most of its members joined the Communist Party, which was now hoping for its own Centre-Left deal with the Christian Democrats. (A minority who refused to join the PCI fused with the Manifesto group — excluded from the PCI in 1969 — to form the PDUP, the Party of Proletarian Unity. The PDUP in turn split in 1976, amid the general disintegration of the Italian far left in the late seventies, part of it eventually collapsing back into the PCI.) Far from being the brave new venture it was hailed as, the PSIUP was no more than an episode in the regroupment of the Italian left. ★

★

★

If new centrist parties were a feature of the sixties, the seventies have seen many on the left rejecting the idea of political parties altogether, and in particular Leninist forms of organisation, in favour of single-issue campaigns and movements. The ‘Green’ or ecological movement, the peace movement and the women’s movement have been the most notable if not the only examples. Those involved in such movements have often claimed that they are breaking radically with traditional forms of politics. In fact they pose much less of a threat to reformism than a centralised political organisation, and are much more able to co-exist with it. They do not challenge the ideological or even the electoral hegemony of the reform¬ ist parties, but merely seek to advocate specific demands. Moreover, by refusing to align themselves with any particular social class, they fit neatly into the reformist framework. A movement which believes that all women, of whatever class, are equally oppressed, is not going to make any attack on existing property rights. A movement which

Living in a Nowhere Land

237

argues that nuclear weapons are a unique and specific evil, not a product of capitalism, will see disarmament merely as a question of policy, not as something requiring an attack on the whole militaryeconomic complex. In fact, a number of European social democratic parties have seen the various ‘movements’ as a potential source of rebuilding their own support and membership. As John Palmer shrewdly observed in 1982: There is an irony in the fact that just as the Labour Party Conference prepares to excise its radical left, starting with the expulsion of the Militant tendency, Labour’s sister parties in many other European countries are making determined efforts to attract far-left radicals to their ranks. This is nowhere clearer than in West Germany where the SPD

is set to recruit groups in and around the ‘green’ movement.

The German anti-nuclear, environmental protest movement has always been a broad coalition of political tendencies ranging from former Chris¬ tian Democrats to Marxists and anarchists. Yet the

spd,

long regarded

by the British Labour Party right wing as the epitome of ‘moderation’, believes its future now lies in recruiting the ‘green’ far-left. . . . Another example of the strategy of an ‘opening to the left’ is evident in the tactics of the Dutch Labour Party. It spent six months in opposi¬ tion profitably seeking to occupy the ground hitherto monopolised by radical left-wing unilateralist parties — such as the Pacifist Socialist Party — and did well enough in the general election this month to emerge as the largest party in the Netherlands. It is equally clear that something similar is planned by the Danish Social Democrats now that they find themselves in opposition. One leading Danish Social Democrat told me recently that they deliberately decided to quit office not only to recoup electoral support lost to parties on their left — such as the People’s Socialist Party — but also to recruit militant, left-wing activists ‘without worrying too much about the ideological background.’8

Greens Green or ecological movements developed in several parts of Western Europe during the seventies. In France they achieved some electoral success in 1977-78, and in the 1981 presidential election their candidate, Brice Lalonde, scored 3.9 per cent in the first ballot. Since the Socialist Party had included in its manifesto a promise to cancel future nuclear projects, most ecological votes probably went to Mitterrand on the second round, and perhaps even tipped the balance to ensure his victory. On being elected, Mitterrand cancelled plans to build a nuclear power station at Plogoff, in Britanny, which had been

Bailing out the System

238

the scene of mass anti-nuclear demonstrations; then, having made this symbolic gesture, he went ahead with the rest of the nuclear pro¬ gramme. France now leads the world in fast-breeder reactors. Lalonde complained bitterly: The presidency and the government don’t seem to understand the depth of the ecological movement and the hope that it represents for young people. Nor do they understand that we were available and ready to help them ... We have been humiliated.9

It was too late. The Greens had trusted Mitterrand and he had trampled over them. Such was the inevitable fate of a single-issue campaign without clear political leadership. By 1986 Lalonde was saying that it was necessary to ‘live with’ nuclear power.10 The West German Greens, who had a stronger base, undoubtedly • noted the discomfiture of their French counterparts. The German Green movement was actually founded back in 1972 by a small group of SPD activists who had lost confidence in their party’s ability to introduce reforms. With the SPD in power and steering well to the right, they were able to keep their credibility, and by 1979 were in a position to contest elections. Politically the Greens had a quite in¬ coherent programme. Their blanket moralising opposition to heavy industry as such — rather than to how it is owned and controlled — left them with little to say to industrial workers in a period of rising unemployment. They were able to draw in many leftists as German Maoism finally disintegrated — yet they also appealed to ex-Nazis, and had among their election candidates in 1983 a former member of the SA, the paramilitary ‘brownshirts’ of the Nazi Party. But the Greens’ success in getting 27 members elected to the national parliament in 1983, as well as getting seats in state parliaments and town councils, made them a force to be reckoned with in West German national politics. As a result the SPD, seeking to rebuild its base while in opposition, was willing at least to flirt with some of the Greens. Willy Brandt, a shrewd political operator, was particularly keen to draw the Greens towards the SPD. The SPD’s new leader, Vogel, was able to put himself a little to the left of his precedessor, Helmut Schmidt. He declared that he was willing to . . . listen to the Greens, incorporating their good ideas in my programme without running after them. They do after all pose real questions. They are not all that wrong about the need to renew cities like Berlin, although they tend to overdo the point.11

These pressure have caused great difficulties for the idealistic Green activists. In the state elections in Hamburg in 1982 the SPD

Living in a Nowhere Land.

239

could form a government only with Green support. The Greens agreed to give support without joining the government, in exchange for policy concessions. A few months later the SPD broke the agree¬ ment, denounced the Greens, called fresh elections and won an out¬ right majority. Likewise in Hesse the Greens gave an SPD government ‘passive support’, but pressure was put on them actually to join the government. In December 1985 a leading Green did join the Hesse government, but many in his own party disapproved of the move. The Greens are now deeply divided between ‘realists’ who want to co-operate with the SPD and ‘fundamentalists’ who want to carry on in the old way. The Greens seem to have passed their electoral peak, and the pressures put on the ‘realists’ to move ever closer to the SPD are bound to increase. The peace movement One of the products of the New Cold War was the growth of a massive peace movement throughout Western Europe. In October and November 1981 there were demonstrations involving around two million people — 250,000 in Bonn, 200,000 in London, 500,000 in Amsterdam (one-thirtieth of the entire Dutch population), 120,000 in Brussels and 50,000 in Paris. All were concerned at nuclear escalation and especially the spread of new US missiles to Western Europe. Potentially this was a mass movement directed against both the arms production that was central to the Western capitalist economies, and the Cold War ideology which Western governments so often used to justify their existence and their policies. Yet the system was able to contain the threat without too much difficulty. This was to a large extent because of the limitations inherent in the politics of the peace movement. For most of the activists nuclear weapons were seen as the product of a dynamic — what Edward Thompson called ‘exterminism’ — which could be clearly separated from the capitalist economy as such, simply an excrescence on an otherwise healthy system. As a result most people in the peace movement did not have a perspective of transforming the system as a whole, but simply of persuading a government to adopt an alternative policy. Inasmuch as they looked to political means, therefore, they tended to focus on social democratic parties. For the social democrats this was both a challenge and an oppor¬ tunity. They could not simply disregard a mass peace movement; a number of social democratic leaders (Palme in Sweden, den Uyl in Holland) adopted positions sympathetic to the disarmers. But a thin layer of rhetoric was often enough to draw most of the disarmers behind the banner of reformist politics. In Britain many of the activists

Bailing out the System

240

in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) were persuaded to put their trust in the election of a future Labour government, despite Labour’s previous record on the question* and despite the fact that Labour’s commitment to a non-nuclear policy was combined with an equally strong commitment to the NATO nuclear alliance. In France the peace movement failed to get off the ground because of the Socialist Party’s deep-going support for the Western Alliance and the French nuclear strike force. Mitterrand, who had opposed French nuclear weapons in the sixties, and promised before 1981 to work for nuclear disarmament, adamantly refused once in power to reduce the French nuclear force by a single missile. The anti-nuclear left was unable to build a base against the opposition of both the Socialist Party and the PCF. In West Germany the SPD initially tried to create a similar situation. Helmut Schmidt originally called for disciplinary meas¬ ures against any SPD member participating in the October 1981 peace demonstration. His threats collapsed in face of widespread SPD support, with some fifty members of parliament declaring their intention to demonstrate. Erhard Eppler, a leading figure in the party, agreed to address the demonstration. When he spoke, Eppler tried to draw the demonstrators back towards the SPD, saying that Helmut Schmidt should ‘consider himself a part of the peace movement’.12 With the return of the SPD to opposition, the peace movement became a focus for Brandt and others who wanted to co-opt on their left; the SPD’s former hostility could all be blamed on the now retired Schmidt. Women The women’s movement in Europe had its origins in the upheavals of 1968. Certainly many 1968 militants showed overt sexism (as instanced by macho wall-slogans in Paris). But the fact that students and workers were demanding greater control over their lives led many women to start questioning their own oppression. By the end of the sixties the ideas of the American women’s movement had gained widespread influence in Europe. But the rebirth of the women’s movement was not simply a question of ideas; it was also a product of the struggles of working women. The British women’s movement had its starting-point in the strike for equal pay by women machinists at the Ford car factory. The strike brought the women into direct confrontation with the leading woman member of the Wilson government, Barbara Castle, minister See chapter 8.

Living in a Nowhere Land

241

for employment and productivity. As Rose Boland, leader of the strike, put it: They keep saying, ‘We’ll have to freeze wages.’ It’s all right for Barbara Castle, with her £7,000 a year. Well, let her take a cut.13

Such a willingness to reject reformism and to put class before gender was not uncommon in the early years of the women’s move¬ ment. Until around 1975, while there was still a high level of workers’ struggles, the women’s movement could relate to the working class. (This is not to say that there was no friction between the women’s movement and the revolutionary left; there was plenty, and neither side was blameless.) But with the downturn in struggle of the mid-seventies, identi¬ fication with the working class no longer seemed to offer a chance of delivering the goods. Women had quite rightly argued against Marxist dogmatists that women’s liberation would not simply be achieved automatically ‘after the revolution’. Now ‘not waiting for the revolu¬ tion’ turned into forgetting all about the revolution and grabbing whatever little was going under the present system. The establishment of a women’s committee here, the appointment of a woman to a highly-paid advisory post there — these were immediate gains that could be won now, and generally won through the agency of a social democratic party. Increasing attention was now given to ‘positive discrimination’ within the structures of the labour movement — for example, reserved places for women on the leading bodies of unions, more women parliamentary candidates, and such like. Parallel to this was the growth of feminist journals and publishing houses, and of higher education courses in women’s studies. Much of this activity was directly or indirectly dependent on public money, and again encouraged the greater involvement of feminists within the structures of social democratic parties. In the early seventies many feminists had sharply criticised the organisational structures of the traditional left, and defended more informal and fragmentary forms of organisation. Other feminists argued, either that women should confine their activities to womenonly organisations, or at least that they should concentrate on work in women’s caucuses and committees within parties and unions. Since such strategies explicitly rejected class action and revolutionary organisation, they made it easier for feminists to be sucked into reformist parties. The non-centralised structure of social democracy helped it to absorb women activists. Revolutionary organisations have often been accused of being slow to incorporate the demands of the women’s movement. But when a centralised Leninist organisation BOS-P

Bailing out the System

242

adopts a position on abortion or discrimination, then every member — male or female — is under an obligation to fight for it publicly and in the workplace. No such obligation applies to the members of a social democratic party. The members of a women’s caucus may work themselves up to a level of white-hot purity on questions of non-sexist language — but their decisions have no impact on the mass of party members, who remain set in their sexist ways. Thus a formal commitment to ‘listen to women for a change’ by the British Labour Party actually meant remarkably little in terms of policy. There was a party political broadcast aimed at women, a rally and a series of public meetings, followed by a Women’s Right to Work Festival. Doubtless this was good for morale and attracted a few more feminists into the party. But Labour made no firm commitment to develop policies on wages and public spending that would materially improve the lot of working women, and certainly gave no guarantee that Labour MPs would be disciplined for failing to support abortion rights (the feminist vote may be sizeable, but the Catholic vote is bigger). The women’s movement thus lays itself wide open to co-option by reformism. The clearest case of this was that of the French women’s movement at the time of Mitterrand’s election in 1981. One segment of the French women’s movement was Choisir: La Cause des Femmes (‘Choose: The Women’s Cause’), led by Gisele Halimi. In 1974 Choisir had not taken sides in the presidential election, and in the 1978 elections they had run 43 candidates of their own, taking 1.5 per cent of the vote. In 1981 Choisir held a public meeting to which both candidates on the second round were invited; only Mitterrand turned up. Following this, Halimi published a strong defence of the Socialist Party: Having long been bogged down together with the Communist Party in class analysis (‘There is no sexual oppression but only a bourgeoisie exploiting a proletariat . . .’), the Socialist Party is slowly but surely revising its positions. And how could it fail to do so? The Marxist schema — or rather its interpreters — is outdated; how can it deal with the superexploitation of women, the fact that they have a higher unemploy¬ ment level, that they are inadequately informed and that professional training for them is non-existent?

She even claimed credit for Mitterrand’s opposition to the death penalty: Mitterrand, in an outburst which will stand as the only philosophical moment of this campaign, refuses to let a man be cut in two, whatever his

Living in a Nowhere Land

243

crimes. This is undoubtedly a question of culture, and one which can be fitted into the global choice of non-violence made by women.

And in a lyrical tone she concluded: If we don’t want women to go on having a bleak future, we must choose. This time, yes, it’s Mitterrand.14

Halimi did not have long to wait to get her reward. In the June 1981 elections she got Socialist Party backing and became a member of parliament. Mitterrand also got the backing of the Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes (Women’s Liberation Movement). But after two years of the left in power the MLF urged its supporters to abstain in the 1983 municipal elections.15 Disillusion there undoubtedly was; but without a revolutionary socialist alternative to Mitterrand, that disillusion could lead only to a dead end.

Chapter 20 How to sell a contradiction

INTELLECTUALS are something of a problem for social democratic

parties. For social democratic parties are a denial of the need for theory; pragmatism and opportunism reign supreme. Even thinkers such as Bernstein or the Fabians would be more hindrance than help to a modern social democratic party, constantly adapting such few principles as it has in order to win electoral favour and bend to economic necessity. Yet the importance of ideology in modern capitalist society is such that social democracy cannot ignore intellectuals. The massive growth of the media, above all television, and the expansion of higher education have given intellectuals a greater access than ever before to ‘public opinion’, and hence a greater electoral relevance. Social demo¬ cracy cannot opt out of the battle of ideas, however little it may welcome any impact those ideas might have on its actual policies. Many intellectuals are drawn towards social democracy because they find that the intellectual principles to which they are committed — ‘scientific truth’, ‘artistic freedom’, and so on — run counter to the market values of capitalism. They are therefore attracted to a politics which is seen as oppositional to those values. But their opposition has individual and not social roots. Most intellectuals work independently — writers, artists — or at least have considerable control over their own work situation — research scientists, journalists, higher education teachers. For such intellectuals to achieve a unity of theory and practice they need the discipline of a party organisation. But social democracy cannot provide such discipline since it does not take the intellectuals’ practice seriously. The intellectual tradition that runs from Marx and Engels to Lenin, Trotsky and Gramsci, and which is characterised by the unity of theory and practice, now does not exist outside the restricted circles of the revolutionary left. As a result, most left intellectuals vacillate be¬ tween abstract theorising and opportunist practice.

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The problem was compounded in the period that ran from the thirties to the fifties by the experience of Stalinism. For Stalinism did offer intellectuals the framework of a disciplined party — but in a form which subordinated intellectual honesty to the tactical needs of the organisation. Communist intellectuals clung to patently false dogmas such as the ‘absolute pauperisation’ of the working class; they defended the competence of the party to judge on all matters of science, as in the case of the geneticist Lysenko; and they indulged in a grotesque and sectarian rhetoric, typified by Fadeyev’s state¬ ment that if hyenas could use fountain pens, and jackals type¬ writers, they would write like T S Eliot’, or Jean Kanapa’s ‘If Gide became disgusted with the Bolsheviks, it was because they were not pederasts.’1 In the Cold War period this led to a polarisation among left intellectuals, with social democracy opposing Stalinism in the name of a liberal notion of‘intellectual freedom’. In Western Europe, with a long socialist tradition and a discredited classic right, social democracy seemed the best bet as an ideological alternative to Stalin¬ ism. As a result the US-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and its associated publications (such as Encounter in Britain, Preuves in France and Monat in West Germany) developed close links with right-wing social democratic politicians such as Hugh Gaitskell. Anthony Crosland had regular contact with the Congress for Cul¬ tural Freedom and received encouragement from it in writing The Future of Socialism.2 Another important Cold War publication was The God that Failed (1950), a collection of essays by ex-Communist intellectuals (Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Louis Fischer, Stephen Spender) designed to expose and undermine the grip of Communism on intellectuals. The operation was master¬ minded by Richard Crossman, a Labour MP soon to become a leading Bevanite. Among the contributors Silone (a supporter of Saragat in Italy) in particular stressed a rather vague moralising socialism as the best alternative to Communism. Two figures who played an important role in this period in providing an intellectual left flank for Cold War ideology (though neither was a member of a social democratic party) were the philo¬ sopher Karl Popper and the novelist Albert Camus. Popper’s book The Open Society and its Enemies (1945) was a ‘refutation’ of Marxism that gained a success quite unjustified by its content, which showed a pitiable ignorance of Marx’s writings. Popper’s main theor¬ etical contribution was his concept of‘piecemeal social engineering’; he argued that

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... a systematic fight against definite wrongs, against concrete forms of injustice or exploitation, and avoidable suffering such as poverty or unemployment, is a very different thing from the attempt to realise a distant ideal blueprint of society.3

Popper himself had broken with the Austrian Social Democratic Party many years before, but he continued to exercise a pervasive influence on reformist politics. The leader of his British fan club, Bryan Magee (a Labour MP who went over to the SDP), has argued that Popper has worked out ‘the philosophical foundations of democratic socialism’.4 In West Germany, SPD leader Helmut Schmidt wrote a preface to the translation of Popper’s Open Society, and in Italy Popper has many admirers in the PSI, including those who helped organise a conference addressed by Popper in 1983 under the auspices of the Club Turati (named after a leading anti-Communism social democrat of the twenties). Camus read Popper’s Open Society while writing his own polemic against Marxism, The Rebel (1951).5 Camus, like Popper, attempted to undermine Marxism by attacking the idea that there is any direction or logic to the historical process. The reformist implications of this are not hard to see. On occasion Camus liked to indulge in anarchosyndicalist rhetoric. But in 1955 he committed himself to public support for the reformist but sharply anti-Communist ex-prime minister Mendes-France, whom Camus saw as a representative of ‘French labourism’.6 (Camus’ influence too survives; Roger Quilliot, who combined being a leading Camus scholar with writing antiCommunist articles for Guy Mallet, became Mitterrand’s housing minister in 1981.) The polarisation of the Cold War period made serious theoretical work virtually impossible. In 1956 things began to change. A large number of able Communist intellectuals broke with Stalinism and started to confront some fundamental theoretical questions. They encountered a new generation of thinkers who had not gone through the defeats of the thirties and forties and had been radicalised by the anti-imperialist and peace movements. Potentially the ‘new left’ intellectuals of the fifties could have laid the basis for a revived revolutionary Marxism, free of Stalinist and reformist distortions. But the working-class movement was at a low ebb, and it was not possible for them to overcome the gulf between theory and practice. Moreover, they were entangled in a problem inherited from Stalinism. To understand Stalinism they had to explain how a barbaric and arbitrary tyranny could grow up in a society which ostensibly had a planned economy as its material base. There were two

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possible solutions to this enigma. The more radical was to recognise the essentially capitalist nature of the Russian economic order under Stalin. For those unwilling to accept this, there was an alternative, namely to reject the so-called ‘reductionism’ of the Marxist basesuperstructure model, according to which legal and political institu¬ tions and intellectual life all ultimately derive from the economic structure of society, and argue for a ‘humanist’ Marxism which gave more place to the individual. Marxist humanism (as represented by such diverse figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Williams, Lucien Goldmann and Ernst Fischer) certainly opened up the way for a more lively and critical version of Marxism. But the argument that political and cultural processes were more or less independent of any base in the class struggle opened the way to a type of politics based on a series of single-issue campaigns. Marxist humanism was thus easily assimilated by reformism. Moreover, the divorce of Marxist theory from the working-class movement meant that much of it collapsed into what was aptly described by one of its main practitioners as ‘obsessive methodologism’7 — that is, a tendency for Marxism to concern itself with its own status and nature rather than with the realities of the world and the strategy needed to change it. The theoretical brittleness of the ‘new left’ can be seen in the evolution of the British magazine New Left Review. Its editorial team constantly reiterated the need for ‘theoretical rigour’, but when it did venture into the real world its rigour vanished like the morning dew; editor Perry Anderson swallowed the Harold Wilson myth hook, line and sinker: All the most crippling limitations of the British labour movement have been incorporated in the lamentable succession of its official spokesmen. Now suddenly this is over. The Labour Party has at last, after fifty years of failing, produced a dynamic and capable leader.8

Never can the divorce between theory and practice have been more pathetically displayed. Marxist humanism was largely eclipsed by the student radicalisation of the late sixties. The new wave was looking for a more radical¬ sounding theory, and found it in the work of one Louis Althusser, a long-standing member of the French Communist Party, who for a few years enjoyed a European vogue. Althusser’s thought contained many contradictions. To some extent his critique of humanism was a reversion to classic Stalinism (his treatment of Hegel comes straight out of Zhdanov), but he also

248

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argued for the ‘relative autonomy of the superstructure’ — that is, he claimed certain areas of political and intellectual activity cannot be reduced to a class base. This has important political implications. Firstly, there is what has been called his ‘ideologism’,9 namely an analysis of the ‘ideological state apparatuses’ in society which suggests that these can be captured separately from the process of smashing the state machine. The reformist logic is obvious and was picked up by Santiago Carrillo as a justification for the ‘Eurocommunist’ strategy. Secondly, Althusser’s defence of the autonomy of theory, while being a healthy reaction against episodes like the Lysenko affair, consecrates the separation of theory and practice. The party will leave the intellectuals alone to dabble in semiotics; and the intellectuals will leave the party alone while it cobbles up unprincipled deals with reformists. Jacques Ranciere quotes an academic follower of Althusser as saying that he was in the Communist Party because it was ‘the only organisation that didn’t require him to be active’.10 The whole con¬ cept of the party and the intellectuals’ role therein is overtly social democratic. It is therefore not surprising that many of Althusser’s disciples have drifted towards social democracy. The post-Althusserians (like Popper) reject ‘historicism’, that is, a notion of a historical process which enables us to locate present practice in the perspective of a revolutionary future; they reject ‘economisin', arguing that the dayto-day self-activity of workers in pursuit of limited goals has nothing to do with socialism; they reject ‘totality’, refusing to see all struggles as linked within a global revolutionary perspective. The downturn in struggle of the late seventies was reflected in a further rightward shift by intellectuals. Althusser was replaced as cult figure by Michel Foucault, who sees the whole of Marxism as leading to the concentration camps.11 Foucault argues that power in society is totally dispersed: . . . from state to family, from prince to father, from the tribunal to the small change of everyday punishments, from the agencies of social domination to the structures that constitute the subject himself, one finds a general form of power, varying in scale alone.12

In this perspective there can be no smashing of the state, only the pursuit of fragmentary good causes. By the late seventies the rightward drift was gaining speed. The French intellectual left, which in the sixties and seventies had exer¬ cised enormous influence over the rest of Europe, flew apart. Some ex-leftists — notably former Maoists who had once vaunted their

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theoretical purity — went over to virulent anti-Marxism; the rest were content to tail Mitterrand. In the absence of a combative working class, pessimism overtook most intellectuals, not only in France but throughout Western Europe. Their analysis of the strength of the right on the one hand, of the weakness of the working class on the other, led many to believe that nothing could be achieved except through the broadest possible alli¬ ances for the most minimal objectives. For some the concept of socialism itself had become a problem requiring a new definition; for others there was a reversion to a moralising utopianism which detached socialism from any class base. Amid the general rightward drift two figures who have enjoyed considerable influence are Andre Gorz and Eric Hobsbawm. For a number of years Gorz was, under the name of Michel Bosquet, a regular contributor to Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly journal sympathetic to the French Socialist Party. He is also an accomplished centrist, who for many years tried to blur the distinction between reform and revolution. In 1966 he prophesied that in the foreseeable future workers would not resort to ‘a revolutionary general strike’;13 just two years later ten million French workers proved him wrong. Gorz was incorrigible. In 1980 he published a slim volume called Farewell to the Working Class,14 in which he argued, on the basis of some very impressionistic evidence of technological innovation and social change, that work itself is being abolished and that with it the working class will vanish. Workers who read the book may well wonder why their bosses are so keen to keep them at it through the day, and why the press and police are so keen to get them back to work when they go on strike; French workers in particular may ask why, if work is vanishing, the Mitterrand government has abandoned any suggestion that it might introduce the 35-hour week. For Gorz the overwhelming advantage of bidding farewell to the working class is the political flexibility it permits. On the one hand he can appear infinitely radical, breaking with old dogmas. Yet at the same time he can latch on to anything that moves — ecology, feminism or any other flavour of the month. Socialism may yet come at the behest of the Virgin Mary ... or of Francois Mitterrand. It comes as no surprise that two of the authorities that Gorz cites most reverentially are Jacques Attali and Jacques Delors15 — the former an economic adviser and close confidant of President Mitterrand, the latter an ex-Gaullist and subsequently Mitterrand’s finance minister. Gorz’s radicalism is soon revealed as just another apology for social democracy. Eric Hobsbawm is a more serious thinker; a distinguished histor¬ ian and long-standing Communist, he is also highly admired by

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Labour leader Neil Kinnock.16 While not actually having said fare¬ well to the working class, Hobsbawm none the less feels somewhat estranged from it: The manual working class, core of traditional socialist labour parties, is today contracting and not expanding. It has been transformed, and to some extent divided, by the decades when its standard of living reached levels undreamed of even by the well-paid in 1939. It can no longer be assumed that all workers are on the way to recognising that their class situation must align them behind a socialist worker’s party, though there are still many millions who believe this.17

Hobsbawm’s strategic conclusions are predictable. If the Labour Party is to get back to power it must try to win the middle ground — exactly the argument of right-wing Labour in the fifties. Labour should give more recognition to the strength of national feeling among the population — back to the ‘national interest’ that lies at the very heart of reformism. And since the working class is on the way out, supporting strikes is clearly a low priority. By 1985 Hobsbawm had gone so far as to assimilate ‘class politics’ to the sectarian lunacy of the Stalinist Third Period.18 It is unlikely that the Labour Party leadership have anything to learn from Hobsbawm’s strategic recommendations; his role is rather to add his prestige as a distinguished Marxist and to help line up ex-revolutionaries behind Kinnock. As Lenin pointed out, revolutionary theory is a vital precondi¬ tion of revolutionary action. But theory without practice butters no parsnips. Social democracy is by its very nature incapable of achieving the unity of theory and practice. If socialist theory is defined as something that leads to a better understanding of what the world is like and how it can be changed, then social democracy has contributed not one iota to the development of theory. Yet despite the fact that social democracy has little interest in theory as such (unlike the Communist Parties, for which theory was something that conferred legitimacy and which always gave great attention to keeping their intellectuals in line), it has nonetheless had considerable success in co-opting intellectuals. As we have seen, thinkers as diverse as Karl Popper and Eric Hobsbawm have found themselves contributing to the intellectual credibility of social demo¬ cracy. Only a revolutionary organisation that offers a genuine unity of theory and practice can resist the continuation of such co-option.

Chapter 21 Children of the revolution

REFORMISM has not totally dominated the West European left. Ever since 1945 there has been a small current of revolutionaries who reject social democracy and Stalinism and look back to the revolutionary traditions of the early years of the Communist International. Until 1968 such groupings were small and isolated from the mainstream of working-class struggle. This was not their fault. The continuing grip of Stalinism on the one hand, the long boom — which made revolu¬ tionary change seem unnecessary and impracticable — on the other, combined to push the revolutionaries to the very margins of the struggle. Only after 1968 could they begin to achieve a small but noticeable growth. Yet all too often even these revolutionaries, despite their conscious and sincere commitment to soviet power and workers’ self-activity, have also been co-opted by reformism. To understand why and how, it is necessary to say a little about the political traditions that they come out of. The Communist Inter¬ national stood for open revolutionary parties. When Lenin advised British Communists to seek affiliation to the Labour Party, he defined the terms clearly: ... a party affiliated to the Labour Party is not only able to criticise sharply, but is able openly and definitely to name old leaders and to call them social-traitors. This is a very peculiar situation in which a party which unites an enormous mass of workers, and which is a political party, is nevertheless obliged to allow its members complete liberty . . . Under such circumstances it would be a mistake not to affiliate to this party.1

Lenin, then, envisaged not entry, but open affiliation with the Com¬ munists retaining their own press and their own identity. It should be remembered that in 1920 the Labour Party was a relatively loose organisation; while the Communist Party’s request for affiliation was rejected, individual Communist Party members could openly join the

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Labour Party until 1924, and it was even possible for a known Communist to be elected as a Labour MP. No such luxury was available to the tiny group of Trotskyists in the early thirties who invented the concept of ‘entrism’. They had no chance of operating inside the Communist Parties, which had devel¬ oped thuggishly bureaucratic regimes. Social democratic parties offered rather more opportunities. The SFIO, which the French Trotskyists entered in 1934, ofered a party regime which allowed not only open debate but the right to form permanently organised ten¬ dencies. Such was the basis of the so-called ‘French turn’, subsequently applied by Trotskyist groupings in other countries. In the French case the experience lasted just one year until the Trotskyists were expelled again. The entry had produced no visible gains — but on the other hand any other course of action would probably have been worse. A brief incursion — little more than a raid — had at least given the Trotskyists something to relate to. In some countries, such as Britain, where Trotskyists first entered the Independent Labour Party, then the Labour Party, entry was a more long-term matter. It was only in the fifties that the Fourth International began to theorise a more long-term concept of ‘entrism’. In 1954 the World Congress of the Fourth International, believing — not wholly im¬ plausibly — that a Third World War was imminent, adopted the following strategy for building the International: The Fourth International does not conceive of winning over the workers’ vanguard and the masses to its programme and to its organisation by opposing itself to the actual movement of the masses, but by integrating itself into it, by fusing itself with it, and by aiding through its political and practical intervention its advance and the selection of new leading cadres within its ranks.2

(This, incidentally, is a reasonably cogent statement of that mysterious doctrine ‘Pabloism’.) The Fourth International has gone through some twists and turns since, but its heritage is still very much that of 1934 and 1954. The map of the extreme left was complicated in the early sixties by the emergence of pro-Chinese splits from many European Com¬ munist Parties. The underlying logic of Maoism was voluntarism — the ideology of a ruling class in an undeveloped country trying to industrialise by a sheer effort of will (symbolised by the ageing Chairman Mao’s reported feat of swimming the Yangtse four times faster than the world record for the distance). Maoist politics in the sixties appeared extremely hard, but they were also very volatile. The

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main tool of analysis was the rather vague concept of ‘revisionism’, applied subjectively to anything that was currently disapproved of. The Maoists were extremely hostile to the Communist Parties from which they had just split, often dipping into the rhetoric of the Comintern’s ‘Third Period’ to describe them as ‘social fascist’. About social democracy they knew much less, and were therefore inclined to be less hard. With purely subjective criteria to work on, alliances could change at any time. In general the Maoists tended to grossly underestimate the grip of reformism and thus to indulge in wildly ultra-left rhetoric. In 1969 an article in the French Maoist paper La Cause du Peuple warned the bourgeoisie that they would be kidnapped, have their throats spat into, be hung up by the feet and then by the neck. The following year the paper was banned for advocacy of murder, theft, pillage and arson. The British Maoists of the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) responded to elections with the slogan ‘Don’t vote, strike’. The events of 1968 and afterwards enhanced the mood of ultra¬ leftism among revolutionaries. Those who had seen the upheavals of Paris in May 1968 or Turin in the autumn of 1969 could not believe that reformism still had a hold on workers. In Italy the Lotta Continua group took the view that trade unions were the instrument of the Communist Party trying to regain its grip on workers; they therefore opposed fighting inside the unions and advanced the slogan ‘we are all delegates’; in effect this gave the Communist Party an easier ride inside the unions as their domination was not challenged or opposed by Lotta Continua supporters. Even the Fourth International was caught up in the general ultra-leftism of the period. In May 1968 the French Trotskyist JCR (Revolutionary Communist Youth) issued a leaflet stating: The heroes of this new generation are not Mitterrand or WaldeckRochet. They’re called Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap . . .3

As a factual statement this was doubtless true; but it tended to imply that Mitterrand was obsolete and would obligingly evaporate, some¬ thing he signally failed to do. Former ultra-lefts often become the worst rightists. In the im¬ mortal words of the Clash rock band: ‘He who fucks nuns will later join the church’.4 When people who have been led to believe that reformism has already disintegrated awake to find that it is still very much there, they tend to be so impressed by its tangibility that they start to capitulate to it. The ultra-leftist impatience that wants confrontation gives way to an opportunist impatience that is looking for short cuts.

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It is this that explains the ‘crisis of the revolutionary left’ that began in the late seventies. The large revolutionary lefts that had existed in 1975-76 in Italy and Portugal were afflicted by splits and lost members rapidly; in France and Spain, where some substantial groups existed, there were splits, demoralisation and loss of members. In Britain one group after another decided to bury itself inside the Labour Party. Here and there pockets of surviving ultra-lefts followed the barren road of individual terrorism, like the Italian Red Brigades. But overwhelmingly the movement was to the right. Often the revolu¬ tionary left seemed to be paying a bitter price for its hour of glory in 1968. In France, for example, 1968 had raised the question of state power; revolutionaries had to have generalised political formulations. By the mid-seventies the level of mass struggle had gone down, but the revolutionaries had not gone down with it; they were still talking about governmental formulae and electoral strategy rather than the small change of day-to-day struggles. Standing on a picket line seemed something of a comedown after running for the presidency. The near-revolutionary situation in Portugal in 1975 put all the revolutionary groupings to the test. The Maoist groups fared par¬ ticularly badly. Their sectarian hatred for the Communist Party led them to line up with the Socialist Party of Mario Soares, which was the main instrument for damping down the revolutionary upsurge.* The MRPP (Movement for the Reconstruction of the Party of the Proletariat) in particular worked closely with the Socialist Party; it supported the right-wing candidate, General Eanes, for the presidency, and worked with the Socialists to try to split the Communist Party-controlled union federation. The Trotskyists were scarcely more fortunate. The Fourth Inter¬ national had two sections in Porgugal, one tailing the Socialist Party and one tailing the Communist Party. In the elections of April 1976 both parties presented statements to the electorate. The LCI (Inter¬ national Communist League) declared: We demand that the Communist Party and the Socialist Party assume their responsibilities by forming a government without representatives of the bourgeoisie.5

Exactly what the ‘responsibilities’ of reformist parties are was not de¬ fined. As for the PRT (Revolutionary Workers Party), they told voters: If you want a government that represents the will of the Socialist Party and Communist Party comrades, if you want a Socialist Party government without capitalists or generals, vote for the PRT.6 See chapter 14.

.

Children of the Revolution

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Simple-minded voters might have asked why, if that was what they wanted, they shouldn’t simply vote for the Socialist Party. In the presidential elections later the same year the LCI and PRT combined to present a candidate (who in fact withdrew before the election). In her programme . . . she promises that if she is elected she will call on the general secretary of the Socialist Party, Mario Soares, or a Socialist Party leader chosen by the party, to form a government representing the will of a majority of the workers.7

In other words, in the unlikely event of a Trotskyist being elected president, she would have appointed the same prime minister as was in fact appointed by General Eanes. No comment seems necessary. In Italy in 1976 the revolutionaries were faced with the prospect of an election which the reformist left stood a good chance of winning. Of course in this situation it is quite right for revolutionaries to campaign to put the left in power; to do otherwise is to isolate themselves completely from those they should be seeking to influence. At the same time they have a duty to be absolutely honest about what they believe the reformists in power will do, and to warn workers to trust nothing but their own strength and organisation. Unfortunately the Italian revolutionaries did not meet this re¬ quirement. They ran a slate under the label Democrazia Proletaria (Workers’ Democracy), bringing together the three main groups of the revolutionary left, including Avanguardia Operaia (Workers’ Vanguard), a Maoist (but non-Stalinist) organisation which had developed quite a significant rank-and-file working-class base. But the programme did more to create illusions in a left government than to mobilise workers. It called for ‘constant mass pressure on the government to make it refuse any role of. . . stabilising the capitalist system; only so will it be possible to have popular control over the centres of decision which will open the road to power to the working class.’ It went on to describe a left (for example Communist Partydominated) government as ‘an active instrument in a general process of the transformation of society’; and it defined the role of revolu¬ tionaries as being to ‘support this government and at the same time to push it through struggle to ever more advanced objectives.’8 This is more like a left-sounding version of Eurocommunism than Leninism. From now on it was downhill all the way for the Italian revolutionary left, at one time the most powerful in Europe. The French revolutionary left also faced problems in the period leading up to the election of the Mitterrand government, especially in view of the public dispute between the two main parties of the left, the

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Socialist Party and the PCF, each of which stood a candidate in the first round of the election. One Trotskyist group, the OCI (International Communist Organisation) opted to back the Socialist Party against the PCF. They collected thousands of signatures in workplaces urging a vote for Mitterrand (and against Marchais) on the first ballot.9 The LCR (Revolutionary Communist League), the French section of the Fourth International, adopted a more principled position. But it too was based on a false estimation of what the election of a left government might lead to. In 1977 the LCR Congress had passed a resolution which declared that . . . the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, without waiting for 1978, must declare that they are ready to form a government, not to manage the bourgeois state in the framework of the market economy, as the Common Programme lays down, but to get rid of Giscard, satisfy the workers’ demands and take anti-capitalist measures opening the way to workers’ power.

Not only did the LCR overestimate the enthusiasm that a left govern¬ ment would generate, but it suggested that there was some value in calling on reformists to act in a way fundamentally out of keeping with their nature (like calling on ducks to grow fur). It is one thing tc challenge reformists to produce the reforms they themselves have promised; quite another to sow illusions that they can go beyond reformist limits. The perils of such emphases become clear in the year before the presidential election. In a complicated game of bluff the Socialist Party and PCF were refusing to come to an agreement for mutual desistement — that is, that they would both promise that the less well-placed candidate would withdraw and call on his voters to support the better-placed one. (In fact this would have been an agreement by the PCF to back Mitterrand, since it was inconceivable that Marchais would lead on the first round.) Undoubtedly many workers who wanted to see a left victory must have felt somewhat irritated by this display of sectarianism by both left parties. But it was scarcely the central issue of the period, which was what the LCR made it. The LCR became identified as the organisation that was calling for united action by the reformists. On no less than four occasions in the eight months prior to the elections the LCR weekly paper carried a large front-page headline calling for desistement.10 So when Mitterrand won, and got his parliamentary majority, the LCR was a little bemused; what was it to call for next? Its paper Rouge editorialised:

Children of the Revolution

2S7

From now on there is no obstacle in Mitterrand’s way, nor in the way of the Socialist Party and Communist Party who are in government. From now on anything that could block a resolute action in favour of the workers has been swept away!11

We may presume that the staff of Rouge did not actually believe that Mitterrand was going to usher in the socialist commonwealth. While subsequently the LCR has not spared Mitterrand from criticism for the abandonment of his pre-election promises, it has tended to concentrate its attention on proposing alternative policies that the government could implement, rather than devoting its efforts to explaining how workers could begin to fight back against the government. In 1985, as Mitterrand’s popularity slumped and the racist Front National grew in influence, the LCR launched a national petition supported by leading personalities ... for proportional representation!12 Had the LCR’s demands for a nationwide system of proportional representation with no minimum threshold been granted for the 1986 elections, the result would have been just nine revolu¬ tionary MPs — and 56 fascists (under the more limited system that was introduced, the fascists got 35 seats). Such are the fruits of electoral obsession. Some groupings took the argument to its logical conclusion and actually entered social democratic parties. The best-known and most sustained example of a grouping of revolutionary socialists working within a mass social democratic party is the case of the Militant tendency within the British Labour Party. Militant’s basic perspective derives from the experience of the Communist International; it believes that the growing crisis will draw more and more people into the Labour Party, just as the social democratic parties of Europe grew massively in the period after 1917: As under the hammer blow of events the Labour Party will move to a more and more radical position, the masses will stream in their tens and hundreds of thousands to active membership of the Labour Party.13

Out of the resulting crisis inside the Labour Party the new Bolshevik Party will presumably emerge. The scenario forgets that a lot of water has flowed under the bridges since 1920 and the ‘masses’ may feel just a little distrustful of the Labour Party and its record. Of course Militant is not a strictly parliamentarist tendency. On the contrary it has, unlike most left groups in the Labour Party, done systematic work in the trade union movement. But even here its practice is often distorted by electoralism. Parliamentary perspectives tend to overshadow the day-to-day struggle at the grassroots, and the BOS-Q

258

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winning of trade union office sometimes becomes an end in itself so that Militant supporters take positions when they do not have the rank-and-file base to back up revolutionary policies. To some extent Militant has filled gaps left by the collapsing Communist Party, in building Broad Left currents in various unions. It has thus got caught up in the same logic of working within the union machine; in the civil service union CPSA, where Militant has some influence, it has opposed the escalation of disputes. However, the most serious indictment that can be made against Militant is that it actually adds to the credibility of reformism. The founders of Militant joined the Labour Party quite sincerely in order to fight for the revolutionary ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. As they began to make some headway, they found themselves confronted by right-wingers anxious to hound them out of the party. Since they believed that staying in the Labour Party was the most important aim, they had to equivocate, claiming to be loyal Labour Party members who sincerely believed in parliamentary democracy. Offered a mass audience rarely available to revolutionaries through press and televi¬ sion interviews, they found themselves propagating parliamentarism. Eventually they came to theorise their position with a formulation very similar to that of a left-inclined version of Eurocommunism: However in the pages of Militant, in pamphlets and in speeches, we have shown that the struggle to establish a socialist Britain can be carried through in parliament, backed up by the colossal power of the labour movement outside. This, however, will only be possible on one condition: that the trade unions and the Labour Party are won to a clear Marxist programme and perspective, and the full power of the movement is used to effect the rapid and complete socialist transformation of society.14

It is one thing for revolutionaries to enter a social democratic party because they have nowhere to go and need an audience; it is quite another to do a public relations job for the Mother of Parliaments. The Militant are another example of the old truth that those who enter social democratic parties to take them over end up by themselves being taken over. The adoption of protective coloration has not saved Militant from increasing persecution within the Labour Party. Militant are of course right to denounce the bureaucracy who want to expel them — individuals whose record of democracy and defence of workers’ inter¬ ests is not one twentieth as good as that of Militant. They are correct, too, to insist that Marxists have a right to be in the Labour Party; ever since William Morris, Marxism has been a legitimate current within the British labour movement. But Militant’s insistence on staying in

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the Labour Party at any price puts them under increasing pressure. Sooner or later they will have to choose between their revolutionary principles and their organisational allegiance. Contrary to the expectation of so many in 1968, reformism has proved extremely resilient, and even the most apparently orthodox revolutionaries have not proved impervious to its grip.

Chapter 22 Keep on keeping on

IN 1985 the world ‘celebrated’ the fortieth anniversary of the end of

the Second World War. In those forty years of peace some thirty-five million people have died in more than a hundred and fifty wars. Many millions more have died of starvation in a world where abundance is technically possible. Those who, in 1945, hoped for a world without poverty, unemployment and war have seen their aspirations betrayed. The main responsibility for this betrayal lies with the ruling cliques in Washington and Moscow, and in boardrooms around the world. But, as this book has tried to argue, some of the blame also attaches to the so-called ‘socialist’ leaders of Western Europe. For it is one of the problems of defending socialist ideas that our language is constantly stolen from us and used against us. When Guy Mollet, Harold Wilson and Felipe Gonzalez take the label ‘socialist’ we have to make it clear that their tradition is not ours. We differ from them not about means but about ends. They see the capitalist system stinking with injustice and rotting in crisis, and they aim to palliate its worst excesses and stave off the discontent of the oppressed so that the system may survive. We seek to finish the system off as soon as possible, and to build over the ruins a new world geared to human need and not to profit, democratically controlled by working people themselves. The reformists claim that such aims are utopian, while they are sober realists who can show results. But a balance-sheet of the past forty years presents results that are decidedly thin. In the late forties governments containing reformists did bring in some welfare measures that meant real benefits to working people (the British Health Service is the most striking example). But these reforms left the machinery of exploitation untouched, and effected no fundamental transfer of power or wealth between classes. By the sixties the picture was bleaker; the Labour government in Britain and the Italian Centre-Left delivered no significant reforms. Since the mid-seventies we have seen Wilson

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and Callaghan in Britain, Mitterrand in France, Gonzalez in Spain implementing austerity programmes with far less resistance than a right-wing government would have provoked. Theirs is a reformism . . . without reforms. On the other side of the balance-sheet we see the services rendered by reformism to the ruling class. After 1945 it was the reformists who policed the carve-up of the world and ensured that the popular radicalisation of wartime did not take a revolutionary direction. In France in 1968 it was the reformist leaders who diverted the biggest mass strike in history back into safe parliamentary channels; and in 1975 it was Mario Soares and the Socialist Party who pulled Portugal back from the brink of revolution. West Germany under Helmut Schmidt became a bastion of the established order and Mitterrand brought France back closer to the Western Alliance. This balance-sheet shows the rule of social democratic parties. They are not parties of the working class. True, they mobilise the votes and energies of many working people, use the rhetoric of working-class aspiration, maintain intimate links with the trade union leaders and offer a career outlet for individual members of the working class. They do not represent the independent class interests of workers over and against those of other classes. On the contrary, their basic role is to mediate between the classes, in the name of the working class, but to the ultimate advantage of the existing order and its defenders. The future of reformism, then, is tied up with that of the capitalist system. While capitalism may at present be in deep crisis, it has survived crises before and can do so again. Capitalism can survive any crisis on one condition — that it can make the working class pay for it. A massive lowering of workers’ standards could give the system a new lease of life. As long as the downturn in struggle continues, reformist parties are there to provide a channel for dissatisfaction and a safe alternative to right-wing governments that get too unpopular. When an upturn in struggle comes reformism will again be, as in Portugal in 1975, the last bulwark of a system under threat. In 1945 Stalinist parties too played a key role in saving the system. Since then Stalinism has entered a deep terminal crisis. Social democracy, on the other hand, has shown itself much more resilient, for a number of reasons. Firstly, its loyalty to the existing order was proven. AntiCommunism, which rose to fever pitch in the fifties, has remained a crucial item in the ideology of Western societies. Social democrats could win elections and scarcely cause a ripple on the Stock Exchange.

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For Communists to join a government was a horse of a different colour. The Italian bougeoisie, which has been steeling itself for just such a pos¬ sibility since the mid-sixties, has never brought itself to take the plunge. Moreover, social democratic parties do not have the tradition of monolithic centralism which has characterised Communist Parties. A social democratic party can encompass several different positions at the same time and positively profit from the situation. Thus in the 1984 miners’ strike the Labour Party leadership adopted a statesman¬ like position, deploring violence on the part of pickets. At the same time local Labour Party branches made great efforts to raise money for the strikers. The party could draw towards itself simultaneously both supporters and opponents of the strike. This ability to co-opt on their left has always been one of the strengths of the social democratic parties. While Communist Parties were the victims of their own long history of expelling Trotskyists, Maoists and other leftist dissidents, social democratic parties have been adept at drawing towards them and absorbing groups and move¬ ments on their left flank, at the same time maintaining an air of respectable moderation. One of the Labour Party’s master cynics, Richard Crossman, explained: The Labour Party required militants, politically conscious socialists to do the work of organising the constituencies. But since these militants tended to be ‘extremists’, a constitution was needed which maintained their enthusiasm by apparently creating a full party democracy while excluding them from effective power. Hence the concession in principle of sovereign powers to the delegates at the annual conferences, and the removal in practice of most of this sovereignty through the trade union block vote on the one hand, and the complete independence of the Parliamentary Labour Party on the other.1

Such co-option is a constant threat to the revolutionary left. But the threat also contains an opportunity. The very fact that reformism strives to pull in the extreme left means that it cannot ignore it. This gives the revolutionaries a platform which they must dare to use — but which they can only use effectively if they combine total clarity about principle with tactical flexibility. Correct tactics must be based on an accurate understanding of political reality. All too often revolutionaries have fallen into the trap of either underestimating or overestimating the strength of reformism. It was none other than Leon Trotsky who wrote in June 1939: Attlee and Pollitt, Blum and Thorez work in the same harness. In case of war the last remaining distinctions between them will vanish. All of them

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together with bourgeois society as a whole will be crushed under the wheel of history.2 He was catastrophically wrong. Attlee was to head a British govern¬ ment for six years and Blum too was to be briefly prime minister of France, while Thorez saw the French Communist Party grow to a membership of just under one million and even Pollitt saw the tiny British Communist Party reach its highest membership ever. Trotsky was not the first revolutionary to allow optimism of the will to override pessimism of the intellect, nor was he the last. But such underestimation of the resilience of reformism can have dan¬ gerous consequences. For those who do not share the clarity and integrity of a Trotsky, expectation of the imminent collapse of the system can lead all too easily to despair — or worse, to opportunism. Ultra-leftism breeds rightism; those who one day underestimate reformism will the next day find themselves overwhelmed by its strength — and see no alternative but to join it. To undermine the grip of reformism will be a long and arduous task. To expose the historical record of reformism is a vital job, but in itself it is not enough; as Marx wrote many years ago: . . . when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary success, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that it was Mr This or Citizen That who ‘betrayed’ the people. Which reply may be very true or not, according to circumstances, but under no circumstances does it explain anything — not even show how it came to pass that the ‘people’ allowed themselves to be thus betrayed. And what a poor chance stands a political party whose entire stock-in-trade consists in a know¬ ledge of the solitary fact that Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted.3 To take a more homely example: if one member of a party of holiday¬ makers constantly predicts bad weather, she will hardly attract great poularity if she is proved correct and the whole party is drenched. If, however, she is the only one to have brought an umbrella . . . Reformism has been put to the test many times; the memories of Wilson and Mollet, Soares and Mitterrand, are still very much alive. But in the absence of an alternative, illusions still flourish; people will grasp at a shred of rhetoric in order to kid themselves that the next leader — Kinnock or whoever — will somehow be different from the others. The only way such illusions will be shattered is by experience. But the experience of defeat and betrayal does not in itself make people become revolutionaries; they are far more likely to abandon their socialist aspirations and turn to gardening ... or the extreme right.

264

Bailing out the System

If the revolutionary left is to benefit from the repeated failures of reformism then it can do so only through the use of the united front. The reformists claim that they want to win certain specific, limited improvements. Good; we will join them in their struggle, and see how far they are prepared to go. Revolutionaries prove their credentials, not simply by talking about revolution, but by showing in practice that they are the best fighters for reforms. Of course the united front is a highly flexible weapon. The form it takes varies enormously according to the balance of forces and the conditions prevailing. At the present time the revolutionary left is far too small to offer a nationally-based united front to the reformist leaders. Often, moreover, the united front has to be built against the reformist leaders. It would have been grotesque to offer a united front to Harold Wilson when he was denouncing the seamen’s strike, or to Mario Soares when he was spearheading the Portuguese counter¬ revolution. In either case these gentlemen were, for the moment, the main enemy — though attempts should have been made to draw the rank and file of their parties into united action. At the present time united front action will take place around much more limited objectives: support for a strike here, resistance to racism there. It is in such struggles that we can discover which of the members of reformist organisations share our vision of a socialism based on the self-activity of the working class. The united front is not some hypocritical device behind which revolutionaries conceal their true aims and beliefs. We desire the ends — better wages, improved social services, an end to unemployment — just as much as the reformists do. But we do not believe they can be achieved through parliamentary means within the existing system. It is struggle, not argument, that will settle the question. Above all the united front requires total clarity. The united front is always for a limited aim, for something that can be won. And while it is essential to respect unity in the pursuit of that aim, this does not imply any silencing of debate or criticism. To offer an alternative means more than to present ideas; it requires an organisation. The concept of the Leninist revolutionary party has fallen distinctly out of favour with the left over the past few years; it has been dismissed as authoritarian and old-fashioned. But only a party can provide a focus for those who want to come together and fight against the betrayals of the reformists. Only a party can organise systematic intervention in every struggle and campaign. Only a party can guarantee the regular production and sale of agita¬ tional and propaganda publications. Such a party needs discipline. Not the discipline of a Stalinist

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265

organisation where the orders come from above. Rather the discipline of accountability, where all members are responsible for their actions to the scrutiny of the collective. Only such discipline can resist the enormous power of reformism to pull revolutionaries towards it, and stand up against the constant pressures and blandishments offered by reformism in the community and the workplace. For some time to come, such a party will remain a tiny minority. This does not worry us; in face of the colossal pressures of the dominant ideology, holding together even a small party is an achievement. Of course we seek a majority; only through the self-activity of the vast majority of working people can the system be changed. But to seek short cuts to that majority necessarily means getting caught up in the logic of reformism. To take positions as members of parliament, councillors or trade union leaders at a time when most workers reject revolutionary ideas inevitably means acting under false pretences. The views of the majority are today defined in terms of ‘public opinion’, formed and determined by the mass media. Only the experi¬ ence of struggle and a long battle of ideas can expose the contradictions in public opinion. The potential for socialist ^evolution in the world today is as great as it has ever been. Conservatives and reformists constantly make play of the fact that all revolutions fail. Yet a full-scale workers’ revolution has been tried only once — in Russia in 1917. It failed due to isolation and a set of specific political circumstances. Reformism has been tried and failed on literally dozens of occasions. We live in a bleak and bitter period of defeat and demoralisation. But the defeat is not total; the gains made by the ruling class are nowhere near what they need to restore the health of their system. We face a long period of trench warfare. And even amid the defeats there are outbursts of inspiring struggle. The mid-eighties saw a general strike in Denmark, a major strike by German metal-workers, the heroic struggle of the British miners and a rising tide of opposition to the racist regime in South Africa. Workers accept defeat, not because they like it, but because they lack confidence in their ability to change the world. Even a small victory can begin to restore that confidence and help to turn the tide. It is through such struggles that a revolutionary party can be built. It is to this task that the Socialist Workers Party has devoted itself.

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266

*

*

★

The author of this book belongs to the generation of socialists who came into politics in the years before 1964, who hoped and believed that Harold Wilson would mark a moment of radical change in British politics. When Wilson gave us wage freeze, public spending cuts, tighter immigration controls and abject support for the war in Vietnam, many felt disillusioned and betrayed. But there was nowhere to turn. The Communist Party was already in decline, the revolution¬ ary left far too small to offer any realistic focus. So some disappeared from politics in disgust, others gritted their teeth and moved over to the right of the Labour Party, arguing that there was no alternative. For those of us who lived through that period, watching the Mitterrand government in France has been like seeing the rerun of an old film. In both cases the beneficiaries have been the racist right — Enoch Powell and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Today many thousands in Britain want to see an end to the Thatcher government and all it stands for. But if they get the Labour government they want, will they be condemned to see history repeat itself yet again? This seems inevitable — unless it is possible to build a revolutionary organisation quite independent of the Labour Party and strong enough to act as an alternative force. At the present time only the SWP has the perspective of building such an organisation. The individual members of the SWP are no more immune to the blandishments of reformism than anyone else, but the party as a collective offers a chance of resisting and ultimately replacing reformism. If we fail, we face a grim future of more Guy Mollets, more Harold Wilsons, more Felipe Gonzalez and more Neil Kinnocks.

Notes

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Where possible I have tried to document this account from the contemporary press. I have drawn heavily on reports and analyses in Socialist Worker, Socialist Review and International Socialism (first and second series). Among bourgeois publications I have been particularly helped by Le Monde, The Guardian and The Economist. Among other left-wing publications I have found especially useful New Left Review, International Socialist

Journal, Intercontinental Press, Lutte Ouvriere, Radical America, Solidarity and New Socialist. Books referred to are acknowledged in the notes that follow. One volume I found particularly useful is the collection of essays on European social democracy: J Ross and others, Profils de la Social-Democratie Europeenne (Paris 1982).

Chapter 1: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD 1. R H Tawney, ‘The choice before the Labour Party’, in W Robson, The Political Quarterly in the 1930s (London, no date) page 103-4. 2. E Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York 1961) page xxii. 3. Cited in C Harman, The Lost Revolution (London 1982) page 23. 4. See Harman. 5. See I Birchall, Workers Against the Monolith (London 1974). 6. Cited in C Manceron and B Pingaud, Francois Mitterrand (Paris 1981) page 66. 7. Cited in D S Bell and E Shaw (editors), The Left in France (Nottingham 1983) page 125.

Chapter 2: DAYDREAM BELIEVERS 1. L Blum, A L’Echelle Humaine (Paris 1971) page 173. 2. General Rules of the International Working Men’s Association. 3. G B Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism (Harmondsworth 1965) pages 292-93. 4. Labour Party Conference 1937; cited in S Bornstein and A Richardson,

Two Steps Back (Ilford 1982) page 31. 5. A Schonfield, Modern Capitalism (London 1965) pages 95-96.

Bailing out the System

26S

6. W Brandt, B Kreisky, O Palme, La Social-Democratie et l’Avenir (Paris 1976) page 125. 7. Cited in T Cliff, The Crisis (London 1975) page 190. 8. C A R Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London 1956) page 113. 9. Crosland, page 146. 10. New Socialist, January-February 1984. 11. D Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism (Cambridge 1975) pages 157-58. 12. See S Holland, ‘New Strategy for Europe’, New Socialist, NovemberDecember 1982. 13. A Donneur, L’Internationale Socialiste (Paris 1983) pages 96-99. 14. Statement Made on the 9th January 1957 by M Guy Mollet, French Embassy Press Service, London, pages 8-9. Chapter 3: WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? 1. W S Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston 1951) page 443. 2. B N Pandey, The Break-up of British India (London 1969) page 161. 3. G Kolko, The Politics of War (London 1969) page 361. 4. I Deutscher, Stalin (Harmondsworth 1966) page 435. 5. W S Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston 1951) page 51. 6. 28 November 1939. 7. Cited in A Pozzolini, Che cosa ha veramente detto Togliatti (Rome 1970) page 51. 8. Quoted from a private conversation by M-A Burner, Histoire du Socialisme 1830-1981 (Paris 1981) page 70. 9. J Moch, Confrontations (Paris 1952) page 224. 10. T D Burridge, British Labour and Hitler’s War (1976) pages 23, 60-61, 107. 11. W S Churchill, Their Finest Hour (Boston 1949) pages 111-12. 12. A Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, volume 2 (London 1967) page 271. 13. R Croucher, Engineers at War (London 1982) pages 239-42. 14. Croucher, pages 149-74. 15. E P Thompson, Writing by Candlelight (London 1980) page 82. Chapter 4: DANCING IN THE STREETS? 1. Cited in D N Pritt, The Labour Government 1945-51 (London 1963) page 25. 2. Joseph C Grew to Henry Stimson; cited in Kolko, page 517. 3. Kolko, pages 507-8. 4. 5. 6. 7.

M A Waters, Gls and the Fight Against War (New York 1967) pages 8-10. W S Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston 1953) page 227. C Thorne, Allies of a Kind (London 1978) page 553. Kolko, page 540.

8. J Minnion and P Bolsover, The cnd Story (London 1983) page 11. 9. L’Unita, 10 August 1945. 10. Daily Herald, 9 August 1945.

Notes

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

269

Y Craipeau, La Liberation Confisquee (Paris 1978) pages 105-7. J Fauvet, La Quatrieme Republique (Paris 1959) page 31. A Philip, Les Socialistes (Paris 1967) pages 122-23. Economist, 24 November 1945. Kolko, page 54. Evening News (London), 3 November 1944. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, page 109.

18. C Tsoucalas, The Greek Tragedy (Harmondsworth 1969) page 74. 19. The Colonies: The Labour Party’s Post-War Policy, policy report by Labour Party National Executive Committee, March 1943. 20. House of Commons, 21 February 1946. Chapter 5: MEET THE NEW BOSS 1. House of Commons, 17 February 1943. 2. Cited in The Labour Party: Coal and Power, report of the party’s National Executive to Labour Party Conference 1944. 3. H Macmillan, The Middle Way (London 1966, first published 1938) especially pages 186, 230, 356-57. 4. Daily Herald, 10 August 1945. 5. Ernest Davies, Problems of Public Ownership, Labour Party pamphlet, 1952. 6. Cited in H Fagan, Nationalisation (London 1960) page 46. 7. Economist, 13 August 1949. 8. The Times, 28 October 1946. 9. Manchester Guardian, 19 February 1943. 10. D Wedderburn, ‘Facts and Theories of the Welfare State’, in R Miliband and J Saville (editors), The Socialist Register 1965 (London 1965) page 134. 11. Lords Debates Volume 182, cited in J Kincaid, ‘The Decline of the Welfare State’ in N Harris and J Palmer (editors), World Crisis (London 1971) page 48. 12. M Foot, Aneurin Bevan, volume 2 (London 1973) page 140. 13. For a full account see G Ellen, ‘Labour and Strikebreaking 1945-51’ in International Socialism 2:24 (Summer 1984). 14. News Chronicle, 20 April 1959, cited in Foot, page 349. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Le Monde, 29 September 1985. J Moch, Confrontations (Paris 1952) pages 230-31. D Guerin, Quand l’Algerie s’insurgeait (Claix 1979) pages 24-25. C Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe (London

1974) page 80. 19. Cited in G Minnerup, ‘West Germany since the War’ in New Left Review 99. 20. Cited in W Kendall, The Labour Movement in Europe (London 1975) page 114. 21. Cited in E Hartrich, The Fourth and Richest Reich (London 1980) page

21.

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Bailing out the System

Chapter 6: BENEATH THE FLAG OF DEMOCRACY 1. Moch, page 208. 2. Cited in A Werth, De Gaulle (Harmondsworth 1965) pages 203-4. 3. A Werth, cited in D Ligou, Histoire du Socialisme en France (18711961) (Paris 1962) page 566. 4. Economist, 18 June 1949. 5. For A Lasting Peace, For A People’s Democracy, 21 April 1950, 28 December 1951, 13 March 1953 and 17 July 1953. 6. M Duverger, Political Parties (London 1959) page 350, citing report in Le Monde, 20 October 1950. 7. Avanti, 30 May 1947. 8. Economist, 27 March 1948. 9. N Kogan, A Political History of Postwar Italy (London 1966) pages 51-2. 10. Avanti, 19 April 1948. 11. Avanti, 11 April 1948. 12. Avanti, 13 April 1948. 13. Avanti, 8 April 1948. 14. Cited in Pritt, page 186. 15. 10 August 1947. 16. Pritt, pages 243-44. 17. Ernest Bevin, Foreign Affairs (Labour Party pamphlet: Bevin’s speech to Labour Party Conference June 1946). 18. K Harris, Attlee (London 1982) pages 287-88. 19. Viscount Montgomery, Memoirs; cited in R Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London 1972) page 297. 20. Foot, page 230. 21. Tribune, 28 July 1950. 22. 23. 24. 25.

House of Commons, 15 March 1948. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 3 September 1950. Economist, 27 March 1948. Donneur, page 59.

Chapter 7:P NO MORE HEROES 1. 2. 3. 4.

D Mothe, Militant chez Renault (Paris 1965) pages 28-9. Speech by M A Suslov, Soviet News booklet No 9, 1956, page 8. Speech of 20 January 1957. Nuovi Argomenti, June 1956.

5. Cited in Ross and others, Profils de la Social-Democratie Europeenne (Paris 1982) page 377. 6. ‘The Kruschev Speech, the PCF and the PCI’, in R Miliband and J Saville

(editors), The Socialist Register 1976 (London 1976) pages 59-60. Chapter 8: NO FAITH TO LOSE 1. G Minnerup, New Left Review 99. 2. Economist, 21 November 1959. 3. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 November 1959. 4. Cited in H Brakemeier, ‘spd: The Spirit of Routine’, International

Notes

271

Socialist Journal 19(1967). 5. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 November 1959. 6. All quotations from the Bad Godesberg Programme are taken from S Muller (editor), Documents on European Government (New York 1963) pages 148-64. 7. Economist, 13 February 1954. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Crosland, pages 26 and 65-6. Guardian, 6 October 1960. Guardian, 12 October 1960. M Foot, page 574.

12. Editorial in International Socialism 3. 13. Guardian, 28 September 1960. 14. Cited in T Southall and J Atkinson, cnd 1958-65: Lessons of the First Wave (York, no date (1981) ) page 35. 15. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 15 May 1958. Chapter 9: THE BITTEREST PILL 1. Le Monde, 2 July 1957. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Fauvet, pages 321-22. House of Commons, 2 August 1956. Tribune, 3 August 1956. Tribune, 3 August 1956. Miliband, page 338. Tribune, 9 November 1956. Tribune, 2 November 1956. S Simon, La Greve Generate Beige (Vincennes, 1961) page 27. Simon, page 55. Simon, page 21. Cited in J Lacouture, Pierre Mendes-France (Paris 1981) page 347. L’Express, 5 September 1953. D Mothe, Journal d’un Ouvrier (Paris 1959) page 108. P Fougeyrollas, La Conscience Politique dans la France Contemporaine (Paris 1963) pages 43 and 78. Cited in M Bridier, ‘Colonial Revolution and the French Left’, Inter¬ national Socialist Journal 26-27 (1968). Le Monde, 5-6 October 1975. F-0 Giesbrecht, Frangois Mitterrand ou la Tentation de l’Histoire (Paris 1977) pages 165-66. F Mitterrand, Presence Frangaise et Abandon (Paris 1957) page 174. Mitterrand, page 93. Compare the report by D Mothe in L’Express, 5 June 1958. M and S Bromberger, Les 13Complotsdu 13 Mai (Paris 1959) page 366.

Chapter 10: ‘I WANT TO BE ELECTED’ 1. Foreign Affairs, January 1962. 2. La Stampa, 7 December 1963. 3. J Earle, Italy in the 1970s (London 1975) pages 53 and 72.

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4. P Foot, The Politics of Harold Wilson (Harmondsworth 1968) page 15. 5. Labour’s Plan for Science, speech to Labour Party Conference, 1 October 6. 7. 8. 9.

1963. Economist, 10 October 1964. P Anderson, ‘Critique of Wilsonism’, New Left Review 27. H Wilson, The Labour Government 1964-1970 (London 1971) page 31. Wilson, page 34.

10. Wilson, page 37. 11. Cited in T Cliff, ‘The Balance of Class Forces in Recent Years’, Inter¬ national Socialism 2:6 (Autumn 1979). 12. House of Commons, 20 June 1966. 13. Listener, 15 December 1966. 14. Wilson, pages 641-42. 15. J Kincaid, Poverty and Equality in Britain (Harmondsworth 1973) pages 73-4. 16. Guardian, 30 September 1965. 17. Guardian, 8 May 1968. 18. Cited by V Mosler, ‘Prices, Wages and Trade Unions’, International Socialist Journal 20 (1967). 19. Der Spiegel, 5 December 1966. 20. Der Spiegel, 5 December 1966. 21. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 and 30 November 1966. 22. Der Spiegel, 15 September 1969. 23. Le Monde, 29 December 1961. 24. S Rousseas, The Death of a Democracy (New York 1967) pages 22-3. 25. Le Monde, 11 September 1965. Chapter 11: RIDERS ON THE STORM 1. Economist, 25 May 1968. 2. A Hoyles, Imagination in Power (Nottingham 1973) page 41. 3. L’Humanite, 3 May 1968. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

F Mitterrand, Ma Part de Verite (Paris 1969) page 97. C Estier, Journal d’un Federe (Paris 1970) page 234. P Mendes-France, Choisir (Paris 1974) pages 138-39. J Lacouture, Pierre Mendes-France (Paris 1981) page 474. House of Commons, 29 January 1969. Speech, 25 May 1968.

10. Cited in T Cliff, The Crisis (London 1975) page 119. 11. Economist, 9 February 1974. 12. Labour Weekly, 5 October 1973; Guardian, 2 October 1973. Chapter 12: WORKING FOR THE CLAMPDOWN 1. Financial Times, 12 September 1972. 2. See M Gonzalez, ‘The Left and the Coup in Chile’, International Social¬ ism 2:22 (Winter 1984). 3. The Times, 13 September 1973. 4. Marxism Today, July 1976.

Notes

273

5. Cited in Giesbert, page 313. 6. F Mitterrand, La Paille et le Grain (Paris 1975) page 201. Chapter 13: NOWHERE TO RUN 1. P Filo della Torre, E Mortimer and J Story (editors), Eurocommunism: Myth or Reality? (Harmondsworth 1979) page 122. 2. Le Monde, 5 May 1976. 3. Cited in the Times Higher Education Supplement, 25 November 1977. 4. S Carrillo, ‘Eurocommunism’ and the State (London 1977) page 13. 5. See E Heffer, foreword to E Berlinguer, After Poland (Nottingham 1982) page 7. 6. Panorama, 5 July 1973. 7. Cited in Intercontinental Press, 4 December 1978. 8. Proposta di Progetto a Medio Termine (Rome 1977) page 47. 9. Cited in Filo della Torre, Mortimer and Story, page 88. 10. Berlinguer, After Poland, pages 22,40-41. 11. Intercontinental Press, 8 May 1978. 12. Economist, 3 November 1979. 13. Cited in Filo della Torre, Mortimer and Story, page 164. 14. Economist, 10 December 1983. 15. Programme pour un Gouvemement Democratique d’Union Populaire (Paris 1971) page 234. 16. Guardian, 17 January 1977. 17. Le Monde, 12 March 1981. 18. Le Monde, 4 August 1979. 19. Le Monde, 25 October 1978. 20. Le Monde, 27 December 1980. 21. P Robrieux, Histoire Interieure du Parti Communiste, volume 3 (Paris 1982) page 510. Chapter 14: STEPPING STONES 1. Socialist Worker, 26 July 1975. 2. Intercontinental Press, 17 November 1975. 3. Sunday Times Insight Team, Insight on Portugal (London 1975) page 234. 4. J P Faye, Portugal: The Revolution in the Labyrinth (Nottingham 1976) 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. BOS-R

page 51. Tribune, 17 August 1984. Faye, page 190. Tribune, 9 December 1977. Economist, 10 September 1983. See ‘The Spanish Workers’ Commissions’, International Socialism 33. Economist, 3 November 1979. Le Monde, 7 May 1975. Economist, 3 November 1979. Le Monde, 7 May 1975. Le Monde, 27 October 1977.

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214

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Cambio 16, 17 October 1977. Cambio 16, 17 October 1977. Le Monde, 22 May 1979. New Socialist No 3, January-February 1982. Economist, 7 January 1984. Cambio 16, 25 June 1984. Lutte Ouvriere, 31 December 1983. Le Monde, 19 November 1983. Economist, 4 February 1984. Cited in Lutte de Classe, November 1982. Economist, 7 January 1984. A Papandreou, Democracy at Gunpoint (Harmondsworth 1973) page 45. Rousseas, The Death of a Democracy, pages 102-3. Guardian, 6 October 1975. C M Woodhouse, Karamanlis (Oxford 1982) page 253. Interview with Andre Deliyannis, Europe, October 1983.

31. Economist, 28 May 1983. 32. Guardian, 30 August 1982. Chapter 15: TIME FOR TRUTH 1. Socialist Worker, 26 October 1974. 2. Economist, 19 July 1975. 3. Daily Express, 3 July 1975. 4. Economist, 11 January 1975. 5. Economist, 5 July 1975. 6. Socialist Worker, 6 September 1975. 7. Figures collated by T Cliff, ‘The Balance of Class Forces in Britain Today’, International Socialism 2:6 (Autumn 1979). 8. Tribune, 28 September 1979. 9. Speech to Labour Party Conference, 2 October 1984. 10. Guardian, 9 June 1980. 11. See R Samuel, ‘The SDP’s escape from the Christian heritage of socialism’, Guardian, 29 March 1982. 12. Cited by Samuel. 13. See editorial, ‘Labour’s Love Lost’, Economist, 14 November 1981. 14. Economist, 14 November 1981. 15. Irish Times, 20 August 1970. 16. 17. 18. 19.

E McCann, War and an Irish Town (Harmondsworth 1974) page 249. Irish Times, 22 August 1970 and 24 August 1970. Irish Times, 21 August 1970. Irish Times, 21 August 1970.

20. See article by E McCann, Socialist Worker, 16 September 1972. 21. Le Monde, 30 June 1972. 22. 23. 24. 25.

L’Humanite, 30 June 1972. P Robrieux, volume 3, page 23. Giesbert, page 278. Le Monde, 30 June 1972.

Notes

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

Sunday Times, 17 May 1981. Le Canard Enchaine, 20 May 1981. Socialist Review, October 1981. Economist, 23 January 1982. Economist, 19 June 1982. Stern, 8 July 1981.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Guardian, 23 March 1984. Le Monde, 7 May 1981. Lutte Ouvriere, 12 March 1983. Le Monde, 4-5 September 1977. Le Monde, 4-5 September 1977.

275

37. Socialist Review, May 1984; see also Economist, 7 April 1984. 38. Economist, 24 March 1984. 39. Economist, 12 October 1985. Chapter 16: HALFWAY TO PARADISE? 1. J Pontusson, ‘Behind and beyond Social Democracy in Sweden’, New Left Review 143. 2. Guardian, 21 September 1982. 3. Cited in J Ross and others, Profils de la Social-Democratie Europeenne (Paris 1982) page 137. 4. Le Monde, 15-16 September 1985. 5. Guardian, 15 September 1982. 6. G Therborn, ‘Power in the Kingdom of Sweden’, International Socialist Journal 7 (1965). 7. H Scott, Sweden’s ‘Right to be Human’ (London 1982) pages 18-19. 8. Therborn, ISJ 7. 9. Scott, pages 3, 31,40 and 126. 10. Guardian, 13 September 1983. 11. Pontusson, nlr 143. 12. Intercontinental Press, 13 December 1982. 13. Cited in Intercontinental Press, 13 December 1982. 14. Le Monde, 12 November 1982. 15. Ross and others, page 101. 16. Intercontinental Press, 15 November 1971. 17. Intercontinental Press, 10 January 1972. 18. Ross and others, pages 102, 122. 19. Intercontinental Press, 10 January 1972. 20. Le Monde, 18 April 1979. 21. Le Monde, 14-15 November 1982. 22. Le Monde, 14-15 November 1982. 23. E Hartrich, The Fourth and Richest Reich (London 1980) page 242. 24. Guardian, 17 November 1980. 25. New York Times, 29 September 1976. 26. Guardian, 27 January 1976 and letter from Stuart Holland, Guardian, 22 September 1984. 27. Economist, 11 February 1978.

Bailing out the System

276

28. Cited in G Minnerup, ‘West Germany since the War’, New Left Review 99. 29. Economist, 18 February 1978. Chapter 17: ASHES TO ASHES 1. Cited in R Blackburn, ‘The Unequal Society’, in R Blackburn and A Cockburn (editors),, The Incompatibles (Harmondsworth 1967) pages 48-9. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

See Labour Weekly, 26 February 1982 and 12 April 1985. Philip, pages 174 and 178. Ross and others, page 357. Ross and others, pages 254-5. D Bell and E Shaw, The Left in France (Nottingham 1983) page 72.

7. Ross and others, page 273. 8. L Basso, ‘The Italian Left’, in R Miliband and J Saville (editors), The . Socialist Register 1966 (London 1966) page 34. 9. Ross and others, page 424. 10. Ross and others, page 89. 11. Ross and others, page 265. 12. B Hindess, The Decline of Working-Class Politics (London 1971) page 9. 13. Guardian, 28 February 1983. 14. Ross and others, page 278. 15. T Benn, Arguments for Democracy (Harmondsworth 1982) page 13. 16. B Sarlvik and I Crewe, Decade of Dealignment (Cambridge 1983) page 87. 17. Economist, 12 May 1979. 18. Guardian, 13 June 1983. 19. Bell and Shaw, page 39. 20. Ross and others, page 144. 21. Guardian, 18 October 1985. 22. Sarlvik and Crewe, page 61. 23. Labour Weekly, 5 March 1982. 24. D Ligou, Histoire du Socialisme en France (1871-1961) (Paris 1962) page 594. 25. Guardian, 10 June 1985, and Le Monde, 13-14 May 1984. 26. Socialist Review, July 1981. 27. Guardian, 19 February 1983. 28. Guardian, 4 August 1975 and 10 October 1983; Economist, 23 February 1985. 29. Ross and others, page 360. 30. Ross and others, page 394. 31. A Klein, Co-determination and the Law Governing Works Councils (Meisenheim, no date) pages 24 and 29. Chapter 18: FRIEND OR FOE? 1. Cited in D Coates, The Labour Party and the Struggle for Socialism

Notes

211

(Cambridge 1975) page 166. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

W Hiilsberg, ‘The Greens at the Crossroads’, New Left Review 152. J-P Chevenement, Le Vieux, La Crise, Le Neuf (Paris 1974) page 57. Tribune, 4 November 1983. Chevenement, page 50. T Pfister, Les Socialistes (Paris 1977) page 25. Tribune, 6 November 1981. Guardian, 1 June 1982. Le Monde, 11 May 1983. Le Monde, 24 February 1984. Le Monde, 19 April 1986. Speech to Labour Party Conference 1951. M Foot, Aneurin Bevan, volume 1 (London 1962) pages 237-38. L Hunter, The Road to Brighton Pier, cited in C Harman, ‘Tribune of the People II*, International Socialism 24. Cited in M Foot, Aneurin Bevan, volume 2 (London 1973) page 373. Foot, volume 2, page 477. J Lee, My Life with Nye (Harmondsworth 1981) page 280. Foot, volume 2, page 474; Labour Weekly, 5 March 1982. Interview with E Hobsbawm in M Jacques and F Mulhern (editors), The Forward March of Labour Halted? (London 1981) page 98. Labour Weekly, 22 March 1985. Jacques and Mulhern, page 89. Guardian, 16 December 1985.

Chapter 19: LIVING IN A NOWHERE LAND 1. Guardian, 5 August 1985. 2. Quoted in International Socialist Journal 1,1964. 3. Patrick Jarreau in Le Monde, 26 March 1983. 4. Le Monde, 12 April 1986. 5. L Basso, ‘A New Socialist Party’, International Socialist Journal 2 (1964). 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Basso, isj 2. L Basso, ‘The Centre-Left in Italy’, New Left Review 17. Guardian, 27 September 1982. Le Monde, 7 August 1981. Le Monde, 2 May 1986. Guardian, 6 November 1982. Socialist Review, November 1981. Interview in Socialist Worker, 21 September 1968.

14. Le Monde, 9 May 1981. 15. Le Monde, 12 March 1983. Chapter 20: HOW TO SELL A CONTRADICTION 1. I Birchall, Workers Against the Monolith (London 1974) pages 233-30. 2. The Labour Party and the CIA, Radical Research Services (London, no date). 3. D Miller (editor), A Pocket Popper (London 1983) page 317.

Bailing out the System

278

4. B Magee, Popper (London 1982) page 84. 5. M Weyembergh, ‘A Camus et K Popper’, La Revue des Lettres Modernes, September 1979. 6. L’Express, 30 December 1955. 7. P Anderson, Arguments within English Marxism (London 1980) page 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

53. P Anderson, ‘Critique of Wilsonism’, New Left Review 27. A Callinicos, Is There a Future for Marxism? (London 1982) page 78. J Ranciere, La Legon d’Althusser (Paris 1974) page 137. Le Nouvel Observateur, 9 May 1977, cited in Callinicos, page 108. M Foucault, The History of Sexuality (Harmondsworth 1981) pages 84-85. A Gorz, Socialism and Revolution (London 1975) page 135. English translation, London 1982. Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class, pages 84, 131, 137. Labour Weekly, 8 October 1982. ‘The State of the Left in Western Europe’, Marxism Today, October 1982. Marxism Today, April 1985.

Chapter 21: CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION 1. Speech to the Second Congress of Communist International, in V I Lenin, British Labour and British Imperialism (London 1969) page 269. 2. Education for Socialists: The Development and Disintegration of World Stalinism (New York 1970) page 27. 3. Leaflet of 9 May 1968, cited in Partisans 42, May-June 1968. 4. ‘Death or Glory’, London Calling (CBS 1979). 5. Intercontinental Press, 26 April 1976. 6. Intercontinental Press, 26 April 1976. 7. Intercontinental Press, 24 May 1976. 8. Cited in International Socialism 91. 9. OCI leaflet Pour Battre Giscard, distributed April 1981. 10. Rouge, 3 October 1980, 17 October 1980, 6 February 1981 and 10 April 1981. 11. Rouge, 26 June 1981. 12. Rouge, 8 March 1985. 13. Cited in Socialist Review, March 1984. 14. P Taaffe, ‘Marxism and the State’, Militant International Review, June 1982. Chapter 22: KEEP ON KEEPING ON 1. R H S Crossman, introduction to Bagehot’s The English Constitution, cited by T Nairn, ‘The nature of the Labour Party’, New Left Review 27. 2. L Trotsky, Writings 1939-1940 (New York 1973) page 43. 3. K Marx, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (London 1952) pages 2-3.

Chronology 1944 August: Liberation of Paris December: Athens Insurrection

1945 January: Yalta Conference May: German Surrender May: Nationalist rising in Algeria July: Labour Government in Britain August: Hiroshima — Japan surrenders

1947 January: Saragat splits from PSI in Italy May: French and Italian Communists out of government June: Marshall Plan announced

1948 April: Italian elections — defeat for June: Beginning of Berlin blockade

PCI-PSI

Front

1949 April:

NATO

established

1950 June: Beginning of Korean War

1951 April: Be van resigns from British Labour government July: Founding of Socialist International October: Fall of Attlee government in Britain

1953 March: Death of Stalin

1954 May: Fall of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam November: Beginning of Algerian War

1956 February: Kruschev’s secret speech to

CPSU

Congress

October: Hungarian Revolution October: Anglo-French invasion of Egypt (Suez)

280

Bailing out the System

1957 March: Creation of Common Market

1958 May: De Gaulle returns to power in France

1959 November: Bad Godesberg Conference of German

spd

1960 October: British Labour Party Conference adopts unilateralism December: Belgian General Strike

1962 July: Independence for Algeria October: Cuban missiles crisis

1963 November: George Papandreou becomes Greek prime minister December: Italian Centre-Left government takes office

1964 October: Election of Wilson government

1965 February:

US

begins bombing North Vietnam

1966 November: German

SPD

enters Great Coalition

1967 April: Military coup in Greece

1968 May-June: General strike in France August: Russians invade Czechoslovakia

1969 October:

SPD

government in West Germany

1970 January: Swedish miners’ strike August: SDLP formed in Northern Ireland

1971 June: Founding of French Socialist Party

Chronology

1972 June: French Socialists and Communists sign Common Programme November: West Germany and East Germany sign Basic Treaty

1973 September: Chilean coup topples Allende

1974 March: Wilson forms minority Labour government in Britain April: Overthrow of fascism in Portugal July: Fall of Greek Junta

1975 April: Final end to Vietnam war April: First Portuguese elections July: Labour government imposes wage controls in Britain November: Death of Franco in Spain

1976 April: Callaghan becomes British Labour leader September: End of SAP rule in Sweden

1977 October: Moncloa Pact in Spain

1978 March: Aldo Moro kidnapped in Italy

1979 May: Thatcher becomes British prime minister December: Russian troops enter Afghanistan

1981 May: Mitterrand becomes president of France October: PASOK to power in Greece December: Jaruzelski coup in Poland

1982 September: SAP returns to power in Sweden October: PSOE win Spanish elections

1983 March: West German elections — SPD defeated June: Italian elections: Craxi becomes prime minister

1984 March: British miners’ strike begins

281

Index

Action Party (Italy): 43-4 Agartz, Victor: 81 Agee, Philip: 157 Algerian War: 95-100, 115, 234 Ali, Tariq: 112 Allende, Salvador: 13, 134-6,138, 145 Althusser, Louis: 144, 247-8 Altimirano, Carlos: 157 Anders, General W: 63 Anderson, John: 68 Anderson, Perry: 108, 247 Androsch, Hannes: 201 Aragon, Louis: 184 Aristotle: 82 Atlantic Charter: 25 Attali, Jacques: 249 Attlee, Clement: 30, 33, 38, 53,67-8, 84-5, 127,211,227,262-3 Audin, Maurice: 98 Avanguardia Operaia: 255 Bad Godesberg Programme: 81-3, 88, 112, 125,202 Badoglio, Marshal P: 42 Balabanova, Angelica: 65 Basso, Lelio: 43, 235-6 Belgian General Strike: 9,92-5 Ben Gurion, David: 91 Benn, Tony: 15, 87,127, 172-3, 176-7, 211-2,229-31 Beria, L: 64 Berkeley, Humphry: 110 Berlin Blockade: 68 Berlinguer, Enrico: 142, 146-7 Bernstein, Eduard: 10, 17, 244 Bevan, Aneurin: 31,52,68,87,92,223 227-9 Beveridge, W H: 51-2 Bevin, Ernest: 33-4, 46, 67-8, 86 Blum, Leon: 12, 17, 41,53, 63, 262-3 Boland, Rose: 241

Bolshevism: 14, 70, 245,257 Bonomi, Ivanoe: 43 Bosquet, Michel: see Gorz, Andre Bouchardeau, Huguette: 234 Bourdet, Claude: 98 Braden, Thomas: 63 Brandt, Willy: 20,25-6,31,113-5, 125, 138, 143, 147, 155, 203-5, 238, 240 Brandt Report: 25-6 Brezhnev, Leonid: 142 Briggs, Ellis: 116 Brown, George: 107 Bustelo, Francisco: 163 Butler, R A: 83 ‘Butskell’, Mr: 83, 179 Caetano, Marcello: 153-4 Callaghan, James: 107, 173-4, 176-7, 194,230,261 Campaign for Democratic Socialism: 86 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: 78, 85-6,88,240 Camus, Albert: 245-6 Cannon, Les: 77 Carrillo, Santiago: 144, 147-8, 162,248 Carter, James: 140 Castle, Barbara: 229, 240-1 Central Intelligence Agency: 63, 86, 152,157 Centre Union (Greece): 116-8 CERES (France): 15, 183, 225-7 CFDT (France): 120, 124-5, 185,219 CGIL (Italy): 56,65, 77, 106, 126, 193-4,235-6 CGT (France): 54-5,62-3,74,120,122, 124-5, 183, 185,218 Chappie, Frank: 77 Chevenement, Jean-Pierre: 24, 225-7 Chirac, Jacques: 185, 191 Churchill, Winston: 29-30, 33, 37-8, 44-5,51,67, 116-7

Index

Christian Democratic Party: — France: 40-1, 53, 63 — Italy: 43, 55, 64-5, 67, 73, 77, 103-6, 145-7, 191-4,217,236 — Germany: 56,73,80,83,103,112-5, 203-5 — Portugal: 157, 160 CIA: see Central Intelligence Agency CIR (France): 183 CISL (Italy): 65, 193 Citrine, Walter: 39 CND: sef Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Coates, David: 22 Cominform: 61 COMISCO: 70 Common Market: see EEC Common Wealth: 34 Communist International: 11-12, 15, 61, 65,224,251,257 Communist Party: — Austria: 69,143 — Belgium: 214 — Britain: 30-1,34,67-9,77-8,86,109, 151-2,214,220,251,258,263,266 — Chile: 134, 136 — Finland: 152 — France: 32-3, 39-40, 53-5, 62-4, 77, 84,96-7,99-100, 109,115, 122-3, 125, 142-3, 149-51,183-5,190-1, 210,213-5,234,240,242,252, 256-7,263 — Germany: 81, 112,125, 205 — Greece: 32,44-5,116,144,152,168, 170 — Italy: 32,39,42-3,55-6,64-6,70,77, 103-4, 106, 126, 136,142-3,145-7, 149, 191-4,215,219,235-6,255 — Portugal: 152, 155-8,254 — Spain: 147-8, 159-64, 166 Confindustria: 104 Conseil National de la Resistance (France): 33,40 Cooper, Ivan: 180, 182 Cossiga, Francesco: 193 Courtauld, Samuel: 51 Cousins, Frank: 86-7 Craxi, Bettino: 168, 192-4 Cripps, Stafford: 31, 50 Crosland, Anthony: 21-2, 83-4, 133,245 Crossman, Richard: 228-9, 245, 262 CRS (riot police): 64 Cunhal, Alvaro: 156 Currie, Austin: 181 Dallin, D J: 63 Deakin, Arthur: 86, 228

283

Debray, Regis: 186 Defferre, Gaston: 39,91,97, 115, 183, 191,217 De Gasperi, Alcide: 43, 56, 64 Delors, Jacques: 249 Democratic Party (USA): 13, 85 Democrazia Proletaria: 255 Den Uyl, J: 239 Devlin, Paddy: 181-2 DGB (Germany): 58 Douglas-Home, Alec: 106 Dubedout, Hubert: 217 Duclos, Jacques: 183 Dutschke, Rudi: 126 EAM (Greece): 32, 44-5 Eanes, Ramalho: 157-8,254-5 Ebert, Friedrich: 157 EDA (Greece): 116-7 Eden, Anthony: 44, 67,91-2 Education: 23-4, 67,110,117,120 EEC: 25-6, 143, 150,153, 159, 164-5, 169, 173, 177,225-6 Ehmke, Horst: 143 ELAS (Greece): 44 Elleinstein, Jean: 149 Engels, Friedrich: 10, 91, 244 ENI (Italy): 104 Ennals, David: 112 Eppler, Erhard: 240 Equality: 21-3 Erhard, Ludwig: 113-4 Estier, Claude: 123 ETA (Spain): 166 Eurocommunism: 142-52,158,248, 255,258 Fabians: 17, 19, 87, 244 Fadeyev,A A: 245 Farrell, Michael: 181 FDP: see Free Democratic Party Feldt, Kjell-Olof: 197, 199 FGTB (Belgium): 93-4 Fischer, Ernst: 247 Fischer, Louis: 245 Fiterman, Charles: 150 Fitt, Gerry: 181-2 FLN (Algeria): 95-8, 100 Foa, Vittorio: 235 Foley, Maurice: 181 Foot, Michael: 52,68, 172,176 Foot, Paul: 107 Force Ouvriere: 63, 218-9 Foucault, Michel: 248 Fourier, Charles: 17-18 Fourth International: 35, 252-4 France, Anatole: 21

284

Franco, Francisco: 148, 153,159, 165-6 Francs-Tireurs et Partisans: 32 Free Democratic Party (Germany): 112-13, 115,203,205 Freedom Party (Austria): 200, 202 French Revolution: 21 Front National: 98, 190-1,257 Gaitskell, Hugh: 83,85-8,92,107,224, 245 Galvan, Tierno: 165 Gandhi, Mahatma: 47 Garibaldi, Guiseppe: 66 de Gaulle, Charles: 40-1, 53, 64, 91, 99-100, 115, 120-1, 183,233 Giap, Vo Nguyen: 253 Gide, Andre: 245 Gillies, William: 33 Giscard d’Estaing, Valery: 139, 184-6, 189 Goldmann, Lucien: 247 Goldthorpe, John: 209 Gonzalez, Felipe: 148,157,160-6,168, 219,260,261,266 Gorz, Andre: 249 Gouin, Felix: 53 Gramsci, Antonio: 144, 226, 244 Greater London Council (GLC): 215-6 ‘Greens’: — France: 237-8 — Germany: 225, 237-9 Grimaud, Maurice: 186 GSEE (Greece): 170 Guesde, Jules: 63 Guevara, Che: 186 Halimi, Gisele: 242-3 Harrod, Roy: 109 Healey, Denis: 36, 70, 129, 174-5,177 Heath, Edward: 127-8, 138,172, 174-5 Heffer, Eric: 145 Hegel, G W F: 247 Hernu, Charles: 168 Hiroshima: 38-9 Hitler, Adolf: 11,29-30, 33, 36, 80, 91-2, 128 Hobsbawm, Eric: 136, 249-50 Hogg, Quintin: 49 Howe, Geoffrey: 177 Hume, John: 180-2 Hungarian Revolution: 9, 75-7,138,142 Hyndley, Lord: 50 Ibarruri, Dolores: 147 Iglesias, Gerardo: 148 Iniziativa Socialista: 65 International Monetary Fund: 156, 158

Bailing out the System

International Socialists: 112, 127 Internationalism: 24-7, 33, 60, 91, 140, 225 IRA: 180, 182 IRI (Italy): 55, 104 Jaruzelski, General W: 138, 147,189 Jaures, Jean: 63 Jenkins, Clive: 26 Jenkins, Roy: 178 Jeunes Gardes Socialistes: 94 Johnson, Lyndon: 111, 167 Johnson, Samuel: 27 Joint Production Committees: 34-5 Jones, Aubrey: 109 Jones, Jack: 128, 173,175 Juan Carlos (of Spain): 160 Kanapa,Jean: 245 Karamanlis, K: 116, 168-70 Kautsky, Karl: 179 Keep Left: 68 Keeping Left: 229 Keynesianism: 20, 26, 116,134, 201 Kiesinger, KG: 113 Kim Li Tsung: 181 Kinnock, Neil: 177-8, 227, 231,250, 263,266 KKE: see Communist Party (Greece) Koestler, Arthur: 245 Korean War: 62 Kravchenko, V: 63 Kreisky, Bruno: 88, 200-2 Kruschev, Nikita: 12, 75-7, 142 Labour Party: — Britain: 11, 15, 22, 24, 26, 30-1, 33-6,41,45-53,67-70, 77, 79, 83-8, 91-2, 106-12, 127-30, 147,172-81, 191,209,211-6,220,223-4,227-31, 233, 235, 237, 242, 247, 250-2,254, 257-9,262,266 — Holland: 15, 89,237 — Ireland: 15 — Norway: 15, 206 Lacoste, Robert: 64,98 Lalonde, Brice: 237-8 Laroque, Pierre: 53 LCI (Portugal): 254-5 LCR (France): 256-7 Lecanuet, Jean: 115 Lee, Jennie: 229 Lenin, VI: 21,250-1,258 Le Pen, Jean-Marie: 98, 190-1, 266 Lever, Harold: 224 Livingstone, Ken: 216 LO (Sweden): 197

Index

Lotta Continua: 253 Lysenko, T D: 245, 248 McCann: Eamonn: 181 McCarthy, Joe: 68 MacDonald, Ramsay: 29,190 McGahey, Mick: 129 McGowan, Lord: 50 Macmillan, Harold: 49 McNally, Tom: 181 MacShane, Denis: 164 Magee, Bryan: 246 Maisky, I: 67 Major, Louis: 93 Malraux, Andre: 39 Mancini, Giacomo: 105-6 Mandel, Ernest: 94 MaoTse-tung: 12, 137 Maoism, Maoists: 124,126,137-8,185, 219,235,238,248,252-5,262 Marchais, Georges: 122, 143,150, 256 Marshall Aid: 60-2, 67, 80 Marx, Karl: 17, 91, 200, 224,258, 263 Meany, George: 63 Mellish, Robert: 111-2 Mendes-France, Pierre: 42, 63, 91,95, 97,99-100, 123-4,234,236 Mikardo, Ian: 92, 112,177,229 Miliband, Ralph: 232 Militant Tendency: 237, 257-8 MIR (Chile): 135 Mitterrand, Frangois: 14,42,91, 96-100, 115, 123, 136, 139, 147, 149, 151, 157, 164, 166,183-92, 194-5, 217, 226-7, 230, 234, 237-8, 240, 242-3,246, 249,253,255-7, 261.263.266 MNA (Algeria): 96 Moch, Jules: 62, 64 Mollet, Guy: 26, 32,41,91,97-100, 111, 115, 123, 183, 186,223,225, 233.246.260.263.266 Montgomery, Bernard: 68 Morgenthau Plan: 30 Moro, Aldo: 104, 193 Morris, William: 258 Morrison, Herbert: 19 Mountbatten, Louis: 46-7 Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes'. 243 MRP: see Christian Democratic Party (France) MRPP (Portugal): 254 MUP (Italy): 43 Mussolini, Benito: 30, 42, 55, 92 Nationalisation: 19-20, 22, 33,49-51,

285

54-5, 58, 64, 82-5, 184, 186-7, 196, 226 NATO: 62, 67, 83, 92, 94,104-5, 118, 143, 146, 166, 169,229-30,240 Nasser, G A: 90-2 Nenni, P: 64-5, 70, 77, 103-5, 192 Nixon, Richard: 137-8 Nkrumah, K: 137-8 Novelli, Diego: 217 NVV (Holland): 89 OCI (France): 256 OGB (Austria): 201 Ohnesorg, Benno: 125 Ollenhauer, Erich: 81 Owen, David: 178-9 Owen, Robert: 179 Pacifist Socialist Party (Holland): 237 PAK (Greece): 167-8 Palme, Olof: 198-9,239 Palmer, John: 237 Papandreou, Andreas: 117,157, 166-71 Papandreou, George: 44-5,116-8,166-7 PASOK: see Socialist Party (Greece) PCE: see Communist Party (Spain) PCF: see Communist Party (France) PCI: see Communist Party (Italy) PCP: see Communist Party (Portugal) PDUP (Italy): 236 Pecchioli, Ugo: 145 People’s Party (Austria): 58,69,200 People’s Socialist Party (Denmark): 237 Petain, Marshal P: 29, 32, 41 Peurifoy, John: 116 Phillips, Morgan: 70 Pinochet, Augusto: 135-7,189 Planning: 19-21 Poher, Alain: 183 Pollitt, Harry: 262-3 Pompidou, Georges: 138, 183-4 Popper, Karl: 245-6,248, 250 Popular Democratic Party (Portugal): 157 Popular Front: 12, 17, 29, 65, 76, 155, 160-61 Potsdam Conference: 38, 46 Powell, Enoch: 112, 266 Profumo, John: 106 Pronteau, Jean: 77 PRT (Portugal): 254-5 PSA (France): 233 PSI: see Socialist Party (Italy) PSIUP (Italy): 235-6 PSOE: see Socialist Party (Spain) PSU (France: 97, 123-4, 184-5,225, 233-5

286

Quilliot, Roger: 246 Rallis, George: 117 Ramadier, Paul: 53, 55, 63-4 Ranciere, Jacques: 248 Rate-capping: 216 Reagan, Ronald: 140,189, 203 Rego, Raul: 156 Renard, Andre: 94-5 Renner, Karl: 69 Republican Party (USA): 13 Revolutionary Communist Party: 33 Rocard, Michel: 234 Rodgers, William: 86, 178 Roosevelt, Franklin D: 29 Russian Revolution: 11, 70, 85,192, 227,265 Salazar, A: 153 Sandinista Front: 138 SAP (Germany): 31 SAP: see Social Democratic Party (Sweden) Saragat, Guiseppe: 15, 65, 106,245 Sartre, Jean-Paul: 247 Scharf, Erwin: 69 Schiller, Karl: 114 Schmidt, Helmut: 143,203, 205, 238, 246,261 Schumacher, Kurt: 58 Scohie, Ronald: 44 Scoccimarro, Mauro: 56 SDP: see Social Democratic Party (Britain) SDS (Germany): 83, 125-6 Second International: 10-12,208, 213 SFIO: see Socialist Party (France) Shah of Iran: 138,200 Shaw, George Bernard: 19 Shonfield, Andrew: 19 Short, Edward: 127 Silone, Ignazio: 245 Simon, Tim: 174 Sinn Fein: 182 Skeffington, Arthur: 181 Soares, Mario: 136,155-8, 160,168, 254-5,261,263-4 Social Christian Party (Belgium): 92,95 Social Contract: 173-6,220 Social Democratic Party: — Austria: 69, 246 — Britain: 15, 86, 178-80, 237, 246 — Denmark: 15, 237 — Finland: 15,152 — Germany: 10-12, 15, 33, 58, 79, 8083,112-5,125-6,143,147,157, 159, 161,202-6,208,211,218,224-5,

Bailing out the System

233,237-40 — Italy: 15,65, 103-4, 106 — Sweden: 15, 195-9,213,233 Social Democratic and Labour Party (North of Ireland): 181-2 Social Democratic Workers Party (Russia): 14 Socialist Party: — Austria: 15, 69, 88, 200-2 — Belgium: 15, 93-5 — Chile: 134-6, 157 — Czechoslovakia: 70 — France: 14-15, 17, 32-3,40-2, 53-5, 62-4, 73, 76-7, 91-2, 95-100, 115, 123, 125, 143,149-51, 168,183-92, 210-4, 217-8, 224-7, 233-4, 237-8, 240,242-3,252,255-7,266 — Greece: 168-71,214 — Italy: 15, 42-4, 55-6, 64-6,70, 77, 103-6, 126, 145, 147, 157,168,191-4,211,217,219,223,235 — Luxembourg: 15 — Poland: 70 — Portugal: 15, 155-8,254-5,261 — Spain: 15,148,157,159-66,210,219 — Switzerland: 89 Socialist International: 11, 15, 65, 70, 88, 145, 159, 184 Socialist Workers Party: 265-6 Somoza, Anastasio: 138 SOS-Racism: 191 Spaak, Paul-Henri: 62 SPD: see Social Democratic Party (Germany) Spender, Stephen: 245 Stalin, J V: 12, 19, 30-1, 38,44,64, 66-7,74-5,77, 142, 149,247 Steel, David: 110 Stimson, Henry: 38 von Stutnitz, General: 31 Suarez, Adolfo: 161 Sukarno, A: 90 Suslov, Mikhail: 76, 148 Tawney, R H: 10, 179 Teixeira, Octavio: 158 Thatcher, Margaret: 139, 165, 170, 176-7, 180, 188,205 Thompson, Edward: 239 Thorez, Maurice: 40, 77, 142, 262-3 Tito, Josip Broz: 12, 61 Togliatti, Palmiro: 32,42-3, 61,77 Trotsky, Leon: 19, 73, 244, 258, 262 Trotskyism, Trotskyists: 33,35,39,43, 46, 88,94, 124, 127, 138, 167, 252-9,262 Trades Union Congress (TUC): 52, 57,

Index

86, 110, 128, 174-5 Truman, Harry S: 38, 60 USDR (France): 42, 97 UGT (Spain): 161-2,219 UIL (Italy): 65, 193,219 Union Communiste: 62 United Front: 35, 124,263-4 Utopianism: 17-18,21,25,41 Van Acker, Achille: 93, 95 Vatican: 66 Venizelos, E: 45 Vogel, H-J: 238 Waldeck-Rochet: 253 Wallace, Henry: 69 Wallenberg, Marcus: 196

287

Wehner, Herbert: 58, 81 Wigforss, Ernst: 197 Williams, Raymond: 247 Williams, Shirley: 178-9 Wilson, Harold: 85, 87-8, 107-11, 1279, 172-4, 176-7, 181, 188,190,211, 223-4, 227-30, 247,260, 263-4, 266 World War: — First: 11,73 — Second: 12,15, 19,24,29-46,73,76, 84-5, 119, 196, 198,207,213,260 Wright, Richard: 245 Yalta Conference: 25, 38 Yveton, Fernand: 98 Zhdanov, A A:247

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Bailing out the system A glance at the state of the world today makes the case for socialism: a deep international recession with no end in sight, famine in the Third World, food queues in the Eastern bloc, mass unemployment in the West, and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The reforms that the system has conceded are rapidly being taken back: education, health services, pensions - all are being cut. So why have those who propose a radical alternative to this crisis-ridden system made so little progress in the past 40 years? Towards the end of the Second World War an astute young Conservative politician named Quintin Hogg told the House of Commons: ‘If you do not give the people reform, they are going to give you revolution.’ In those words the history of reformist socialism in the past 40 years can be summed up. As this copiously researched book shows, the labour parties, the social democrats, the ‘Socialists’ and even the Communists have time and again saved the capitalist system from disaster, defusing working-class struggle whenever it threatened to bring about radical change. In a narrative that ranges across Europe from Britain to Greece, from Spain to Scandinavia, Ian Birchall gives us a section of our history never before gathered into one book.

£5.95

ISBN 0 906224 30 6

$12.00