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THE BRITISH ROAD TO SOCIALISM - A REPLY TO CRITICISMS
The Communist, No 59 (Feb-March 1973 - extracts)
The article may be downloaded as a Word document here.
'The bourgeoisie will certainly present an obstacle. But it will be an obstacle which coincides with their place in society, as the organisers of production and the regulators of production. It is an obstacle which the working class will only overcome by a development of its own ability to do these things - not by an increase in its class solidarity, wariness of the bourgeoisie or ability to defend itself.'
The working class and the Socialist idea - The Labour Representation Committee and the Independent Labour Party
The First World War and its aftermath - Argues that despite the failure to prevent the war the working class made gains during the war which it was able to maintain in the immediate aftermath
End of the Liberal Party and of liberal economics understood as an irresistible law of nature
The role of the Conservative Party - The party that resists change but keeps a 'radical' wing in reserve to enable it rapidly to adapt when the change is irresistible.
Political expressions of working class consciousness - Parliamentary politics, syndicalism and the CPGB
Origins of the 1926 General Strike - The Sankey Commission of 1919, a challenge to private ownership of the means of production
Why the challenge to private ownership failed - Not because of the force of bourgeois opposition nor because of a 'betrayal' but because of a lack of working class commitment
Return of the coal owners - new hope for the bourgeoisie
The General Strike - redundancy of the bourgeoisie
How the strike ended and could not have ended otherwise
No loss of spirit, simply an inability to see a workable Socialist alternative. Keynes' proposals were not understood by the Labour movement. The Labour Party as a party of government.
Why Socialism could not be imposed without extra-parliamentary force and why the extra-parliamentary force was not available
The limitations of what could be done in 1945
Two Socialist measures - nationalisation and princes and incomes policy - 'The working class has refused to accept a wages freeze because it means a change in the economic struggle and the class has not been told how it can defend its interests when that economic struggle has become more advanced, more conscious. Its refusal is a conservative one because it has not seen the necessity for change. Barbara Castle was the only member of the Labour Party who showed in practice that she understood this need to explain what was happening to the working class.'