The British and European left must reject any strategic orientation towards unity with European imperialism against America, argued John Ross at International's recent Facing 1984 weekend event. He proposes the slogan of Democratic Socialism.
If we want to understand what is going on in British politics, we must place immediate events within two fundamental processes: the first is the historic decline of the Conservative Party as the dominant party of the British state — a process I discuss in some detail in my book Thatcher and Friends (Pluto Press, 1983). The second is the increasing differentiation between Western Europe and the United States.
I don't mean to suggest that everything that happens in Britain is reducible to these two processes nor at all to downplay other elements of the world situation: indeed the continuing development of colonial revolution and the rising tension between the US and the Soviet Union are quite fundamental. What I am suggesting, however, is that these two elements I have outlined will be the decisive organising factors for the structure of British politics that socialists in Britain will have to operate in relation to for the next five, ten, even fifteen years. This, of course, also says something about the timescales involved. The last thing that I think we should expect is some very sudden, very [illegible] the bourgeoisie working class of Britain. [illegible] we are faced with is a prolonged social and political crisis in which questions of long term strategy will be decisive.
The Decline of American Power
What links together recent events in Lebanon, Grenada, Sri Lanka, the Phillipines and the rise of the peace movement is the historic decline and counter-offensive of the United States — the great crisis of the US economy.
The world has never been made up of equally important states. In the nineteenth century it was dominated by the British Empire. Since 1918 the decisive element in international capitalist politics has been the rise to dominance of American imperialism, and since the 1960s its decline. The great reserves of the American economy allowed it to restabilise European capitalism after the First World War in 1923 and again with the Marshall Plan and the setting up of NATO after World War Two. The restabilisation of Europe was not carried out through terror against the working class — indeed that played a role quite subordinate role — it was carried out on the basis that the American capitalism was economically strong enough to subsidise European capitalism on a huge scale. This was the basis of the huge popularity of American presidents in Europe from Woodrow Wilson through to Kennedy. When Kennedy went to Berlin and said: 'Ich bin ein Berliner' there was a tremendous response; when he was assassinated, millions of people felt it as a great personal tragedy.
Even in Latin America when the USA created its wave of Latin American dictatorships after the Cuban revolution it did not do so by terror alone. Terror is in general an inefficient instrument of long-term political rule. The US shored up political stability by enormous foreign loans and subsidies. These are today being withdrawn from Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, the Phillipines, etc. And this is what is creating the mounting chaos and crisis in these countries. The United States is attempting to substitute for this by increased military intervention as we see today in the Middle East and Grenada and will see even more dramatically in events yet to come. And this, of course, only exacerbates the problems because it provokes massive resistance.
All this has had a dramatic adverse effect on the popularity of America in the world. Just think what would be the reaction among the mass of the British population if Ronald Reagan was assassinated; there certainly would not be the air of tragedy that followed Kennedy's assassination, to put it mildly. It is also [illegible] Healey in the House of Commons for 'pandering to anti-American sentiment'. This charge of Howe's is exactly correct. It is not that Healey has stirred up or created anti-Americanism: indeed he has spent most of his political life supporting the United States. No, he is making concessions to a growing mass anti-American sentiment which is predetermined, which does not require revolutionary socialists (let alone the Labour leadership) to create it.
It is the declining power and economic reserves of the USA which lie behind the cracks that are beginning to rend the Atlantic Alliance. As I said, that alliance was based on massive subsidies crossing the Atlantic from West to East. Today the situation is rather different. I recently heard it well summed up on the radio by a Swiss banker who was explaining why the American economy was growing rapidly at present while the West European economy remains stagnant. He described how huge capital flows from Europe to America were financing the US budget deficit and its economic expansion. His comment was: 'If I was American I would be very pleased with this situation but it is absolutely hopeless for us'.
The Atlantic Alliance has not today got the economic reserves to create stability for European capitalism for a third time. The question is what will be put in place of the old type of 'Atlantic Alliance': this strategic question is going to become more and more important. And there are two answers. The first is put forward in Andre Gunder Frank's The European Challenge, in the pages of Marxism Today, and by Denis Healey. It is very simple. The European working class should ally with European imperialism against the United States. This is becoming a more theorised and general argument.
And we already have a clear example of what it means. For what is a strategic alliance with European imperialism against the US? It is to participate in the rearmament and austerity programmes of the European imperialist powers. It is, in a word, to pursue the policies of the Mitterrand government in France: the rapid build-up of the French military establishment and of French nuclear weapons combined with extreme austerity policies. We already see the Socialist Party opposing American intervention in Grenada at the same time as supporting French military intervention in Chad and general rearmament.
The consequences of this programme elsewhere in Europe would be exactly the same as they have been for the Mitterrand government: a rapid collapse in the popularity of the working class parties and the rise of right wing forces. What you see in the recent French union elections is very significant; for the first time the Socialist Party and Communist Party trade unions are in a minority to right wing unions.
The Pro-EEC Alliance
In British politics the interests of European capital are most clearly espoused by the SDP/Liberal Alliance — or the Pro-EEC Party as I would call it. The historic basis of the great supremacy of the Tory Party in British politics was British isolationism, British banking capitalism, British foreign investment, the British Empire, and, to use the phrase of Lord Salisbury, its 'splendid isolation'. It was also based on extreme backwardness; even from the viewpoint of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois rights Britain is not one of the most democratic of the advanced capitalist countries but one of the most backward. And big sections of the country resent the fact that there is no serious system of local government and an absurdly secretive and undemocratic centralised state structure exists that is being centralised still further by Thatcher.
The Tory Party's orientation has committed British imperialism to a whole series of policies which are absurd from the viewpoint of the rational organisation of European capital. There is no European interest in defending three million penguins in the Malvinas. It is absurd nonsense. There is no point for European capital in spending money on the Trident missile system which is a first-strike weapon against the Soviet Union. European imperialism does not want a war with the Soviet Union in the present circumstances or relation of forces. Whether or not Caspar Weinberger believes the United States could win such a war, one thing is certain: Europe will not.
There are real contradictions today between the most decrepit, backward national elements of the British bourgeoisie and more modernising, dynamic and pro-European, pro-EEC elements of British capital — the ICIs of this world. And these are exactly the forces which are today building up the SDP/Liberal Alliance. The Liberal Party rebuilt itself from a tiny rump with 2 per cent of the vote in 1951 to a serious force in British politics, by building first on the healthy reaction of large sections of the population against the undemocratic backward archaic features of British society — this was the basis of its libertarian wing. The second stage of its project, in alliance with the SDP, is to build on the conscious move by dynamic sections of British capital to organise itself more rationally and integrate itself with European capital.
The Second Choice
The British and European Left have two strategic options. I have discussed the first, to unite with European imperialism. The implication of this in Britain, of course, is an orientation to coalition with the SDP/Liberal Alliance. The other alternative is to fight consistently not just against American imperialism but also against European imperialism: to be in the forefront of campaigns against Cruise missiles and NATO of course, but also against the rearmament and austerity programmes of European capitalism. If you want to summarise the choice in two slogans, the strategic choices that face the British Left are the Popular Front or Democratic Socialism.
What I mean by Democratic Socialism, and why I emphasise the democratic part of this, is that the working class must be in the forefront of a great cleansing operation of the British body politic. Take the question of 'Municipal Socialism' as it is sometimes disparagingly called — the initiatives of Sheffield City Council and the Greater London Council (GLC) for example. I am very much in favour of them, despite their limitations. We must ask why Thatcher wants to abolish these councils. The answer is because the Tory Party is no longer strong enough to displace someone like Ken Livingstone in London by simple 'democratic' means. I am not suggesting that Ken Livingstone will always win — simply that in the 1930s the Tory Party was authentically massive and popular and could be relied upon to win an election against someone like Livingstone in an area like the present GLC.
Today the Tory Party is too weak for this and is forced to restrict and undermine even further bourgeois democracy. And this goes against the quite correct feeling of the masses that London is a somewhat nicer place to live under Livingstone than it was under previous regimes of local government. My emphasis on democracy is not as a prefigurative blueprint of socialism but because — among other things — the working class must place itself at the head today of the fight against all that is archaic and useless in British politics. That means taking seriously the Police Bill, the question of devolution in Scotland, the oppression of women, the struggle against the racist elements in our society. And out of the struggle on democratic issues coupled with the economic struggle and international struggles you have some of the elements of a perspective of democratic socialism. Without a perspective of a politics that is not only socialist but also profoundly democratic there will be no socialism in any advanced capitalist country.
The Popular Front
The alternative strategy of the Popular Front — of a Labour/SDP/Liberal coalition — would lead to disaster. Its immediate consequence would be to hold back and even destroy the labour movement. It gives the totally wrong answer to the basic question of British politics today. The crisis of British society is going to have to be paid for by somebody. Who is going to pay for the mess left by the Thatcher government? That determines all questions of socialist advance.
The first candidate to pay for rebuilding British society is that put forward by Roy Hattersley and other supporters of incomes policy. The better-off sections of the working class, the skilled engineering workers in Birmingham and the South East should give more money to the poor unemployed of the North East. I tell you what will be the mass response of the skilled workers in Birmingham or anywhere else to that. It will be the one they gave in the 1979 election after Labour's incomes policy: 'Go to Hell'. And they will vote Conservative again. A coalition of the Labour Party and the SDP/Liberal Alliance of the kind proposed by Eric Hobsbawm, with the policies needed for it, would be a catastrophe for the labour movement that would make the Thatcher government appear a mild experience. It would prepare the way — just as the 1975-9 Labour experience prepared the way for Thatcher — for something much worse even than the present Tory administration.
The only practical answer to the question 'who will pay for the crisis?' is that the money is going to come from the bourgeoisie, that actually taking over and expropriating capital is the only way to create the economic growth that is needed. This is the only way that you can unite the working class and the only way you can construct broader alliances. You can not have a great big alliance of the bourgeoisie and the working class and the oppressed — someone has to pay. You can have an alliance of the working class and the oppressed against the bourgeoisie or you can have an alliance with the bourgeoisie against the skilled workers or the unskilled workers — or in David Owen's version, against some much bigger section of the working class. Either you advance against capital or you split the working class and oppressed. There is no other choice.
The big decline of the Conservative Party and the big shake-up of European politics give the working class movement the possibility in Britain and Europe to put itself at the head of real progressive and popular struggles. In my opinion Kinnock strikes a real note on this score and this is why his talk of democratic socialist advance has a real resonance.
The so-called 'banana skin factor' in British politics, the string of misfortunes which have started to affect the Thatcher government are not simply a matter of bad luck. They reflect the fact that the party no longer has the massive reserves of popularity to fall back upon that it once had. And it is possible for the working class to turn this to its advantage if it maintains and strengthens an independent course. Coalitionism and subordination to the interests of European capitalism on the other hand can only end in catastrophe.
JOHN ROSS is the author of Pluto Press' recent addition [illegible] and a regular contributor to Socialist Action.