Labour-take the power!

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AS I understand it, Fergus Ennis's main objections to Briefing's new slogan, "Labour - Take the Power!" are 1) that "the slogan means different things to different people" and 2) that it is wrong to transfer a slogan appropriate (in its revolutionary sense) only to a pre-revolutionary situation, to a situation of general downturn and retreat, when it is bound to be interpreted in a non-revolutionarv sense. Let me resnond to these two points in turn.

1) The demand 'Break with the buurgevisie - take the power" is defined by Trotsky as a "transitional «emand" • It is, in fact, the culminating demand of the whole series of "transitional demands" outlined in 'The Transitional Programme"

The idea of a transitional demand is that it should take people from A to B - from a non-revolutionary political standpoint (the politics on the basis of which the demand is initially taken up and fought for)

to a revolutionary one (the conclusion that implementing the demand in full necessitates a revolutionary seizure of power).

In that sense, all transitional demands - the demand for the right to work, for a mass housing programme, a sliding scale of wages, etc., etc — are "ambiguous" and have got to be. They are initially accepted by workers who believe that they can be implemented within the system (i.e. accepted by people who interpret them in their 'nonrevolutionary' sense).

The transition to the opposite meaning of the slogans - their revolutionary sense - is not accomplished through academic nit-picking and definitionmongering at the outset. It is accomplished in the course of the practical struggle for power.

Revolutionary

As for myself, Graham Bash, Jane Stockton and others who were once part of the Chartist group and are now committed first and foremost to the independence of Briefing - I think we have made it perfectly clear in plain print what our politics consist of. If the power is to be taken, we ourselves are going to have to take it - all of us, as workers, women, ethnic minorities, the unemployed, etc., etc. - united in a revolutionary alliance of something like the kind that the Briefing alliance is already beginning to represent.

But if other people think that Kinnock and Co. are going to form a government independent of the bankers and bosses -well, let's take them through the experience, whilst providing a practical, organised, unifying alternative, and let's show them who is right.

That is the Bolshevik, the Trotskyist - as opposed to the every last dot and comma of a AAAM I UNVIN IN Chris Knight of London abour Briefing responds o our 'Left Press' column lower!' revolutionary communist 'line' on a journal whose function is precisely to 'bind people together who are politically disparate' las Fergus indignantly charges us). Our immediate aim is precisely to provide the framework for a consistently anticapitalist united front, and this, indeed, we have begun to do (with the generous help, I should add, of Socialist Organiser supporters).

"Labour - take the power!"

is a united front slogan. It is, I believe, the slogan under which the Labour Party as a whole (minus a few leaders) will ultimately become united on the ONW! LONDON LONDON LONDON basis of an anti-capitalist offensive to the extent that objective conditions change and allow such a development to occur.

2. This brings me to the second objection. Fergus charges that the slogan "gears into the prevailing mood of the soft left" under conditions in which 'the yearning for some alternative to the Tories' is being used as a "major weapon" by Kinnock and his supporters.

Are we, then, to leave Kinnock and the right wing to usurp the claim to represent such yearnings felt by all sections of the working class who vote Labuur, while we on the left get on with our own internal priorities in terms of the exhaustive definition - leaving no ts uncrossed, no is undotted - of our own ideal programmes for The fact that the LCC draw caricatures of us as weighed down with 'ultra-left obsessions and delusions" is surely no reason why we ourselves should insist on acting out the caricatures!

As far as we in Briefing are concerned - yes, we do want the Labour Party to win the next election and boot the Tories out.

Even the slightest hint that our interests lay elsewhere would be politically disastrous for the 'hard left' , in terms both of the internal Party struggle and our wider appeal.

It would also be politically incorrect on any basis to counterpose the internal struggle to the fight for a Labour government (which is the disastrous trap into which Fergus falls).

Indeed, the basis of our lack of confidence in Kinnock must be our conviction that his leadership is not unconditionally committed to the strength and victory of our movement at all, and is not even unconditionally committed to winning the next To the extent that guaranteeing electoral victory involves taking measures now which would undermine the future stability of capitalism as a 3 UP 3Up system - as we insist is already the case - then Kinnock must draw back. We press the demand "take the power!" against the Kinnock leadership and despite it.

I know this from experience - in a public debate with Frances Morrell not so long ago, she made the same accusation against us as Socialist Organiser makes: "A lot of Briefing's readership don't know that what you really mean by us taking the power' is that we should seize state power and overthrow the system?"

Well, if people don't know, it's their problem - I think we've made it clear enough whenever opportunity has arisen.

But certainly the LCC, the "Chartist majority" (publishers of the magazine "Chartist'), Frances Morrell and the whole "soft left" camp will reject the idea of "taking the power' more and more vehemently the more its revolutionary implications are understood.

Let them make the distinction between office and power as we force them to expose their position!

Let Kinnock and his allies justify their insistence on assuming office whilst leaving all real power in the hands of the same old ruling class who govern us under the Tories.

On a local government level this is inevitable - power just isn't to be seized from the base provided by a local borough' labour movement. But on a national level, to take ottice without power is unforgivable.

Our real internal opponents, therefore, are not comrades like Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight who are ideologically with us on these points. They • are the Kinnock camp and the 'soft left' A full transitional programme up to an including the demand for state power - is now the weapon we need most of all in our battle against Kinnock and his allies.

Let's force them to reject our demands, by conceiving these demands themselves in the most 'transitional' and popular' possible forms - aiming precisely to win support from the rank and file who at present are with Kinnock.

Three further points. Trotsky did not say that the demand 'Break with the bourgeoisie -take the power!" is for use only in situations of dual power. Trotsky himself used it in the Transitional Programme under conditions of international defeat and downturn immeasurably more daunting than those we are in today.

It is true that we are now in a situation in which 'the question of power" is by no means immediately posed (we don't need lessons from Socialist Organiser on how to work with the movement, as it is). Even now, however, it is crucial that we learn to force the competing leadership tendencies to differentiate themselves politically within the Labour Party precisely in respect of their ultimate goals, above all in relation to the question of state power.

John Bloxam of Socialist Organiser voted for the slogan 'Labour Take the Power!' at the National Briefing Editorial Board meeting!

Finally, Socialist Organiser accuses us of being half in the Kinnock camp, white the 'soft lefts' see Briefing as ludicrously ultra-left. This makes me think we have probably got it about right.

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Socialist Organiser no.166 1984 Page

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sectarian - way of doing things, as a moment's reading of any of Trotsky's writings will show. We are not going to impose

in the national Briefing logan, 'Labour, take the

C/ OUT OF NATO! BOUR- TAKE THE POWER!