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CHANGES WITHIN CAPITALISM
But of what significance is a will to change the political and social relations within capitalism? Why should Communists spend time studying and analysing it? Changes in the will of classes is a crucial part of the development of the class struggle and history. No matter how forceful the material circumstances demanding political change may be, if the will of a class is lacking, the change will not be made by that class (e.g. the Russian bourgeoisie in 1917). The material circumstances are patently one of the causes which determine the emergence of political will. But they are not the only cause.
The other causes include the political consciousness of the class and the actual forms that that consciousness finds to develop itself within. In Britain the material circumstances have been ripe and overripe for the change outlined above for at least three quarters of a century. Small groups within both the working class and the bourgeoisie have had a highly developed will for such changes during those seventy five years; but those groups have had no lasting effect on the political will of either class (the groups include the syndicalists, guild socialists and Fabians in relation to the working class and the Fabians and the group of Tories around Harold Macmillan in the '30s in relation to the bourgeoisie). The participants in these groups have largely seen the failure of each class to react to their calls to change as a fault or error of the class and thus the groups have lost their taste for dealing with political reality. Thus when the classes do actually react to the material circumstances with a will to change these groups are too cynical or disheartened to take any part in determining the form or development of that change. It is only by accepting that the consciousness of the working class and its political will are determined by objective historical factors that Communists can avoid "losing heart" and actually be of some use and significance to the working class.
The present will to change in the working class developed firstly from the fact that in the last five years the working class have been wielding political power as they have not done since the 1920s: UCS; the summer 1972 unofficial general strike against the imprisonment of the 5 dockers; the 1972 miners strike; the resistance to the Industrial Relations Bill. Secondly, because they have now accepted that that political power should be used to ensure the continuing development of the productive forces under capitalism: i.e. they are refusing to act in a purely negative or blind oppositionist way.
This has meant accepting the Government' s arguments about the need to consciously regulate wages and necessarily involves the development of a political position by the working class on the questions involved. The TUC and Victor Feather in particular reflect this new will to make this round of Tripartite Talks come to a definite conclusion: for the classes to strike a bargain rather than have the Government impose that bargain on them. All doubted last summer whether the TUC could "deliver" a working class which would accept conscious regulation of wages, and that doubt seriously obstructed the talks (amongst the most serious doubters were the TUC leaders themselves). This time the working class have given the TUC a clear lead by their refusal to strike in support of the left shop stewards' calls to oppose vicious Toryism. The working class have accepted the need for conscious wage regulation at a national and political level and it will be clear this time round that if the Tripartite Talks abort the TUC must be able to convince the working class that the Government and the CBI positively refused to make an acceptable bargain.
The speeches by Harold Wilson and Wedgwood-Benn in the last few months in support of some form of workers' participation and the TUC s reversal of its position on worker directors are additional indications that the working class' will to change has been taken seriously by politicians and TU leaders whose hold on political power has depended on accurately assessing the position of the working class.