By Tony Richards
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-04-07Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
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of a new, revolutionary leadership, and, by involving ourselv. es in the process of the struggles that emerge, to make workers aware of the role of leadership. This is why we need to build a revolutionary party.
To come - as John Mclroy does - close to equating the consciousness of the warking class to that of the bureaucracy - is a long way from the Marxist method.
Certainly there exist backwardness, confusion, illusions and elements of demoralisation in the working class - each of which is reinforced by the labour bureaucracy: but when Trotsky tells us that the forces of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus, he means that the consciousness of the working class is driven by history into conflict with the bureaucracy.
Confronted by the employers' attacks on their jobs, wages, public services and trade union rights, workers must seek means of struggle which are opposed by the bureaucrats: and in so doing they come face to face with the need for a new leadership.
The problem is to make the working class conscious of its strength, which is covered over and defused by the bureaucracy.
What kind of leadership?
In his final article John MeIlroy says: "Not millions, but thousands of workers are : looking for wider solutions and turning towards the Labour Party.