BRITAIN VOTES RIGHT, LABOUR VEERS LEFT
The Labour Party lost another round in the ing-class block of its voters, that would be elections last October.
Despite more than 12 million votes and a loss of 1.2% at the most, the LP found itself wiped out by majority of over 100 Tory Members, determined to maintain themselves in power till the very end of their mandate.
In spite of the undoubted effects of the favorable new turn of the economic conjuncture and the Tories' clever exploitation of the masses' desire for peace, the Labour Party's usual specifically working-class clientèle remains faithful to drawn by a bold, class program, and in appearing to be demagogic to other layers, having a "sober sense of reality."
Even admitting that in a period of economic upswing the broad petty-bourgeois layers would vote for the Tories anyway, it remains true that even now there are in Britain several million workers, not in the unions, who still do not vote Party, over a period of years, could well win these A consistent class policy on the part of this it, and in places (such as Scotland) was even re- layers for the Party. enforced.
The LP seems to have lost out mainly among the petty-bourgeois layers won over by the "pro-
- salary-earners and civil servants; on the other hand it does not seem to have been able to make an impact on the new generation of electors, who for the most part voted Tory.
The defeat of the L P, a parliamentary reformist Party, is almost normal under conditions of capitalist euphoria however limited and ephemeral the latter may be. At no time did the Party's Rightist leadership seek to differentiate itself from the Tories in a clearcut way on any funlamental issue, for example on nationalization or disarmament. It wished to compete with the capitalist Party par excellence, claiming to be able to improve the welfare state services within the framework of an unchanged social system. Thus it succeeded at one and the same time in deceiving the predominantly work-
But in reality it would be fruitless to demand such a co party, polin fro a Parliam of are leadership operates the whole time on a firm bourgeois ideology.
It would be equally fruitless to concede that, even in Britain, any Party proclaiming itself to be working-class, could in truth conquer and keep the power, with the goal of a radical social transformation, exclusively by the parliamentary road, and without mobilizing and organizing the masses outside of this arena.
As expected, the third consecutive electoral defeat of the LP has provoked an acute crise de conscience in the Party, and the beginning of an ideological differentiation of great importance, without precedent in this Party's history.
The victorious bourgeoisie was waiting for its ideological agents within the ranks of the LP and the trade unions to profit from their defeat
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL in order to carry through the same operation as various other social-democratic Parties in continental Europe: to free themselves of all "socialist" vestiges, in particular the principle of nationalization and the class character of the Party.
Certain well-known lieutenants of Gaitskell in effect, sounded out the ground, before clinching such an operation.
But by contrast with what has just happened in the German, Austrian and Dutch social-democratic Parties, the great majority of the British Labour Party and trade unions has reacted to the Left, literally routing the planned offensive of the Right.
The special conference held in Blackpool in November has confirmed that the dominant trend of the present moment, alike in the constituencies and in the trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party, holds solidly to the principle of nationalization and the class character of the Party.
In reality, owing to some tactical mistakes made by the Kightist Gaitskell clique, the latter are virtually a minority in the leadership, faced by a centrist coalition extending from Bevan through Wilson to Cousins, which exercises the effective control. The Left finds itself reënforced by the support of certain trade unions which, frightened of otherwise seeing an anti-trade union offensive of the bourgeoisie gain ground with the help of the out-and-out bourgeois wing of the LP, are now backing it.
While ideological life in the continental workers' Parties lies dormant or is sucked into the swamp of the most vulgar opportunism, in Britain the most vital and pregnant doctrinal and political discussions are now taking place.
The Left-wing press, from Tribune and The New Left Revier (child of the marriage of The New Reasoner with Universities and Left Revier) right up to the numerous publications of the different Marxist groups and tendencies active in the labor movement, reflects an intense ideological interest in the content, prospects and tactics world siane, anhe iresent politian alization is nationalization is strongly debated, as an economic essential of the socialist substructure at least in its initial phase.
Certain reformist and centrist gentlemen maintain the most equivocal silence on this question of capital importance.
The bourgeoisie has centered its attacks on the nationalized industries, well aware that, if its operation were to succeed, it would destroy thereby the class doctrine of the Labour Party and transform it into an ordinary bourgeois Liberal party, incapable of endangering the bases of the present social régime in years to come.
The more so in that these years threaten to see
5 the decisive confirmation of the advantages of prise States over that of competitive "free enter- the planned and statified economies of the wor-
Equally, the British bourgeoisie wishes to lift the mortgage which lowers the flow of new foreign investments, north American in particular, as long as the Labour Party adheres to its doctrine of nationalization.
In the lively competition now being waged between Britain and continental Europe as to who can attract the best foreign capital, the threat represented by the Labour Party's position on this question is a serious handicap for London.
The pro-bourgeois wing of the Labourite leadership, which is opposed to the extension of nationalization and in tavor of a mixed economy, largely private and competitive, is exploiting the lack interest, if not the hostility, that the partial nationalizations under the control of the capitalist state, carried out immediately after the war, have provoked — with good reason - among the workers.
The Labour leadership has never waged a systematic campaign to popularise the socialist content of statification of the economy, to wit: that to obtain a planned national economy, working not for capitalist profit but for the collective and private needs of society, it is necessary to nationalize all the main means of production, banks, insurance companies, big industrial firms and capitalist commercial enterprises, and transport, and to administer them under the democratic control of the working class and the people.
It is this which makes the whole qualitative difference from partial nationalizations administered by the capitalist state in a bureaucratic way for the benefit of capitalism.
It is for the unified revolutionary Marxist tendency working within the Labour Party to define and clarify the doctrinal program and the present policy around which it is possible to regroup the basic forces of the British workers and to open the prospect of a decisive victory over reaction.
Profiting from the present ideological ferment oriented toward the Left which reigns in the labor movement, the unified revolutionary Marxist tendency must set out to build from the grassroots a serious Left-wing which holds firm and from now on struggles in a practical way for such issues as: a nationalized and planned economy; a policy of peace by unilateral disarmament; a trade-union tactic guaranteeing full employment and an improvement in the purchasing power of the masses, thanks to the united struggle for the progressive reduction in working hours and the constant adjustment of wages to the cost of living and to the advance in productivity.