SOFTLY SOFTLY COATES

A TRADE UNION STRATEGY IN THE COMMON MARKET. The Programme of the Belgian Trade Unions. Edited by Ken Coates. Spokesman Books. {1.25. The title of this book is something of a misnomer. It does not contain a strategy for the trade unions in the Common Market, but presents the Programme of Workers' Control adopted early in 1971 by the Belgian General Federation of Labour, which has close links with the Belgian Socialist Party.

The programme is very much in the reformist tradition of European Social Democracy, albeit of a more "classic' type than that represented by the Labour Party in Britain. This much is admitted by Ken Coates in his introduction who says 'it remains a reform programme whilst continuing the spirit of contestation and struggle.

What the programme puts forward is a kind of peaceful syndicalism in which, step by step, workers will take over control of the economy. Coates observes: 'Of course, there is no guarantee that authority will allow a peaceful revolution to consolidate itself peacefully: but equally, there is not the slightest chance that the people will awaken in a violent revolution unless they are thwarted in the attempt to make a non-violent The 'of course' is deliberate and shows that Coates has read some-but not very muchhistory. Does he really suppose that big business is going peacefully abdicate at all levels as the Programme assumes. Such When | Rosa Luxemburg called on meant by mass strike action not Uto a programme could only have been drawn up by self-important bureaucrats thoroughly imbued with reformist ideas.

The Programme puts forward no more than a blueprint for a gradual transition to 'socialism' which is the counterpart to the gradualism of parliamentary social-democracy.

To evoke Rosa Luxemburg in this connection is an outrage. She would have poured scorn on its compilers and on its English editor. When she called on workers before 1914 to 'learn to speak Belgian', she meant by mass strike action, not by supporting the Utopian schemes of trade union officials.

Can Rosa Luxemburg, or any Marxist, be envisaged supporting the view of the Programme that It is a matter of taking an increasing number of problems out of the arbitrary control of management and submitting them to the control of workers in order progressively to acquire the rights which belong to the In short, the Programme can be dismissed as not only worthless, but dangerous. It gives workers the impression that by trade union action they can take over from management step by step, that they do not require a revolutionary party and that the class struggle can be confined to negotiation over baizecovered tables conflicts within capitalism. That 'spank Bolglan', she At least the Belgians admit that their project contains the danger of corporatism and the further integration of the trade union movement into the capitalist state.

The Programme even lays down a series of guidelines for avoiding this possibility, always with the assumption that it will somehow be possible to move into the seats of power at every level from the factory to the national economy by purely trade union methods. It does not envisage the eruption of the workers onto the scene demanding to become masters of their own destinies.

The book makes no analysis of the Belgian General Strike of 1960-1961 and takes no account of the French General Strike of May-June 1968. It is the kind of programme which delegates to trade union congresses vote for with a clear conscience because it really commits them to nothing more than what they America, the Beautiful.