Pabloites praise Wilson government

ment has taken the first of its steps to attempt to stabilise British capitalism in its crisis. A large range of important goods will go up 3s. in the f. Callaghan himself says this will mean an increase in the cost of living.

At the same time strikes are condemned by Wilson and workers are told they must accept wage restraint. Firms who make goods for export will receive a cash rebate on their production in addition to other concessions.

Callaghan, Chancellor of the Exchequer, revealed a balance of payments deficit for the year 1964 of £800 million. When asked in a BBC interview if he would borrow from abroad, he said this would certainly be necessary, because the crisis was much worse than 1961. Callaghan: cost of living will rise The loan would have to be made soon, and he refused to estimate its size. The loan will have to be paid for, just as the planned 'mechanisation of British industry must be paid for. This is the meaning of the 'restraint' and 'sacrifices' which Wilson will demand from the working class.

In taking this course, and refusing to use Parliamentarv power as part of a mobilisation of the whole working class to take over the factories and financial institutions from the employers, the Labour government in fact carries out the tasks of the capitalist class.

Take wealth

Socialists must campaign among workers to 'make the Tories pay for the crisis', and the only way is to take the wealth out of their hands.

Wilson and his right-wing friends stand in the way of such a solution. The whole reason for the existence of our movement, the revolationary Marxist organisation of the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter, is to fight for a new working-class leadership which will drive out Wilson and the agents of capitalism.

We, therefore, are completely opposed to those self-styled Marxists whose primary occupation is to apologise for the reformists and traitors of the Labour leadership.

The editors of World Outlook', , a 'press service', published in Paris, are of this breed. They are the spokesmen of the so-called 'Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International' - the same people who presided over the degeneration of the Ceylon Trotskyist party to the point where its majority leaders joined a capitalist government earlier this year.

'World Outlook', on October 16, under the title of 'On the Eve of the British Election, had this to say:

"A Labour victory offers the most fertile possibilities for forming a left wing standing squarely on the programme of revolutionary socialism. It offers the best possibilities, moreover, for forming a left wing on the top rungs of the ladder leading to power.' Here is the essence of the revisionist polities of today. Everything is staked on the progress made by the Labour leadership, or sections of the bureaucracy and nothing on the struggle of the workers to defeat these false leaders.

If 'World Outlook's statement means anything, it means that the occupation of official positions within the the bourgeois state will provide the possibility of influencing the increasingly powerful occupants of these positions.

Indeed, the policies of 'World Outlook' supporters in this country, the 'Pabloites' do consist of applying 'pressure' and persuasion to the professed left-wingers of "Tribune' and the trade union machine.

Just in order that no one should be left in doubt, T. J. Peters returned to the subject of the Labour government in the October 23 issue of 'World Outlook'.

'Different'

Not content with the prospect of building a left wing in the future, he assures us that ... this is a left social-democratic government. different in degree from the last Labour government'.

As Wilson announces a policy which is purely an attempt to manage capitalism and which hardly conceals the real aim of big business to cut real wages considerably, our Pabloites commend him as a 'left social demo crat?! Thus it follows that you must call upon the workers to give general support to the government.

In order to get to that point, Peters tries to prove that Wilson's government is a reflection of the pressure of the working class for socialism and ignores the necessary struggle against him as an agent of capitalism. He says Wilson came to power because of an 'internal working class trend' associated with reaffirmation of Clause 4.

The fact is, of course, that Wilson and his colleagues produced programmes which reject Clause 4. They are explicitly and openly for a capitalist society with stricter state intervention.

It is nonsense and deception to say, as Peters does, that the Wilson government is 'committed to the socialist principle of nationalization'. They have just witch-hunted mercilessly the Young Socialists movement which does fight consistently for socialism. Let Peters recall Marx's dictum that we test men by what they do.

Peters speaks of the working class's trend to the left as powertul countervailing force. But this strength of the workers will be a 'force' only insofar as it has conscious leadership, opposed to its official leaders.

Peters compliments the Tories on the clever tactic of appointing the aristocratic Home as leader to succeed Macmillan. In this way, he says, they appealed to the backwardness of their middle-class supporters and prevented a rout at the polls.

Hush up

But Home's appointment followed a raging crisis in the Tory party and the Macmillan cabinet. Given an ounce of leadership by Wilson and his friends, the Tories would have been toppled and smashed A determined campaign of opposition at any time since then would have broken them. Wilson helped to hush up the Profumo scandal and the Tories were let off the hook.

It is typical that Peters blames this on the cunning of the ruling class and avoids all mention of the responsibility of Wilson and the official Labour leaders.

What does Peters envisage and what does he propose fo the working class? He says the Labour government has no points of support except the power of the organised workers.

But is it this power which makes Wilson give guarantees to ICI directors and big insurance companies? Is it the power of the organised workers which gives Wilson the line of wage restraint to stabilise capitalism?

Peters chooses to ignore the fact that leading capitalist spokesmen like "The Econo mist' recommended a Labour vote. Monopoly capitalism is prepared to use a Labour government to discipline the workers.

Wilson's campaign to break the Young Socialists, and to harness the traditional so-called left in the Labour Party to government posts — these are measures which show Wilson's basic strength is derived from monopoly capitalism and not the workers.

Inevitably, Peters places the aphasis on support for the ift socialist democrat' Ison:

"The left wing of the Labour movement has as its main task to stiffen the resistance (?) of the government to the expected assault of the ruling class, the mobilization of the workers behind every (?) progressive stand taken by the government, the participation of the workers in mass action against any attempts at a solution at their expense.' What is the class character of the Wilson government? According to Peters, it is a government of the workers which must be supported insofar as it resists capitalist attacks.

According to us it is a capitalist government in a Labour disguise. With Wilson in charge of leadership, it will carry out capitalist policies against the working class. Not to prepare the workers for this fight is a betrayal. Iome: His appointment tactic'.

Because he cannot pose these class issues, Peters ends in a flurry of generalizations which could have been written by a Liberal, so far away are they from Marxism, from revolutionary politics.

Trotskyists must begin, in all political questions today. from the need of the working class to resolve its crisis of leadership.

View

Peters and his friends start, not from this historical task off the working class, but from the point of view of the national framework of bou: geois politics, e.g., The inquest into the 13 years of Tory plunder of the wealth of the nation is the demand of the hour:

to open the books and let the country know how it came to pass..? (My emphasis-C.S.)

No comment is necessary on the general lines of this sentence, but one particular aspect of it is very important. The phrase 'open the books' is intended to refer to the traditional demands of the Founding Programme of the Fourth International.

wilbath agony o the a6ks 4th. Interuational New This is the basic programmatic document of the world movement founded by Leon Trotsky and his comrades. By 1938 the revolutionary Marxists had found it necessary to lay the foundations of the Fourth International in order to restore working-class leadership after the defeats prepared by the Stalinist bureaucracy in control of the Third (Communist) International. The defeat of the German Revolution in 1923, of the British General Strike in 1926, and of the Chinese Revolution in 1927, followed by Hitler's victory over the German working class in 1933, finally ruled out the perspective of transforming the Communist International by internal opposition.

Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High St., S.W.4.

In that historic document (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International®), the slogan 'open the books' was part of a series of demands behind which the workers would mobilize for their own power under a Marxist leadership, against all opportunists and reform.

ists. Peters here plays the same game as N. M.

Perera and the other traitors in Ceylon: he dresses up the betrayal with the language of Trotskyism.

We in the Socialist Labour League will have none of this. The advance to socialism is only through struggle against the capitalist class and against their agents in the labour movement.

Opportunities

Where Peters concludes: "The left wing of the Labour Party faces a great test and great opportunities', , we should be clear that he really means that since Wilson, according to him, is a left social-democrat together with his government, then he is suggesting that it is they who are on test, who must take their opportunities.

In fact they are tested stooges of the boss class and the opportunities they grasp are in the interests of their own time-serving bureaucracy. not those of the working class There will be a left wing of great power in the Labour Party built out of the struggles of the industrial workers and the reaction of the Labour Party rank and file members to the critical problems of British imperialism, for which Wilson has only capitalist solutions.

The essential question is to provide a Marxist leadership with real roots in the working class, in the first place among the young workers, behind whom the left wing can organise to take workers' power.

Collapse

Without that it will meet the same collapse as every previous left wing in the Labour Party.

The building of a real socialist leadership and the strengthening of the left wing is inseparable from the construction of the revolutionary party. No amorphous left wing, no matter how left its programme and leadership is, can act as a substitute for the party.

But this task can only be accomplished by rejecting the opportunism of Peters and the Pabloites as well as all tendencies which accommodate themselves to sectarianism.

The Socialist Labour League will fight and support the struggle for every reform in the interests of the working class carried out by the Deur fronte wonder class, but this in no way means that we support the right-wing leadership, who will utilise the struggle for reforms to avoid expropriation of the monopolies.

For the Socialist Labour League to fight for reforms inseparable from the struggle for nationalization of the basic industries as the only effective step towards effective planning. 60 pages, Price 1/- from Brockway declared that he was leaving polibetrayal by to