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From International Socialism, No.27, Winter 1966/67, pp.8-9.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
I sometimes wonder whether IS writers live in a dream world. Take, for example, the current debate on incomes policy; in IS 26, Colin Barker says that British capital, to compete effectively on international markets, ‘requires ... a slowing down of the rate of inflation and a faster rise in productivity.’ Well, would this not be desirable? No, for even to think in these terms is to fall into a ‘total acceptance of capitalist values.’ Forgive me if I don’t immediately join the Conservative Party, but I had always thought that (a) inflation was on the whole to be avoided or at least mitigated, and (b) socialism had something to do with meeting people’s needs. If Colin Barker stepped down from his ivory tower he might discover that rapid price inflation, such as we have experienced over the past three years, causes a great deal of hardship, distress and resentment. To ignore this — and, what is more, to advocate a policy of money wage militancy which can only aggravate inflation — is typical of the nihilist Left’s contempt for the hopes and feelings of ordinary people. But this is merely a small illustration of the ultra-Left’s confusion. Central to the Cliff-Barker position on incomes policy (Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards, T. Cliff and C. Barker, London 1966) is the pre-supposition that anything which gingers up capitalism is by definition deplorable. The case isn’t argued. It is stated as though it were self-evident. To cover up the superficiality of the approach, IS resorts to the well-known technique of smear-by-inverted-comma; thus, efficiency is all right, and is what we would have in a socialist society, but ‘efficiency’ is a capitalist swear word.
So! Are we then in favour of running capitalism inefficiently? No, since we apparently favour higher living standards for the workers. But this in turn (consult any first year economics textbook) depends on a high volume of production and high productivity — an extremely distasteful and doubtless bourgeois truth, but one which nonetheless happens to be true. Of course, I am missing the point. High living standards can only be guaranteed under socialism. Any policy of economic growth in a capitalist society can only line the pockets of the capitalists at the expense of the workers. Fine, so how are we to attain socialism? Apparently by creating unemployment — in other words, at the expense of the workers as before. Now that Wilson’s policies will lead to heavy unemployment, IS 26 says in its editorial, conditions are favourable for ‘the growth of politically conscious industrial organisations.’ So in fact we want more unemployment to foment more militancy to achieve ... what? And notice the rancid anti-democratic paternalism of the entire argument. The workers are to be made miserable by unemployment because this will make them anti-capitalist. The fallacy of the argument lies of course in posing a stark either-or dilemma. Either we are good socialists, totally repudiate the incomes policy concept and commit ourselves to the extraordinary proposition that inflation is a reform. Or we lurch backwards into timid reformism and condemn ourselves to eternal capitalist fire. Choose, comrades! But this is arrant nonsense, as revealed by Ken Coates’ article in your last issue. I would strongly support ‘transitional demands’ that open the way to structural reforms of capitalist industry, to the gradual whittling-away of the rentier element, and to the extension of workers’ participation and control. This must, however, be clearly differentiated from the Cliff-Barker strategy, which quite simply dispenses with a goal and is hence utopianism-in-reverse. The essential — and incontrovertible — argument for evolutionary change is that it allows one to see where one is going. This cannot be said for the approach outlined by Cliff and Barker. Who would confidently predict, after a glance at history, that the outcome of hyper-inflation in Britain over the next two years would be socialism?
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