The Benn heresy by Alan Freeman
Socialist Challenge1980sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
UNDERSTANDING the politics of Tony Benn and the 'Bennite' current is crucial to grasping the prospects for socialist advance in Britain. The ideas of Benn and his supporters represent the main left-wing opposition to Toryism and right-wing Labourism in Britain today.
Whilst Benn and Bennism are not revolutionary — and Alan Freeman resolutely defends Benn against such an accusation — it still remains a fact that a genuine mass revolutionary socialist movement will not be built without both confronting Bennism and also fighting alongside of it. To paraphrase Trotsky, we have to take the reformist workers seriously, because they take their own ideas seriously.
At every stage of the political crisis reformism appears in new and often more left-wing forms. Bennism is the latest of these and we can be confident it will not be the last. Bennism nevertheless has a certain distinctiveness in that it does have a more or less comprehensive political solution to the British economic and political crisis. This therefore assures it of a certain durability.
Join
When such a movement with such widespread support appears, it is incumbent on Marxists to analyse its proposals. We do not do this just so that we can 'expose' it but, we do it in order to find those points in its programme where we can join with it in a united front against the capitalist class and its direct agents in the labour movement.
By unravelling Benn's personal political history, Alan Freeman is able to trace the development of the post-war British crisis and the failure of right-wing labourism — what Benn calls social democracy — to deal with it. Benn's personal evolution is the reverse of the old Bevanite leaders like Foot, Castle, and Wilson, whose experience in office [illegible] them to the right. Benn's experience in office had the effect of actually radicalising him. He was pushed to the left when he saw how the capitalist state sabotaged radical change. This prompted Benn to take up the theme of democracy in a way which the Bevanites were never prepared or even wanted to do.
Policy
The Bevanites always saw the battle with the right as being simply about policy. For them parliament was the focal point of change and the supreme representative of democracy. For Benn, parliament appears as the end-point of the democratic process — a process that begins with the mass movement.
The theme that parliament must be more democratic, more accountable and really sovereign, as opposed to the bureaucracy of the civil service, the multinational corporations , and the capitalist class in general, pervades Benn's speeches. The theme of democracy and mass action from below is a crucial part of the distinctiveness of Bennism.
Alan Freeman considers that the raising of the issue of democracy and making it a central concern in British politics is Benn's most crucial achievement. Alan however does not accept Benn's argument that parliament can be made truly sovereign. As a revolutionary Marxist he obviously does not reject an elected assembly on a point of principle, but he recognises that what matters is on what type of state does such an assembly rest. When that is a capitalist state then it is impossible for the mass movement to impose its will through parliament.
In our opinion Freeman's discussion of 'marxism and democracy', his account of the circumstances in which civil war might be needed to defend parliament against the capitalist class, and his explanation of the inevitable limitation of real parliamentary sovereignty in the capitalist state are probably the strongest part of the book.
The other distinctive feature of Bennism is the alternative economic strategy or AES, which includes limited nationalisation, workers' participation and planning agreements with the major capitalist companies on investment and output to reconstruct the ailing economy. The left-wing critique of this is we assume well known to our readers. But Freeman here does bring to light an element of wide-eyed utopianism in Tony Benn's thoughts.
Benn thinks agreement with the capitalists might be possible. He attributes almost magical powers to the talisman of the 'popular will' to get fundamental change. This is Benn's blind spot. He rejects the idea that the ruling class might engineer a coup against a left-wing government. He completely underestimates the possibility that the British ruling class, in alliance with international capital will do everything in their power to de-stabilise a left Labour Government as a prelude to its fall.
Assault
Benn does not seem to understand that when you have an economic and political crisis of the proportion we have today, any future Labour government will come under a furious assault from domestic and foreign capital. The only time when this will not happen is if the Labour left and the working class as a whole have been utterly defeated. Even a government of the Foot-Healy type would be given the treatment.
The IMF-engineered runs on the pound in 1965 and 1975 would be childs' play compared to what they will do next. Although Foot might be at the helm the strength of the Labour left still makes a Labour government 'unsafe' in the eyes of the ruling class.
To have any chance of surviving in office the next Labour government will have to immediately move against the sabotage of domestic and foreign capital. Nationalisation of banks, control of the import and export of capital, the taking over of the finance houses and steps towards nationalising the big monopolies will have to be top-rated items on Labour's agenda.
Control
This will require the mobilisation of the trade union movement. Such measures can only be done if the workers in these industries and financial institutions supervise and control the bosses. Workers control will be the necessary measure to stop capitalist sabotage.
Benn refuses to face up to the idea of such a dramatic confrontation. When asked about this in interviews with Socialist Challenge, Socialist Organiser, and Capital and Class he tries to fob it off with; 'That's what I call the Allende question' or make jokes about 'my old tin hat and rifle'. Benn, as Freeman points out, sees revolutionary change, not as the mass mobilisation of the working class which acts as essential motor force of the transition, but either as a putsch or an 'industrial coup' — the actions of a minority. Benn's political thinking is therefore essentially flawed because he underestimates the lengths to which the British ruling class will go to suppress socialist change.
Does that therefore mean revolutionary Marxists should shun the Bennite forces? Of course not. As Freeman says Benn does address himself to the crucial questions. This means that the first task is to be with this mass movement inside the Labour Party and the trade unions where we can fight with it against the right wing. Bennism represents the furthest stage of left development of all but a minuscule minority of the working class. There is no question of influencing this movement from the sidelines or imagining that it can be by-passed by a new layer of workers coming into struggle.The second task is to arm the Bennite supporters with an understanding that only a Labour government that breaks with the capitalist class and is committed to socialist policies and has the means to implement them can avoid a terrible debacle.
Anyone who wants to understand the crisis of British capitalism, the character of the Labour right, the role of Thatcherism and what makes Bennism tick, can do no better than read Alan Freeman's book.