Weekly Worker 368 Thursday January 25 2001

3. Immediate demands

[Working conditions and wage workers] [Migrant workers] [The unemployed] [Nationalisation] [Trade unions] [Councils of action] [Workers' militia] [The national question] [England, Scotland and Wales] [Ireland] [Europe] [Peace] [Women] [Youth] [Pensioners and the elderly] [Homosexuals] [Freedom of information] [Crime and prison] [Religion] [Small businesses and farms]

On the most basic level, the development of capitalism in Britain creates the necessity for workers to struggle against the effects of the capitalist system that confronts them. Even without the leadership of revolutionary socialists and communists, resistance will occur, albeit spontaneously. This is the unconscious expression of the fact that workers have nothing to lose except their illusions and everything to gain through the overthrow of capitalism.

To succeed, however, this social movement must consciously oppose every violation of democracy and example of discrimination. Workers must defend every oppressed minority and elevate themselves to a ruling class by winning the battle for democracy.

The demands we put forward are based on what the masses need in order to live a decent life in Britain. They are not based on what the capitalist system says it can afford. Our intention is to provide a battle plan and at the same time make workers aware of their power to refashion society so that it serves human interests. The formulation of our demands thereby connects today’s conditions and consciousness to the aim of revolution and the establishment of socialism.

3.1. Working conditions and wage workers

In circumstances where the capitalist state is politicising the economic struggle of the working class, we demand:

A five-day working week and a maximum seven-hour day for all wage workers; reduction of that to a four-day working week and a maximum six-hour day for occupations which are dangerous or particularly demanding. The working day must include rest periods of not less than two hours.
An uninterrupted weekly break of not less than 60 hours for all wage workers.
Equal pay for work of equal value.
The abolition of overtime in its present form. In the case of emergencies and other such eventualities, overtime must be voluntary, for only short periods and with at least double pay.
A minimum net wage set to reflect the value of unskilled labour power. This to be decided on the basis of what is needed to physically and culturally reproduce the worker and one child. The minimum wage to be used in the calculation of all other wage rates and benefits.
A minimum of six weeks’ fully paid holiday leave during the year.
Insurance and other such payments to be made entirely by the capitalists and the state.
Occupational training for all workers to be a legal obligation for employers.
Child labour to be illegal before the age of 14. No more than a five-day week, no more than a two-hour day. Child labour to be banned in any industry harmful to children. Coordination of work and education under trade union supervision.
All industrial courts, arbitration panels, etc to be made up of at least 50% elected workers’ representatives.
All workers must have the right to strike and the right to join a trade union.

3.2. Migrant workers

There are large numbers of workers who have migrated to Britain in order to improve their lives. Immigration is a progressive phenomenon which breaks down national differences and national prejudices. It unites workers in the UK with the world working class.

The bourgeoisie of Britain uses migrant workers as worst paid labour and keeps them in that position by criminalising them through immigration laws, police raids and deportation orders.

The UK capitalist state has an official ideology of anti-racism. That in no way contradicts the national chauvinist consensus which champions British imperialism’s interests against foreign rivals and sets worker against worker.

Migrant workers are not a problem. The capitalists who use them to increase competition between workers are. The reformist plea for non-racist immigration control plays directly into the hands of our exploiters. It concedes the right of the state to bar workers from entering Britain. Capital moves around the world without restriction. We socialists are for the free movement of people and against all measures preventing them entering or leaving countries.

It is in the interests of all workers that migrant workers are integrated. Assimilation is progressive as long as it is not based upon force. In order to encourage integration and strengthen the unity of the working class the following demands are put forward:

The right to speak and be educated in one’s own language. The right to conduct correspondence with the state in one’s own language.
No religious or separate schools.
The right to learn English for all migrant workers and their families. Employers must provide language courses.
The right to become citizens with full social and political rights of the country they have emigrated to for all workers who have resided in the country for three months.

3.3. The unemployed

Unemployment is an inevitable by-product of capitalism. Full employment can only be a temporary phenomenon in a system which reduces people to mere possessors of the commodity, labour power - ie, objects of exploitation.

Especially in periods of crisis, millions cannot profitably be employed and are therefore discarded. Maintained at below subsistence levels, the unemployed are used as a reserve army of labour to drive down general wage levels. Unemployment is not due to the policies or coloration of this or that government. The only way to eradicate unemployment is to end the system that causes it.

As part of the working class, the unemployed must be fully integrated into the workers’ movement. They must be made into a reserve army of socialism.

The immediate Socialist Alliance demands for the unemployed are:

The right to work at trade union rates of pay, or unemployment benefit at the level of the minimum wage.
No state harassment of the unemployed. Claiming benefit is a right, not a privilege.
Cheap labour schemes must be replaced by real training and education under trade union supervision.
The unemployed must have the right to remain in or join trade unions as full members with equal rights.
To the extent that they operate, unemployed workers’ organisations must be represented in the trade union movement - from trades councils to the Trades Union Congress.

3.4. Nationalisation

From the point of view of globalisation and the world struggle for socialism, programmes for wholesale nationalisation are today objectively reactionary. The historic task of the working class is to fully socialise the giant transnational corporations, not break them up into inefficient national units. Our starting point is the most advanced achievements of capitalism. Globalised production needs global social control.

We oppose the illusion that nationalisation equates in some way with socialism. There is nothing inherently progressive or socialistic about nationalised industries.

Under definite circumstances, however, nationalisation serves the interests of the workers. Faced with plans for closure or mass sackings, the Socialist Alliance demands that the state - the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not the workers, bears the consequences of failure.

Against closures and mass sackings, we demand:

No redundancies. Nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers’ control.
Compensation to former owners should be paid only in cases of proven need.
There must be no business secrets hidden from the workers. The books and databanks of every company must be open to the inspection of specialists appointed by and responsible to the workers.

3.5. Trade unions

Trade unions limit competition between workers, thus securing a better price for labour power. They represent a tremendous gain for the working class, drawing millions of backward workers into collective activity against employers.

Of course, left to itself, trade union consciousness is characterised by sectionalism and the hopeless attempt to constantly improve the lot of workers within capitalism. The Socialist Alliance openly seeks to make trade unions into schools for socialism. It does this by always putting forward the general interest, by fighting for workers’ unity and by fully involving the masses in decision-making.

Bargaining is a specialist activity. Consequently the trade unions need a layer of functionaries. However, due to the passivity of most rank and file members and lack of democratic accountability, these functionaries consolidated themselves into a conservative caste.

The trade union bureaucracy is more concerned with amicable deals and preserving union funds than with the class struggle. Operating as an intermediary between labour and capital, it has a real material interest in the continued existence of the wage system. Within the trade unions we fight against bureaucracy by demanding:

Trade unions must be free of any interference or control by the state.
No trade union official to be paid above the average wage of a worker in that particular union.
All officials must be elected, accountable and instantly recallable.
Workers should support trade union leaders only to the extent that they fight for the long-term interests of the working class as a whole.
One industry, one union. Industrial unions are rational and enhance the ability of the workers to struggle.
All-embracing workplace committees. Organise all workers, whatever their trade, whether or not they are in trade unions. Workplace committees should fight to exercise control over hiring and firing, production and investment.

3.6. Councils of action

In any decisive clash of class against class, new forms of organisation which are higher, more general, more flexible than trade unions emerge. In Russia they have been called soviets, in Germany Räte, in Iran shoras, in Britain councils of action.

Democratically embracing and coordinating all who are in struggle, such organisations of struggle have the potential to become the workers’ alternative to the capitalist state. The Socialist Alliance will encourage any such development.

3.7. Workers’ militia

The Socialist Alliance is against the standing army and for the armed people. This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia.

Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself: defending the picket line, mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, fending off fascists, etc.

As the class struggle intensifies, the conditions are created for the workers to arm themselves and win over sections of the military forces of the capitalist state. Every opportunity must be used to take even tentative steps towards this goal. As the circumstances allow, the working class must equip itself with the most advanced, most destructive weaponry available.

To facilitate this we demand:

Rank and file personnel in the state’s armed bodies must be protected from bullying, humiliating treatment and being used against the working class.
There must be full trade union and democratic rights, including the right to form bodies such as soldiers’ councils.
The privileges of the officer caste must be abolished. Officers must be elected. Workers in uniform must become the allies of the masses in struggle.
The people have the right to bear arms and defend themselves.

3.8. The national question

As a general rule we do not want to see countries broken up into small nation-states. Ours is the call for humanity to shed the flag-waving imagined communities of nation-states. As consistent internationalists the Socialist Alliance unreservedly stands against any tactical pandering to, let alone attempts to exacerbate, national tensions.

The Socialist Alliance wants a positive solution to the national question in the interests of the working class: ie, the merging of nations. That can only be achieved through democracy and the right of all to fully develop their own culture.

The Socialist Alliance fights to secure the right of nations and nationalities to self-determination. Every historically constituted people should be able to freely decide its own destiny. They can separate if they so wish. Thereby they can also elect to come together or stay together with others.

3.8.1. England, Scotland and Wales

The British nation evolved from the gradual bonding of three nationalities or proto-nationalities - the English, Welsh and Scottish. Drawn together over many centuries by common political and economic experience, they now in the main possess a common language, culture and psychology.

The birth of the British nation objectively was a profoundly progressive development. Nevertheless, because it was carried out under the aegis of a brutal absolutism, it was accompanied by countless acts of violence and discrimination.

As post-boom British imperialism was forced to turn inwards, and in the absence of a viable proletarian alternative, resistance in Scotland and Wales often took a national form. A mythologised past was deployed by nationalists, national socialists and Labourites alike to serve their own nefarious purposes.

The Socialist Alliance opposes every form of Scottish and Welsh national narrow-mindedness. Equally we oppose every form of British-English national chauvinism. Ideas of exclusiveness or superiority, and national oppression itself, obscure the fundamental antagonism between labour and capital and divert attention from the need to unite against the common enemy - the United Kingdom state and the system of capital.

While the Socialist Alliance defends the right of Scotland and Wales to secede, we do not want separation. We want the closest unity circumstances allow. That can only come about by fighting for full democracy. The peoples of Scotland and Wales cannot decide their own future through the monarchy and the Westminster parliament of the House of Commons and House of Lords. Nor does devolution within the United Kingdom, with a sop parliament in Edinburgh and a tame assembly in Cardiff, allow for the exercise of genuine self-determination. That is why we stand for a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales.

It is the internationalist duty of socialists and communists in Scotland and Wales to defend the right of the Scots and Welsh to remain with, and achieve an even higher degree of unity with, the English. As an equal proletarian internationalist duty, those in England must correspondingly be the best defenders of the right of the Scottish and Welsh peoples to separate. That in no way contradicts their duty to advocate unity.

3.8.2. Ireland

Ireland is Britain’s oldest colony. In 1921 the territory of Ireland was dissected. A sectarian Six County statelet was created in order to permanently divide the Irish working class and perpetuate British domination over the whole island of Ireland. Within the Northern Ireland statelet a large Irish-catholic minority was permanently imprisoned. In the south reaction triumphed, presided over and blessed by the catholic church.

We unconditionally support the right of Ireland’s two national-religious traditions to democratically and voluntarily unite - best facilitated by a federal solution whereby a British-Irish two-and-a-half county province exercises self-determination up to and including the right to separate within a united Ireland.

Working class opposition to British imperialism in Ireland is a necessary condition for our own liberation - a nation that oppresses another can never itself be free. The struggle for socialism in Britain and the unity of Ireland’s people are inextricably linked.

Socialists in both parts of Ireland also have internationalist duties. They must fight for the closest spirit of solidarity between workers in Britain and Ireland and their speediest coming together. They too must be resolute opponents of nationalism.

3.9. Europe

The European Union is a capitalist club run by an appointed bureaucracy - the European commission. From the point of view of socialism, the EU is reactionary.

However, it would be incorrect to call for the break-up of the EU and seek a future based on national independence, sovereignty, etc. We neither advocate the euro nor defend the pound. To the extent the EU becomes a superstate, the working class must unify its resistance and organisations across Europe.

The Socialist Alliance will do everything in its power to create the conditions necessary for the founding of a united socialist party of the EU.

The Socialist Alliance demands:

Abolish the European commission and council of ministers.
A democratic EU. For a constituent assembly of the EU elected on the basis of universal suffrage and proportional representation.

3.10. Peace

British imperialism has an unparalleled history of war and aggression in virtually every corner of the world. Though no longer the power it once was, it maintains large, well equipped armed forces in order to defend the interests of capitalism abroad and at home. The Socialist Alliance opposes all imperialist military alliances and ventures.

British capitalism is one of the world’s main weapons manufacturers and exporters. It has a vested interest in promoting militarism. The Socialist Alliance stresses however that the struggle against the military-industrial complex cannot be separated from the struggle against the profit system as a whole.

The Socialist Alliance does not call for this or that percentage cut in military spending. We are against giving even one penny or one person to the capitalist state’s armed forces.

Peace cannot come courtesy of bodies such as the United Nations - an assembly of exploiters and murderers. Nor can it come about by trying to eliminate this or that category of weapons. It is the duty of revolutionary socialists and communists to connect the popular desire for peace with the aim of revolution. Only by disarming the bourgeoisie and through international socialism can the danger of war be eliminated.

The Socialist Alliance is not pacifist. Everywhere we support just wars, above all revolutionary civil wars for socialism. We will therefore strive to expose the war preparations of the capitalist state, the lies of social chauvinists and the illusions fostered by social pacifism. These alien, bourgeois influences objectively disarm and paralyse the working class in the face of a state armed to the teeth.

3.11. Women

Women are oppressed because of the system of exploitation and the division of labour. Women’s oppression has existed since the dawn of class society. The abolition of exploitation will mark the beginning of the emancipation of women. Therefore the struggle for both is interconnected.

Women’s emancipation is not a question for women alone. Just as the abolition of class exploitation is of concern to female workers, so the emancipation of women is of concern to male workers. The struggle for socialism and the emancipation of women cannot be separated.

Under capitalism women carry out domestic labour, such as housework, child rearing, etc, which is performed gratis. Given the technical possibilities to industrialise it, such work is enormously time-wasting. It is also dull, demoralising and does not allow for any kind of cultural development.

Advanced capitalism has created the material prerequisites for the liberation of women. However, women cannot be fully emancipated until the disappearance of the division of labour without going beyond bourgeois right - that is, right based on work done.

In Britain women have won or been granted formal equality with men. The very existence of the capitalist system makes a mockery of that formal equality. At work, at home, in education, before the law, women are at all times faced with inequality, discrimination and oppression.

There has been a rapid increase in women’s participation in the economy. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to increase not only the number of unemployed but also the absolute size of the working population. Nowadays, therefore, women are exploited by capital as cheap wage workers and domestic slaves. Hence,as a norm, they suffer a double burden of oppression.

Women have their own problems and demands. These demands, however, do not conflict with the demands of the working class, but rather they reinforce them.

The Socialist Alliance demands:

The turning of formal equality into genuine equality. Socially, economically, politically and culturally there must be equality of opportunity. Open 24-hour crèches and kindergartens to facilitate full participation in social life outside the home: ie, trade unions, political organisations, workers’ militia, cultural activities, etc.
High quality canteens with cheap prices. The establishment of laundry and house-cleaning services to be undertaken by the state. This to be the first step in the socialisation of housework.
Fully paid maternity leave three months before and six months after giving birth (the partner to be provided with six months’ paternity leave).
Free abortion and contraception on demand.
Provision for either parent to be allowed paid leave to look after sick children.
Maximum six-hour working day for all nursing mothers.
Decriminalisation of prostitution so as to remove it from criminal control. Prostitutes to be provided with special healthcare and other services to reduce the dangers they confront. Measures to give prostitutes wider social opportunities.

3.12. Youth

Youth are at the sharp end of British capitalism’s perverted values. Young workers are in general not protected by trade union membership. Homelessness and unemployment are greatly disproportionate amongst the young. Training on official schemes is notoriously mediocre, designed more to massage government statistics than equip youth with the skills of the future. In the drive to cut costs, basic education is under constant attack, with the standard of university education woefully diluted.

Youth are contradictorily fawned upon by advertisers, exploited as cheap labour and blamed for social decay. The system is in fact only interested in youth in terms of the cash register. Every ideal, every artistic talent is judged purely in terms of its ability to generate artificial needs in others. There are many who reject the twisted ethos of the system. But in despair they often turn to nihilism - itself turned into a commodity by capitalism.

The following demands are of crucial importance for youth:

The provision of housing and hostels for youth to enter of their own choice for longer or shorter periods when they lose their parents or choose to leave them.
Education compulsory up to the age of 16 and from then on within a fully democratic system. Education should be free and of a polytechnical nature: ie, rounded to include technical as well as academic skills.
No religious schools, no private schools.
Students over the age of 16 should receive grants set in line with the level of the minimum wage.
The right of every young person on leaving education to a job, proper training or full benefits.
The removal of all obstacles to the participation of youth in social life. Votes and the right to be elected from the age of 16.
The provision of a broad range of sports and cultural centres under the control of elected representatives of youth.
The abolition of age-of-consent laws. We recognise the right of individuals to enter into the sexual relations they choose provided this does not conflict with the rights of others. Alternative legislation to protect children from sexual abuse.
The extensive provision of education and counselling facilities on all sexual matters, free from moralistic judgement, is an essential prerequisite to enable youth to develop themselves in all areas of sexuality and re-production.

3.13. Pensioners and the elderly

People deserve a secure, dignified and comfortable old age. The needs of the elderly should be met fully by the state, and should be available by right. Our old people should not suffer the humiliation and anxiety of relying on means tests or charity.

The aim of these demands is to mobilise the working class as a whole to fight for pensioners’ rights:

No compulsory retirement. The right to retirement from age 60 for all workers - at 55 in unpleasant and dangerous jobs.
The state pension should be at the level of the minimum wage, and should be paid to everyone who has retired.
Old people should have the right to decide how they live. There should be no compulsory institutionalisation. The state must provide what is needed to allow elderly people to live independently if they so wish, for as long as they are physically or mentally capable of doing so.
Social clubs for the elderly should be democratic and subsidised by the state, not charities.
The comfort and dignity of the dying must be ensured at all times. Euthanasia and disposal of the body after death should be carried out according to the wishes of the individual.

3.14. Homosexuals

Homosexuals have often been scapegoated or persecuted. They can be portrayed as deviants who threaten the family - the basic economic unit of capitalist society. Homosexual rights is therefore a key demand.

Homophobic attitudes divide the working class and aid those advocating the author-itarian state. The working class needs to be mobilised in order to defend and advance homosexual rights.

The Socialist Alliance demands:

Abolition of all forms of state discrimination directed against homosexuals.
Lesbians and gays should be accorded the same rights in society as heterosexuals: ie, state marriages, artificial insemination for lesbians, adoption and fostering. No discrimination in custody cases on the grounds of sexual orientation.
No discrimination in any area of employment.

3.15. Freedom of information

Knowledge is power. The British bourgeois state has always shrouded its affairs in secrecy. The real class interests and imperialist ambitions of the capitalists are thus kept from the eyes of the working class.

Freedom of information legislation is a sham. The working class must fight for openness in all state matters, not least as a preparation for running its own state.

The Socialist Alliance demands:

Conduct the affairs of the bourgeois state in complete openness in all matters.
Abolish the 30-year rule and all other forms of secrecy. Public access to all state files, cabinet papers, diplomatic agreements, etc.
End all forms of censorship, both legislative and institutional.

3.16. Crime and prison

Crime can only be understood in relationship to society. In a class society crime is a product of alienation, want or resistance. Under capitalism the criminal system is an anti-working class, anti-popular system.

Against this system the Socialist Alliance demands:

All judges and magistrates must be subject to election and recall.
Fines must be proportionate to income.
There must be workers’ supervision of prisons.
Prisoners must be allowed the maximum opportunity to develop themselves as human beings. People should only be imprisoned within a short distance of their own locality - if not, families must be given full cost of travel for visits.
Prison life must be made as near normal as possible. The aim of prison should be rehabilitation, not punishment. Within prisons there should be a wide range of cultural facilities. Medical treatment must be via the general health service. There must be provision for daily visiting hours and weekly 24-hour conjugal visits.
Worthwhile prison work must be made available. It must be paid at full trade union rates and limited to seven hours a day.
Cells must be self-contained and for one person alone.
Prisoners must be allowed access to books, newspapers and periodicals of their choice. Incoming and outgoing letters can only be checked for contraband - they must not be read or censored.
Prisoners should have the right to vote in parliamentary and other such elections and to stand for election. Votes from prisoners to count within the constituency they actually live, not where they happen to originate.

3.17. Religion

Religion can play no progressive role for the working class - unlike previous oppressed classes in history - in its struggle against today’s ruling class.

Nevertheless, though revolutionary socialists and communists want to overcome all religious prejudices, we are the most consistent defenders of the individual’s freedom of conscience and freedom of worship.

The Socialist Alliance therefore demands:

Separation of the Church of England from the state. End all state subsidies for religious institutions. Confiscate all Church of England property not directly related to acts of worship.
Freedom for all religious cults. Freedom for atheistic propaganda. Religious organisations and individuals have the right to propagate their ideas and seek to win converts. Opponents of religion have the same right.
The ending of all state-sponsored religious propaganda and acts of worship. Religion is a private, not a state matter. Religion can be taught as a subject of academic study, not as a means to indoctrinate children.

3.18. Small businesses and farms

Small business people, including small farmers, form a several-million-strong petty bourgeois stratum in Britain. Carrying on an unstable, precarious existence, these people operate in the nooks and crannies of the monopoly-dominated capitalist economy.

Their limited profits often oblige them to work alone or alongside their employees. A combination of the threat of bankruptcy and the aspiration to become big capitalists drives them to work longer hours in worse conditions than many members of the working class.

Every downward oscillation of the capitalist economy faces the petty bourgeoisie with financial ruin. While the destruction of this stratum is economically progressive, the working class has a political interest to defend the petty bourgeoisie from the short-term ravages of the anarchic capitalist economy, at the same time helping to raise the working conditions, security of employment and living standards of wage workers in farming and in small businesses.

The Socialist Alliance demands:

Secure rights of tenure for owner-occupiers, small farmers and small businesses, with low rents.
Cancellation of debts to banks arising from disproportionately high interest rates. Provision of low interest rates for small businesses.
Guaranteed prompt payment of bills by big business to small businesses.
Encouragement of the formation of producers’ cooperatives through the provision of scientific and technical advice, research facilities, administrative machinery, grants for capital improvements, etc.