Political Resolution of the Socialist Labour League

[p014] Political Resolution of the Socialist Labour League The following is the text of the political resolution adopied by the inaugural conference of the Socialist Labour League, which met in London on May 16-18, 1959: I. WHAT IS THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE? 1. The Socialist Labour League is an organization of Marxists within the Labour and trade union movement, dedicated to fighting for socialist policies in place of the present policies of class betrayal. 2. As distinct from others who call themselves socialists, Marxists do not believe that it is possible to reform capitalism out of existence or to change it into socialism by peaceful means. The experience of over a century of working-class struggle shows that when confronted with a direct challenge to its political and economic power the capitalist class will renounce the facade of parliamentary democracy, and by utilizing the State machine and fascist organizations will attempt to ensure the perpetuation of its power and privileges. 3. Marxists hold that only through the struggle of the working class for the achievement of State power can capitalism be overthrown. The working class will be able to take and hold State power only by smashing the capitalist State machine and creating its own organs of power (e.g. workers’ councils). Participation in Parliament and in local councils by workers’ representatives can help the struggle for socialism, but only if the fight of those representatives is linked with direct action by the organized working class. 4. The present leaders of the trade unions and Labour Party are not determined to end capitalism, achieve working- class power and build socialism. They have a stake in the preservation of capitalist society, in which they fulfil the role of mediators in the conflict between Capital and Labour. High salaries, liberal expense accounts and a mode of life remote from that of the ordinary worker ensure their acceptance of capitalist society and explain their opposition to independent working-class action, which threatens the very basis of their existence. One of the chief tasks of the Socialist Labour League is to help trade unionists and members of the Labour Party, Communist Party and other working-class organizations, through joint activity and political discussion based on their own experiences, to build a new leadership, firmly rooted in the working class and devoted to socialist principles. Il. THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE WORKING CLASS 1. At a time of deepening economic crisis the employing class is determined to preserve its system at all costs, and to put the burden of the crisis on the backs of the workers. 2. The growth of unemployment to an official figure of over 500,000 (with unregistered unemployment, short-time working and young people leaving school the total is nearer to one million) confirms in a striking way the socialist indictment of capitalism as a system unable to guarantee full employment and a rising standard of living. New techniques are available to make more goods and make them more cheaply. Yet workers are unemployed and go without. These new techniques could raise the workers’ living standards to a level undreamed-of a few years ago. But capitalism is unable to utilize them to benefit mankind. 3. Instead, vast resources are squandered on the production of murder weapons: the hydrogen-bomb, rocket bases and the botulinus toxin. The very testing of the H-bomb is poisoning our food, spreading cancer and putting a question mark over the health of unborn generations. 4. These problems which face the working class, and which spring from an obsolete and bankrupt social system, cannot be solved by reformist leadership. Such leadership weakens the working class. The reformist leaders betray the workers at a time of crisis, as MacDonald did in 1931, Il. THE END OF CAPITALIST EXPANSION 1. Under capitalism, production and distribution are increasingly carried on by large-scale units. Workers labour in ever bigger factories and enterprises, while ownership and control are kept in a decreasing number of more and more powerful hands. Modern technique and organization thus make production social in character, while subjecting workers to the increas- ingly concentrated power of capital, which appropriates the fruits of their labour. With the post-war boom, living standards have risen for some workers, but the power of the monopolies has grown. tremendously. ° 2. War-time destruction, and subsequently the rearmament: programme, made necessary the expansion of production... This provided immense profits for the capitalist class, which. at that stage found it in its interests to give certain concessions. and make efforts to avoid all-out clashes with Labour. The boom also obscured class antagonisms and strengthened’ the grip of reformism in the Labour movement. Joint conciliation and consultative committees became a regular part of industrial relations. Both the Right wing and the Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party supported the introduction of these methods into industry, thus preventing the working class from using its power to make still greater advances in wages and conditions. 3. While in office, the Labour Party leaders shifted steadily to the right—a process which culminated in the return of a 43

[p015] LABOUR REVIEW Tory government. The socialist aspirations of the rank and file have been blocked and frustrated by the foreign and domestic policies of these Right-wing leaders, which are in basic agreement with those of capitalism. Reformism and gradualism have been put to the test since the end of the war. The nationalization measures of the Labour government left the capitalist system intact and saddled the nationalized industries with a burden of compen- sation and interest payments. The present crisis in the coal industry and in railways, the attacks on the standards of railwaymen and miners, show the complete fallacy of the idea that socialism can be introduced industry by industry and without the working people first securing political power firmly in their hands. The nationalized industries are run in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, while the workers in them are now suffering worsened conditions resulting from the anarchy of capitalism. 4. Capitalism has failed to expand the consuming power of the working class sufficiently. Yet overproduction and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall remain. . The harnessing of new productive techniques in the scramble for profits makes labour redundant. At the same time the sharpening competition among capitalist nations forces ever greater technical advances within capitalism, accentuating still further the tendency towards mass unemployment. 5. The increasing power of the government to control credit has not solved the basic problem. Such measures as cuts in hire purchase restrictions and easier facilities for credit have left the hard core of unemployment untouched. Whatever zigzags there may be the economic difficulties of capitalism will persist and will very likely get worse. At present the capitalist economy is neither in a boom nor in a slump, but in a state of stagnation that could be the prelude to still steeper economic decline. IV. THE STRATEGY OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS 1. To meet competition and retain its position in capitalist markets is the central aim of the British employing class. This aim determines its class strategy. 2. Whereas in the period following the war the expansion of production was consistent with high profits, this is no longer the case. _ Now, in order to reduce production costs to ‘competitive’ levels, the capitalist class has to break the resistance of the working class by. smashing both ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ strikes. It has to seek, by legislative and other means, to cripple trade union organization in the workshops. Nowhere have the aims of the employing class been set forth more nakedly than in the document issued by the engineering employers, ‘Looking at Industrial Relations’. Their disclosure that twice in four years they sought a show-down with the engineering unions is an arresting contrast to the honeyed tones used by the employers just after the war. 3. The capitalist class offers the working class the prospect of helping it engage in a cut-throat trade war with other capitalist nations. This could end only in a wholesale worsening of working conditions, and, finally, in total economic collapse or war. 4. Thanks to the intensified struggles of the colonial ‘peoples and the fiercer competition offered by the USA, Germany and Japan, the present capitalist offensive will be still fiercer than in the past. Class struggles in industry are likely to be more bitter, and more far-reaching in their effects, than those of the twenties. 44 July-August 1959 5. But British capitalism is confronted by a working-class movement which, if properly led, is big enough, experienced enough and strong enough to destroy capitalism. With this fact the capitalist class must reckon. Up to now it has been unable to defeat decisively any section of the working class, let alone the working class as a whole. What progress it has made in sackings, victimizations and wage cuts has been made as a result of betrayals by Labour leaders. Indeed, the employing class was disagreeably surprised by the capacity of the busmen, dockers, engineers and building workers to remain solid and fight back, even when hampered by bad leaders. Nothing has been settled yet in industry. 6. Likewise in the political field the Tories have been un- able to secure a decisive swing to the Right, though, thanks to the lack of socialist leadership and a socialist policy, they have held their own. 7. The employing class seeks at all times to avoid an all- out struggle with the working class, particularly with a general election in prospect. If the Tory Party obtains a working majority, it can hope to be able to introduce anti-trade-union legislation, particularly against unofficial strikes and shop stewards’ committees, in order to cripple the resistance of the working class. Such legislation would be supported by certain trade union leaders, as their statements have shown. Failing this the Tories hope for the return of a Right-wing Labour government whose class collaboration policies would pave the way for a Tory government, as in 1931. It must be understood, however, that Tory policy is extremely flexible and should the opportunity arise for the Tories to deal a blow at a section of the working class they would not hesitate to do so. On the other hand the determined resistance of the workers could force the Tories to retreat, if only as a temporary measure. The form the employers’ offensive will take in the future largely depends, therefore, on how prepared the workers are to resist and to take solidarity action with their fellow-workers. V. THE PROBLEM OF LEADERSHIP 1. Neither in the industrial field nor in the political field are the Labour leaders making preparations to meet the employers’ attacks, or to evolve a counter- strategy to that of the capitalist class. On the contrary, they are trying to lull the workers. 2. The Labour Party’s election pamphlet, ‘The Future Labour Offers YOU’ does not challenge capitalism. It scarcely mentions the word ‘socialism’, and then only in a perfunctory Way. Although the Tories have been discredited to a great extent by the growth of unemployment, the mass disillusionment and discontent have not been harnessed behind Labour, as recent by-election results show. 3. No fighting socialist alternative is put forward by the leaders of the Labour Party. Labour stands committed to continue the manufacture of the H-bomb, the construction of rocket bases and the con- tinuation of the arms programme; there is to be no extension of nationalization to any industry except steel, and even here Labour is not seriously answering the steel barons’ propaganda campaign. There is no effective policy for ending unemployment. 4. The trade union leaders have turned their backs on any real struggle for higher wages and shorter hours. In the mines and the building industry, in face of the ‘employers’ point-blank refusal to grant anything, the leaders go to arbitration. TE SAI ESN etn “voters EA PE

[p016] DOCUMENT On the railways, a new claim is submitted only under rank- and-file pressure. In engineering, Carron’s only reply to the bosses’ arrogance is that their statements are unwise. In hosiery, the union leaders defy their members’ mandate by accepting a cut in wages. 5. Despite their reformist leaders the trade unions and Labour Party command the support and loyalty of the over- whelming majority of the working class. The leaders use this support and loyalty in a constant effort to prevent those they lead from getting to grips with capital- ism. No advance to socialism is possible while these leaders are in control. VI. MARXISTS AND THE LABOUR PARTY 1. Marxists work in the mass organizations of the working class with the aim of winning the working class from reformism to revolutionary socialism. The British Labour Party is based on the trade unions. It grew up as the political expression of the organized working class in a period of capitalist expansion and imperialist exploitation. The leaders of the movement have a social stake in the preservation of capitalism. This explains their inability and refusal to lead a real struggle for socialism. The wun- democratic structure’ of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress is the organizational safeguard of the eeaucracy that controls these bodies against the rank and le. Since the party came into being the dominant Right-wing bureaucracy has fought the Left by means of bans, pro- scriptions, witch-hunts and purges. So far the Right wing has been generally successful in this, for three reasons: (a) The Communist Party has zigzagged in its attitude to the Labour Party, from sectarianism to opportunism. At one time the Labour Party was called a ‘social-fascist’ organization and no distinction was drawn between leaders and rank and file. Today the Right-wing leaders are wooed, and the General Council of the Trades Union Congress is praised by Palme Dutt. By both policies the Communist Party has failed to demon- strate to the rank and file the need for a Marxist alternative. (b) The concessions made by capitalism since the end of the war in the fields of education and health have buttressed reformism inside the Labour movement. (c) Left-wing movements inside the Labour Party hitherto have not been led by Marxists, have not based themselves on the working class as the decisive force for change, have seen alliances and manoeuvres as the key factors, and have collapsed as soon as their leaders went over to the Right wing. The weakness of Victory for Socialism is that it ignores the main job of socialist organization—to help workers in struggle. It fails to challenge the main source of Right-wing power by building support in the factories and trade unions— the decisive places for any serious fight inside the Labour Party. 2. The Socialist Labour League has come into existence, not in order to repeat the experiences of such Centrist group- ings, but to lead a new kind of struggle against Right-wing leaders and Right-wing policies in this new period. An organization of Marxists is necessary, not only for the purpose of theoretical education and the discussion of policy, but also to give help and leadership to the workers in their immediate struggles against capitalism. 3. The proscription of the League within a month of its establishment is a tribute to the way the Marxists and their journal The Newsletter have helped the workers in struggle in the transport, docks, building and engineering industries. The Right wing sees what serious repercussions the alter- native presented by the Socialist Labour League could have for the exponents and practitioners of class collaboration policies. The witch-hunt against the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter will not succeed in its aim of smashing our organization and our paper. We shall conduct a determined struggle against the expulsion of socialists whose only crime is that they recognize and perform their duty of working for a genuine socialist policy. The Socialist Labour League will continue to fight for working-class policies inside the Labour Party, despite bans, proscriptions and expulsions, and will continue to demand the right to be affiliated to the Labour Party. VIt. THE INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE 1. The majority of the world’s population is ruled by governments of the international capitalist monopolies. In the countries of western Europe and the former colonial countries governments rule in the interests of their own capitalists and of the dominant monopolists of the United States. Their political and military policies are directed to the suppression of the working class in their own countries, the maintenance of colonial slavery and an eventual defeat for the Soviet Union and its allies. 2. Imperialism offers the working people everywhere the prospects of increasing unemployment; trade wars, with the lowering of the workers’ standards and the smashing of their organizations; colonial wars; and a nuclear holocaust with the possibility of the destruction of human civilization itself. 3. Recognizing that the working class is the only con- sistently revolutionary class, the Socialist Labour League affirms the common interests of the workers of all countries against the capitalists and their governments. From these common interests follows the duty of working-class organiz- ations throughout the world to act in solidarity in their fight against exploitation and imperialism and in defending the Soviet Union from imperialist attack. The Socialist Labour League will therefore press for and support common action extending beyond national frontiers on such issues as the campaign against nuclear war, the struggle of the colonial peoples for independence and the fight of the European miners against the growing coal crisis. 4. Large communist and socialist parties have not pre- vented a consolidation of the Right wing in western Europe, supported by American imperialism. Since 1945 French capitalism has sought to retain its. imperialist possessions by an unbroken succession of colonial wars. Only fourteen years after the ‘war to end fascism’ the: democratic institutions of the capitalist State have crumbled. De Gaulle’s success in France; the Adenauer régime in. Germany; the successive Catholic Right-wimg coalitions in. Italy; the continued rule of fascism in Spain and Portugal: this is the context in which the British Tory Party enters the: general election fight. Its victory would further strengthen. European reaction. 5. Stalinist and social-democratic leaders offer no road out. for the working people. Each in their own way advocate policies of class collaboration. There is need for working-class leadership on genuine revolutionary lines, based on the interests of the working class, not on the diplomatic requirements of the Soviet bureaucracy nor the privileges which western imperialism confers on ‘Labour’ leaders. 6. The Socialist Labour League warns the working-class 45

[p017] LABOUR REVIEW movement that a strategy based on the hope that European capitalism will split from the USA is no substitute for the waging of an international working-class struggle against war, and can lead only to further defeats. 7. The spirit of the oppressed peoples and the working class’s will to struggle have nowhere been crushed. In the major capitalist countries big class battles have yet to take place. The colonial and semi-colonial areas are in continual ferment. The peoples of Africa are awakening, and the crimes of white landowners and of imperialist troops will not hold them back. In the Middle East and Far East there are insistent demands for national unity and freedom from imperialist oppression. In Latin America there is a continued resistance to national bourgeois dictatorships and American imperialist domination. The struggles of the working people against capitalism in the metropolitan countries and the fight against imperialist exploitation by the peoples of the colonial and semi-colonial countries help each other and weaken the common enemy. Blows against imperialism give more self-confidence to the workers under Stalinist rule and spur on their demands for socialist democracy by weakening their fear of capitalist encire}ement. 8. International unity of the working class is even more vital today than it was a hundred years ago when Marx and Engels proclaimed the battle cry: ‘Workers of all lands, unite!’ and declared that the emancipation of the working class could come about only by their common action on a world scale. To develop that unity there is an urgent need in every country for Marxist movements linked throughout the world in mutual help and with a common strategy for the inter- national struggle for socialism. We need to build a great revolutionary socialist inter- national based on rank-and-file militancy throughout the world. The Socialist Labour League will strive to construct fraternal ties with all those Marxists in the world who stand for independent working-class policies as an alternative to Right-wing reformism and Stalinism. VIN. THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE AND THE SOVIET UNION 1. The working-class revolution of October 1917 which overthrew the power of the capitalist class in Russia and established the power of the working class was the greatest blow yet struck against the capitalist class. To the Socialist Labour League the unconditional defence of that revolution is the duty of every Marxist; and the extension of that revolution till socialism has been achieved all over the world is our central strategic aim. The Socialist Labour League will by every means open to it defend the Soviet Union, China and the countries of eastern Europe against imperialist attack. But by defence of the gains of October, defence of the workers’ States against imperialism, we do not mean the defence of the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy nor the whitewashing of: the policies of whichever section of it happens to be in control at.a given time. ' Khrushchev himself pointed out to the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party how Stalin’s policy betrayed the interests of. the Soviet people. What Khrushchev could not and dared not show is that the crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy were committed in order to defend and maintain its privileged position in. Soviet society. 2.. This bureaucracy, which first developed in the early 1920s and grew at an increasing tempo after Lenin’s death, July-August 1959 gave ideological expression to~ its political power and economic privileges in the nationalistic and conservative theory of ‘socialism in one country’. The expansion of capitalism (1850-1914) helped the process of the watering down of socialist ideas until they lost their revolutionary character altogether. This was one kind of revisionism. The Stalinist kind of revisionism had a different origin. Working-class internationalism came to the side of the Russian revolution with the ‘Hands Off Russia’ campaign, but its effect was nearly three years too iate. The task of maintaining the socialist direction of the revolution in a vast country still emerging from the middle ages was too much for the handful of devoted and experienced revolutionaries round Lenin and Trotsky. Owing to the failure of the international revolution and the exhaustion of the Russian people after years of civil war and intervention, the Bolsheviks were excluded from office, persecuted and finally murdered by Stalin and his fellow- bureaucrats. Some of the worst traditions of tsarism were revived and strengthened. But not even Stalin could undo the revolution itself. It was to preserve and extend their privileges and power that the new bureaucracy in the Soviet Union replaced working-class internationalism with narrow nationalism, the extension of the socialist revolution with its containment inside the national boundaries of Russia. 3. Linked with this anti-Marxist theory of ‘socialism in one country’ there developed the theory of ‘peaceful co- existence’, equally anti-Marxist, which repudiated world revolution and subordinated the revolutionary needs and interests of the workers of the capitalist countries to the short-term diplomatic interests of the Russian rulers. This policy led to all kinds of unprincipled alliances and manoeuvres both by the Soviet government and by the leaders of the communist parties, whose chief task became that of acting as pressure groups to work for a climate of opinion favourable to the current line of the Russian bureaucracy. The communist parties thus became frontier guards for the Soviet bureaucracy, basing their policies not on a Marxist analysis of the conditions which operated in their countries, but on the temporary needs of the Soviet bureaucracy as expressed by Stalin. 4, The international communist movement remains under Stalinist control today, and continues to operate policies which sacrifice national communist parties and the interests of the workers of particular countries to various diplomatic moves by the Kremlin. In, certain capitalist countries moreover (Italy, France) the Stalinist leaders have acquired their own material base (e.g. seats in local and national government, well-paid trade union positions) which further contributes to their narrow, conser- vative social outlook and precludes their parties from ever fulfilling a revolutionary role. 5. Because of its failure to give solidarity and support to revolutionary movements Stalinism is unable to solve the problems that face the international working class. Only by the taking of power in the hands of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries can peace and the defence of the. Soviet. Union be guaranteed and socialism be con- structed, for the building of socialism requires that world resources. be rationally utilized and that full advantage be taken of the international division of labour already created by capitalism. 6. The Socialist Labour League rejects the false idea that the Soviet bureaucracy will gradually ‘liberalize’ itself. The defeat of the bureaucracy in i the Soviet Union requires the creation of a genuine Marxist party which will fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucracy by the work- ing class and which will link the struggles of the Russian workers with the struggles of the working class in other ' i

[p018] DOCUMENT countries. Only the creation of such a Marxist party can ensure the development of socialist democracy in the Soviet Union. 7. One of the main tasks of the Socialist Labour League is to combat the false ideas of Stalinism; to show in particu- lar that the best contribution British workers can make to the defence of the Soviet Union is to struggle for the achieve- ment of working-class power in Britain; while at the same time our members engage in joint anti-capitalist activity with rank-and-file members of the Communist Party, who in many cases still sincerely believe that the policies of ‘socialism in one country’ and ‘peaceful coexistence’ are really in the interests of the working class. IX. THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE AND THE COLONIAL REVOLUTION 1. Without any qualification or condition, the Socialist Labour League stands for the right of every nation to self-determination. The present era has seen the tremendous development of the revolutionary movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The struggles have taken many forms, depending on the nature, state of organization and traditions of the peoples concerned, and have considerably weakened imperialism. We fully support the struggles of all colonial and dependent peoples for independence from imperialism, not only out of considerations of humanity but because for the British workers this is a common fight against a common enemy. 2. We recognize in particular that in Britain the working class bears a heavy responsibility to fight alongside its class brothers in the colonies. The linking of the struggle of the British workers with that of the colonial workers is for us one of the keys to social advance. 3. But we recognize also that political ‘independence’— as in India and Ireland—can mean freedom for native and foreign capitalists to exploit. Real victory for the independence struggles in the colonies is not possible except under working-class leadership. We therefore stand for working-class leadership of the national liberation struggles and for the growth of strong socialist organizations that will seek to extend the national revolutions into socialist revolutions. 4, We oppose the opportunist attitude taken by Stalinism in relation to certain national struggles, which has meant, for example, the abandonment of socialist principles (and even the term socialist) from the programme of such organiz- ations as the Connolly Association, and the submerging of the socialist aim in the Arab national struggles. 5. We bring to the fore the common class interests of immigrant workers in Britain with the white workers. The splitting of the working class on racial lines can only be in the interests of the capitalist class. We therefore urge united opposition by white and coloured workers to all forms of racialist propaganda, incitement or violence directed against any section of the working class. In particular we urge the necessity of building committees embracing trade union branches, Constituency Labour Parties and immigrant workers’ organizations, actively to combat racial violence. We feel that only by such organization is it possible to defeat future racial outbreaks in such areas as Notting Hill. X. FOR A WORKING-CLASS STRATEGY 1. The Socialist Labour League has the duty of pre- paring the working class for the impending industrial and political battles, since the employers have declared war on the workers. There is no other organized force in the Labour movement that is systematically seeking to warn the workers, to prepare them, mobilize them or lead them into struggle. 2. The preparation of the working class for struggle im- plies the following: the exposure of the Labour and Com- munist Party leaders’ policy of class betrayal; the winning of masses of workers for an alternative socialist policy; the waging of a consistent, united campaign in industry in defence of jobs and workshop organization, for higher wages and shorter hours; the linking of the struggle in industry with the struggle for an alternative policy and leadership in the Labour Party. 3. The Socialist Labour League frankly recognizes that the fight for socialist policies demands a struggle against the Right-wing leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions, and that this struggle must be waged, persistently and patiently, in the mass organizations of the British working class. 4, Against the inability of the present Labour leaders to fight unemployment or the H-bomb, against their refusal to engage in any serious struggle with the capitalist class, the Socialist Labour League advances this socialist policy: (a) For a vigorous fight against unemployment, under the slogan ‘Not a single worker on the street. Share the avail- able work with no loss of pay.’ For the opening of the books to workers’ inspection. (b) For the defence of shop stewards, including legisla- tion by the next Labour government to protect active trade unionists from victimization. (c) For the nationalization of basic industries under workers’ control, without compensation to the ex-owners. (d) For the withdrawal of British troops from the colonies. (e) For an end to the manufacture of the H-bomb, the construction of rocket bases and the preparations for germ warfare. 5. The Socialist Labour League warns the working class that, in the future as in the past, the employing class aims to challenge and defeat section ufter section of the working class separately. If this strategy is to be resisted and smashed, there is @ great need to spread the understanding that the common class interests of the workers necessitate common class action in defence of each section under attack. 6. Experiences such as the London bus strike, the Smith- field meat market strike, the South Bank and Belvedere lock-outs, the BOAC dispute, the Harland and Wolff strike, and the disputes at Ford’s and Morris’s, all show that a defensive strategy of limited struggle is totally inadequate: to meet and beat back the employers’ offensive. 7. For any leadership to call a body of men out on strike: without aiming to bring the full strength of the organized! working class behind the strikers is to court disaster. A prolonged struggle by one factory or one section in: isolation, against which the whole might of the employing: class and its State machine can be focused, stands less chance: of success today than in the 1945-56 period. 8. In every major struggle today the need from the outset is swiftly and boldly to develop solidarity action of all kinds with the workers engaged in the struggle. Every effort should be made to extend the strike while the initiative remains with the workers; financial aid and token stoppages after the initiative has passed to the em- ployers are no substitute for resolute action to ‘black’ an employers other establishments, his raw materials and finished products, as soon as battle is joined. cM 47

[p019] LABOUR REVIEW The employers must be made to feel that by sacking a single militant they are challenging the whole might of the organized working class. Either the workers reply to arrogant employers in language they will understand, or the working class will see its organization and its gains whittled away piecemeal. 9. But this objective of taking the offensive in every strike, of waging each dispute from the outset with the aim of: winning a decisive victory, implies efficient, thorough and conscious preparation. Every encouragement must be given to the development of rank-and-file committees in each industry, consisting of the most experienced and trusted militants, and to the linking- up of these committees on a local, area and ultimately national scale. 10. In rank-and-file committees, built by the workers themselves, directly responsive to their needs and wishes, the working class possesses all the means of preparing for major industrial struggles. They provide the machinery for exchanging information and experiences; for bringing the trade unions and trades councils into action more speedily as each issue arises; and for the production of all kinds of strike bulletins and broad- sheets that are indispensable if the lies of the capitalist Press are to be answered. 11. Rank-and-file committees are in no sense ‘anti-union’ or ‘outside the unions’. On the contrary they are a traditional means inside the British trade union movement of organizing the members to fight despite the leaders’ sell-outs and betrayals. When the leaders refuse to fight, then the rank and file, since they and not the paid officials are the union, have the right and the duty to replace their leaders with men who will adhere to trade union principles. 12. The Socialist Labour League must explain to the working class how every partial, immediate struggle in industry today raises, in no matter how embryonic a form, the key question of control, of power. The moment the workers in a given factory challenge their employer and seek to prevent his depriving men of their livelihood this is a rehearsal on a local scale of the eventual national challenge to the whole employing class for control of the factories. That is why every strike experience, particularly the work of strike committees and other rank-and-file organs of struggle, must be carefully studied, compared and analysed, and the necessary lessons drawn from every victory and defeat. 13. The Socialist Labour League regards the barriers that the Right wing seeks to set up between ‘industrial’ and ‘political’ activity as quite artificial. It is of the utmost importance to link the struggles in industry with the political fight inside the Labour Party; to make local Labour Parties into working-class campaign centres that will help strikers in their areas by every means in their power; to strengthen the Labour Left by drawing into the party fresh forces from among the most active and militant trade unionists. The fight for a socialist policy means the linking of the industrial and political fights against capitalism, as two sides of the same coin, just as the employing class and its Tory government are two expressions of one and the same social force. XI. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MARXIST 1. Marxists are the most politically aware of all workers. They do not look upon socialism or the struggle for its achievement in an idealistic way, but in a scientific way. 48 July-August 1959 They base their policies and programme on a study of the objective class forces operating in society, on a study of the real position and needs of the working class. Marxism is the science of working-class struggle and working-class power. 2. Since Marxism is a science, it must be studied as a science. The Socialist Labour League therefore carries out systematic and thorough education of all its members in Marxist theory, in the experience of the working-class move- ment in all countries, showing the laws and lessons of that experience. 3. But Marxism is not merely a theory, but a theory of human action, and first and foremost of class struggle. To be a Marxist is therefore not merely to study, but to study in order to be better equipped to fight and work on behalf of the working class. 4. But to fight and work as an individual is not enough. Marxists fight and work as a disciplined team, with agreed policies based on democratic discussion, with a division of labour, and under the guidance of elected and accountable leading bodies. 5. One of the principal responsibilities which member- ship of the Socialist Labour League entails is that of ex- tending the sales and influence of the League’s publications, which are a bridge between our ideas and the militant workers who are seeking an alternative to reformism and Stalinism. The higher the circulation of The Newsletter and Labour Review, the more workers can be won for Marxist ideas and mobilized in anti-capitalist activity. 6. The Socialist Labour League is not an independent revolutionary working-class party. But its work and activities are laying the foundations for a future party of this kind, which is essential for the overthrow of capitalism and the achievement of working-class power in Britain. Meanwhile the Socialist Labour League aims to win to its ranks all those workers in the Labour Party and Com- munist Party who want to build a revolutionary alternative to the betrayals of reformism and Stalinism, together with all other workers of like mind. XII. THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE’S FUTURE ACTIVITY This inaugural conference of the Socialist Labour League resolves to extend the activity of the League in the following ways: 1. That we strive for a united campaign for increased wages, shorter hours, the defence of jobs and the defence of stewards. 2. That we strive for the most extensive distribution of propaganda on these questions, by means of leaflets, factory- gate meetings and similar forms of activity. 3. That particular efforts be made to arouse resistance to the wage cuts imposed on the hosiery workers, which are a threat to workers in every industry. 4. That we urge the maximum resistance to the coming redundancies on the railways and in the aircraft and en- gineering industries, under the slogan ‘Not a single worker on the street. Share the available work without loss of pay.’ 5. That we urge the fullest support for strikes against non-unionism, so that every gap in trade union organization can be sealed up and trade unionism strengthened. 6. That we advocate a real drive for the third week’s

[p020] THE ‘NEW LEFT’ annual holiday with pay. 7. That the industrial. struggle be brought into the heart of the Labour Party with the demand that the party pledge its full support to the workers’ struggles on wages, hours, jobs and workshop organization, as well as pensions, housing and the other social services, the aim being to inundate the leaders of the party with demands from trade union branches and jobs for the necessary policy changes. 8. That the demand be raised for Labour’s policy to include: an end to the capitalist arms programme and to conscription for the defence of capitalism; a break with NATO, SEATO, the Baghdad Pact and all such imperialist war alliances; an end to secret diplomacy; the ending of British manufacture of the H-bomb, the ending of the con- struction of rocket bases and the closing of the germ warfare establishment at Porton (Wilts.); a campaign to mobilize the world working class against the H-bomb and rocket bases. 9. That full support be given to the campaign for the cessation of work on the construction of nuclear missile factories; and that every encouragement be given to the setting up of anti-H-bomb committees in the trade unions to win support for the idea of ‘blacking’ work on the H-bomb and rocket bases. 10. That the demand be raised for the next Labour govern- ment to withdraw British troops from the colonies and give their peoples immediate and unconditional independence. 11. That towards the end of this year the National Indus- trial Rank-and-File Conference should be recalled, with the participation of local Labour Parties and other organizations of the Labour movement, in order to consider the further development of the campaign for socialist policies in the trade union movement and Labour Party. The Socialist Labour League, recognizing that the Labour and trade union leaders will never move of their own volition, will work for the building of a powerful rank-and-file move- ment in the trade unions and Labour Party, which alone can guarantee the winning of these demands. This movement can be completely successful only under Marxist leadership. That is why the strengthening of the Socialist Labour League in numbers and in influence is essen- tial.