They do not lead nor are capable of leading the masses into struggle. Within the bounds of their reformist narrowness they revive the old irresponsible centrism without hindering, but rather, helping, MacDonald to bear the responsibility for the party’s leadership and in certain cases for the destiny of the British Empire too.
This picture is nowhere more sharply revealed than at the Gloucester Conference of the Independent Labour Party (Easter 1925). While grumping about MacDonald the Independents approved the so-called “activity” of the Labour government by 398 votes to 139. But even the opposition could permit itself the luxury of disapproval only because a majority for MacDonald was guaranteed. The lefts’ discontent with MacDonald is a discontent with themselves. MacDonald’s policy cannot be improved by in built changes.
Centrism will, once in power, conduct MacDonald’s, that is to say, a capitalist policy. MacDonald’s line can be seriously opposed only by the line of a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. It would be the greatest illusion to think that the Independents’ party is capable of evolving into a revolutionary party of the proletariat. The Fabians have to be squeezed out, “removed from their posts”. This can only be achieved by an implacable struggle against the centrism of the Independents.
The more clearly and acutely the question of conquering power comes to the fore, the more the Independent Labour Party will strive to evade an answer and substitute for the fundamental problem of revolution every kind of bureaucratic construction regarding the best parliamentary and financial methods of nationalizing industry.
One of the commissions of the Independent Labour Party came to the conclusion that purchasing of the land, plants and factories should be preferred to confiscation as in Britain, according to the presentiments of the commission, nationalization will take place gradually, a la Baldwin, step by step; and it would be “unjust” to deprive one group of capitalists of its income while another group is still obtaining a return on its capital.
“It would be another matter”, the commission’s report states, (we are quoting from the report in The Times) “if socialism came to us not gradually but all at once as the result of a catastrophic revolution: then the arguments against confiscation would lose the greater part of their force. But we”, says the report, “do not think that this combination is likely and we do not feel called upon to discuss this in the present report.”
Speaking in general there are no grounds to reject in principle the purchase of the land, factories and plants. Unfortunately however the political and financial opportunities to do this will never coincide.
The financial state of the United States would make a purchasing operation wholly possible. But in America the question itself is not a practical one and there is not yet a party there that can pose it seriously. But by the time that such a party appears the economic position of the United States will have undergone extremely abrupt changes.
In Britain on the contrary the question of nationalization stands at point-blank range as a question of the salvation of the British economy. But the position of state funds is such that the feasibility of purchasing appears more than dubious.
However the financial aspect of the question is only a secondary one. The main task consists in creating the political prerequisites for nationalization regardless of whether by purchase or not. After all it is a matter of life and death for the bourgeoisie. A revolution is inevitable precisely because the bourgeoisie will never let itself be strangled by a Fabian banking transaction.
Bourgeois society in its present state cannot accept even partial nationalization except by besetting it with conditions which must impede the success of the measure in the extreme, while compromising the idea of nationalization and with it the Labour Party. For to every really bold, even if partial, attempt at nationalization the bourgeoisie will respond as a class.
Other industries will resort to lock-outs, sabotage and the boycott of nationalized industries, that is to say, they will wage a life and death struggle. However cautious the original approach might be the task will in the end be reduced to the need to crack die resistance of the exploiters.
When the Fabians declare to us that they do not feel themselves “called upon” to consider “this contingency” it has to be said that these gentlemen are basically mistaken as to their calling.
It is very possible that the most businesslike of them will be useful in this or that department of a future workers’ state where they can occupy themselves with the accounting of individual items on a socialist balance-sheet. But they are of absolutely no use as long as it is still a question of creating the workers’ state, that is to say, the basic prerequisite of a socialist economy.
In one of his weekly reviews in the Daily Herald (4th April 1925) MacDonald let slip a few realistic words: “The position of the parties”, he said, “is these days such that the struggle will become increasingly hot and fierce. The Conservative Party will fight to the death and the more menacing that the power of the Labour Party becomes, the more monstrous the pressure of the reactionary MPs (the Conservative Party) will become”.
This is absolutely true. The more immediate the danger of the Labour Party coming to power the stronger the influence of such people as Curzon (it is not by chance that MacDonald called him a “model” for future public figures) will grow in the Conservative Party.
For once it might appear that MacDonald’s appraisal of perspectives was correct. But in point of fact the Labour Party leader himself does not understand the meaning and weight of his own words. The observation that the Conservatives will fight to the death and the more frenziedly as time goes on, was required by him only to demonstrate the inexpediency of inter-party parliamentary committees.
But in its essentials the prognosis given by MacDonald not only tells against inter-parliamentary committees but cries out against the possibility of solving the whole of the present-day social crisis by parliamentary methods. “The Conservative Party will fight to the death”. Correct! But that means that the Labour Party will only be able to defeat it in event of it exceeding their determination to struggle.
It is not a matter of the competition between two parties but of the fate of two classes. But when two classes fight each other to the death the question is never solved by counting votes. This has never been so in history. And as long as classes exist it never will be so.
It is not however a question of MacDonald’s general philosophy nor of particular happy slips of his tongue, that is to say, not of how he justifies his activity, nor of what he wishes for, but of what he does and where his actions lead. If the question is approached from this angle then it turns out that MacDonald’s party is by all its work preparing the gigantic sweep and extreme severity of the proletarian revolution in Britain.
It is none other than MacDonald’s party that strengthens the bourgeoisie’s self-confidence and at the same time stretches the patience of the proletariat to the limit. And by the time that this patience cracks the proletariat rising to its feet will collide headlong with the bourgeoisie whose consciousness of omnipotence has been only strengthened by the policy of MacDonald’s party. The longer that the Fabians restrain Britain’s revolutionary development the more terrible and furious will be the explosion.
The British bourgeoisie has been brought up on ruthlessness. Leading it along this path were the circumstances of an island existence, the moral philosophy of Calvinism, the practice of colonialism and national arrogance.
Britain is being forced increasingly into the background. This irreversible process also creates a revolutionary situation. The British bourgeoisie, compelled as it is to make its peace with America, to retreat, to tack and to wait, is filling itself with the greatest bitterness which will reveal itself in terrible forms in a civil war.
Thus the bourgeois scum of France, defeated in the war with the Prussians, took their revenge on the Communards; thus the officerdom of the routed Hohenzollern army took their revenge on the German workers.
All the cold cruelty that ruling-class Britain displayed towards the Indians, Egyptians and Irish and which has the appearance of racial arrogance, in the event of a civil war will reveal its class nature and prove to be directed against the proletariat. On the other hand the revolution will inevitably awaken in the British working class the deepest passions which have been so skilfully restrained and suppressed by social conventions, the church and the press, and diverted along artificial channels with the aid of boxing, football, racing and other forms of sport.
The concrete course of the struggle, its duration and its outcome will depend wholly upon the domestic and especially the international conditions of the moment in which it develops. In the decisive struggle against the proletariat the British bourgeoisie will enjoy the most powerful support of the bourgeoisie of the United States while the proletariat will rest for support primarily upon the working class of Europe and the oppressed popular masses of the colonies. The-nature of the British Empire will inevitably give this gigantic struggle an international scale.
This will be one of the greatest dramas in world history. The destiny of the British proletariat in this struggle will be linked with the destiny of all mankind. The whole world situation and the role of the British proletariat in production and in society will guarantee
