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Marxism and the state: an exchange
The
State: A Marxist Programme and Transitional Demands
Lynn Walsh
THE ROLE OF THE POLICE
Cartoon by Alan Hardman, from the pamphlet The
state - a warning to the Labour movement, by Militant
Michael focuses much of his criticism on our position on the
police, referring in particular to several articles published in Militant in
1981. He considers that our position on the police is based on "reformist
methodology" and reflects "congealed illusions" in the possibility of
"establish[ing] a workers' state through electoral activity". Our mistake,
according to Michael, was in not putting forward our full programme based on
the idea that the capitalist state "must be broken up, smashed, and replaced by
a new workers' state". Instead, our intervention in the events of 1981 was
primarily based on immediate, democratic demands on the police put forward in a
transitional way.
Michael quotes from Militant articles first published in 1981
at the time of the riots in Brixton, Toxteth, Bristol, and several other
British cities. They were also reprinted in 1983 in the Militant pamphlet, 'The
State: A Warning to the Labour Movement'.
The three articles on the police quoted were a small part of
the material we produced in relation to the riots, which were really uprisings
of some of the poorest inner-city areas. The economic and social decay of these
areas, aggravated by the slump after 1980 (intensified by the policies of the
Thatcher government) created the conditions for the upheaval. However, it was
the aggressive and provocative methods used by the police that provided the
trigger, and we continually emphasised the responsibility of the police at the
time (see the section on 'The Riots' in 'The Rise of Militant', by Peter
Taaffe, pp163-166).
Young people, both black and white, were to the forefront of
these events, and right from the start supporters of Militant (the predecessor
of the Socialist Party) were present to help organise the defence of the areas
from further police attacks and (as opposed to merely 'rioting') to win young
people to socialist ideas.
We called for an end of police harassment and for the
disbanding of the Special Patrol Group, the most aggressive section of the
police at that time. We related the role of the police to the social situation.
Our key demands were: "An urgent labour movement enquiry, step up the fight for
socialist solutions to the social and economic crisis underlying the explosion
[and for an] enquiry into the police." (Militant 548, 17 April 1981)
We stressed the need for the young people of the area and the
wider community to organise to defend themselves against police harassment and
a clampdown on the areas through prosecutions and vicious prison sentences in
the aftermath of the upheavals. We set up the Labour Committee for the Defence
of Brixton, which played an important part in exposing the role of the police,
defending those facing charges, and calling mass meetings at which our policies
were put forward.
Among our policies were the demand for a thorough-going
enquiry into the police (going beyond the limits of the slow-moving Scarman
enquiry set up by the Thatcher government) and measures to establish democratic
checks on the police through elected committees involving labour-movement
representatives.
Michael considers such demands to be irredeemably reformist.
Nowhere, however, does he say what demands he thinks we should have been
putting forward. From what he writes we can only conclude that he would have
been advocating demands on the following lines: Smash the state! Fight the
police! Form workers' militias!
Such slogans might be appropriate in a revolutionary or at
least an immediate pre-revolutionary situation, when conditions were ripening
for a mass movement of the workers to take power into their own hands. Even
then, slogans on the state would have to be formulated much more skilfully and
concretely than suggested by Michael. Lenin and Trotsky frequently explained
the need for a 'defensive' approach, in the sense of putting the responsibility
for revolutionary action (e.g. forming workers' militias or disbanding
capitalist bodies) on state aggression or counter-revolutionary violence by
auxiliaries of the ruling class (such as fascist bands).
Would Michael argue that there was a revolutionary or even a
pre-revolutionary situation in Britain in 1981, even in some of the inner-city
areas in which there were upheavals? For a few days, the clashes on the streets
between the police and local residents, especially the youth, had some features
of an insurrection. But the clashes involved a minority of the communities
affected (though there was wide sympathy for action on common grievances). They
were not organised, but a spontaneous outburst of anger, and the level of
political consciousness was low, though a section of young people were quickly
being radicalised and were responsive to socialist ideas.
Moreover, it would be absurd to argue that there was a
pre-revolutionary situation in Britain as a whole. The working class suffered a
setback as a result of the defeat of the Labour government in 1979. The
Wilson-Callaghan government had introduced monetarist economic polices and
launched attacks on workers' living standards, especially low-paid local
authority workers. That had produced the 'winter of discontent' in 1979, a wave
of public-sector strikes. In the absence of a mass alternative on the left,
however, Labour's defeat brought Thatcher to power and the assault on the
working-class rights and living standards was redoubled. There was a bitter
struggle of print workers on The Times, and other mainly defensive battles.
There were many important workers' struggles in which we intervened, but it
would be completely fanciful to describe the situation on Britain at that time
as pre-revolutionary.
In our publications and discussions we explained the Marxist
theory of the state and our programme for the socialist transformation of
society. This was done then, as it is now, on the lines of the 'What is the
State?' section of the 'What is Marxism?' pack quoted by Michael. Many
discussions were based on Lenin's 'State and Revolution' and other Marxist
classics (e.g. Engels' Origins of the Family, Private Property and the
State).
But for our intervention on the streets of Brixton, Totexth,
Bristol, etc, we needed a programme of immediate demands that corresponded to
the situation and pointed in a transitional way towards a socialist
transformation. Calls to 'Smash the capitalist state! For a new workers' state'
would have got no echo. We would have been very isolated suffering
severe 'social ostracism' in a situation in which we were in fact able,
with a correct approach to demands and slogans, to win a layer of youth to our
ranks and get a favourable response for socialist ideas among a much wider
layer.
Some of the 'front-line' youth might well have welcomed the
idea of an armed militia but not necessarily for progressive political
motives. Had a 'militia' emerged at that point, it would not have been a
democratic defence organisation responsible to democratic workers'
organisations. There was neither the level of consciousness nor organisation
necessary for the formation of a defence force. Any call for an armed defence
force would have been far in advance of the consciousness of even the most
politicised sections of organised workers.
Democratic control of the police
However, there was widespread condemnation of the police for
the aggressive, paramilitary methods they had been using, especially the
provocative 'stop and search' tactic aimed mainly against black youth. At the
same time, in areas like Brixton and Toxteth people wanted something done about
the high levels of crime, especially violent, drug-related crime, which
blighted their lives. There was a broad demand for accountability and control
of the police. To have called for the abolition of the police, however, without
the realistic possibility of alternative workers' organisations to protect the
community, would have been a serious mistake.
The Thatcher government responded to the broad public mood of
criticism of the police with the Scarman Enquiry. Lord Scarman's report
confirmed that a section of the police had been systematically harassing black
youth. He recommended reforms in police practices, but naturally wanted to
ensure that they were implemented within the framework of capitalist
institutions and legal procedures. For a time, the police adopted more low
profile methods in inner-city areas, though the Scarman reforms did not prevent
them from assuming emergency powers and acting as a paramilitary force against
the miners during their titanic strike of 1984-85, a strike that had many
features of a civil war in the coalfields.
In 1981, however, we raised demands for control of the police
that went far beyond anything proposed by Scarman. The key element of our
demands was democratic control by local government police committees
elected bodies involving the working class through representatives from trade
unions, community organisations, etc. We demanded that elected police
committees should have the power to appoint and dismiss chief constables and
senior officers, and would be responsible for 'operational questions', that is,
day-to-day policing policies. Police committees should ensure a genuinely
independent complaints' procedure, and should be responsible for weeding out
any racist elements or fascist sympathisers within the police. We called for
the abolition of the Special Patrol Group and other similar units, as well as
the abolition of the Special Branch and destruction of police files and
computer records not connected with criminal investigations.
Local authority police committees, such as the Greater London
Council committee, had become quite prominent in the period before the riots.
They played a progressive role in opening up the police to greater public
scrutiny, exposing their worst methods, and trying to assert some influence
over policing priorities or policies. (The recent sycophantic comments of Ken
Livingstone on the head of the Metropolitan police, in spite of the killing of
Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell and the outrageous Forest Gate raid, are
an indication of how far the political situation regarding the police and civil
rights has been set back since the 1980s.) However, they were ultimately
toothless bodies that had no power to assert any effective control over police
policies or day-to-day operations.
Our demand was for bodies that would reflect organised
pressure from the working class, pressure that would be used to check police
activities and impose limits on their methods. The degree to which the police
would be checked would depend on sustained organised pressure from the working
class through elected, representative bodies. Of course, the ruling class (and
their political representatives, including Labour leaders) were bitterly
opposed to any such development, which they regarded as a potential
encroachment on the prerogatives of the bourgeois state.
In opposing any steps to democratise control of the police,
police chiefs, supported by many Tory and Labour leaders, argued that increased
democratic accountability would subject the police to 'political control':
"They try to perpetuate the myth, important for gaining public acceptance of
their role in the past, that the police are an arm of a 'neutral' state. They
are, according to this view, 'above' politics and sectional interests, and
ultimately answerable to the equally 'neutral' and 'independent' judiciary."
(The Police, Lynn Walsh in The State
, p52)
To answer this line of argument we related some of the history
of the police in Britain, particularly in relation to the development of watch
committees. In the nineteenth century, "the control of the watch committees
[over the police] was absolute". (TA Crichley, History of the Police in England
and Wales) Our approach is: Regarding the police, things were different in the
past and they can be different in the future. There was no question, as Michael
asserts, of arguing that there had been an "organic development of police
accountability" and that this should be extended by the working class. Our
references made it clear that past 'democratic accountability' of the police
was to the bourgeois ruling class, and our demands were to challenge capitalist
control on the basis of working-class struggle.
Our line of argument was: If democratic control of the police
was good enough for them (i.e. the bourgeoisie) why is it regarded as taboo
now? Of course, it is a rhetorical question, we know the answer. But we cannot
assume that everybody automatically sees through the ideological arguments used
by the bourgeoisie to legitimise their class role. Michael seems to assume that
it is all self-evident. There is no need for this kind of argument. Experience
shows, however, that such arguments combined with action are
vital to changing consciousness.
"In the past, before the working class had emerged as an
independent political force, the spokesmen of big business and the middle class
insisted that the police were democratically accountable. Now, the labour
movement, which represents the overwhelming majority in society, must demand
that democratic accountability is extended to cover this force which, it is
claimed, exists to protect the interests of the public." (The State
,
p54)
Reform and revolution
We were putting forward democratic demands, but demands that
go to the heart of the role of the police as an instrument of the bourgeois
state and raise the need for the working class to defend its own interests in
the current battle over the role of the police. Were we (as some will no doubt
argue) pandering to the current consciousness of the working class and failing
to defend the Marxist programme on the state?
On the police, we were putting forward immediate, democratic
demands, which are always part of a transitional programme. They corresponded
to the consciousness of the advanced layers of the working class, who wanted a
democratic check on the police. The setting up of democratic police committees
cannot be ruled out in a future period of heightened class struggle. Whether
they will be achieved, how far they will go, will be determined by the strength
of working-class struggle. An element of democratic accountability over the
police would help create more favourable conditions for working-class struggle.
But such an element of 'workers' control' could not last indefinitely. Either
the workers would move forward to a socialist transformation of society, or the
ruling class would move to destroy the elements of democratic control.
The concession of elected police committees under pressure
from the working class would be a progressive development. However, if this
gave rise to illusions that, as Michael puts it, the police are "an isolated
entity which can become removed, or extracted, from the clutches of the
bourgeois state through working-class control of local watch committees" that
would be a negative development.
During the 1918 German revolution (as noted in the section on
the police in The State: A Warning to the Labour Movement, pp46-47) the Berlin
police were in fact "extracted from the clutches of the capitalist state", and
the revolutionary workers appointed Emil Eichorn, a leader of the Independent
Social Democrats, as police chief. This was a positive step, so far as it went,
but could only be a very temporary situation. The failure of the workers to
consolidate power through new proletarian organs of state power meant that the
Berlin police, together with other 'revolutionised' institutions, succumbed to
the bloody counter-revolution (for which the right-wing Social Democratic
leaders provided a political cover).
With regard to democratic police committees (or a new form of
watch committees), we clearly warned against any illusion in the step by step
reform of the police or other state bodies into socialist institutions:
"If the working class is to preserve the economic gains and
the democratic rights that it has wrested from the capitalists in the past, it
must carry through the socialist transformation of society. Past gains cannot
be preserved indefinitely within the rotten framework of a crisis-ridden
capitalism. In transforming society, it is utopian to think that the existing
apparatus of the capitalist state can be taken over and adapted by the working
class. In a fundamental change of society, all the existing institutions of the
state will be shattered and replaced by new organs of power under the
democratic control of the working class. While basing itself on the perspective
of the socialist transformation of society, however, the labour movement must
advance a programme which includes policies which come to grips with the
immediate problems posed by the role of the police." (The State
,
pp53-54)
Michael quotes this passage. But how (he asks) can we, on the
one side, advocate democratic police committees while, on the other, warn that
the police cannot be reformed into a worker-friendly institution? He sees this
as a "contradiction [that] is too great to ignore".
But it is no more contradictory than demanding any other
reform under capitalism. Reforms can be won through struggle, but we warn that
they will not be lasting gains under capitalism. In the field of democratic
rights do we not defend the right to jury trial, legal aid, procedural
safeguards for defendants, and so on? Clearly, such legal rights do not
guarantee real 'justice', which is impossible on a juridical plane without a
deeper social justice, which is impossible in capitalist society. But it would
be absurd to argue that such legal and civil rights are of no consequence for
the working class. Such rights have been won, clawed back by the bourgeoisie,
re-established for a period, and so on. Demands for social reforms and
democratic rights will always remain an important part of our transitional
programme. Legal and civil rights, like the right to vote, freedom of political
association, etc, create more favourable conditions for working-class struggle.
Demands for democratic control of the police are no different, in principle,
from demands for other democratic rights. Doesn't the demand for universal
suffrage, for instance, reinforce the illusion that an elected parliament can
control the executive of the capitalist state?
The demands that we put forward on the police in 1981
corresponded to the situation in Britain at that time. Since then, the
situation has obviously changed in many respects, especially since the 9/11
attacks in the US which have provided the political pretext for an enormous
strengthening of the powers of the state and a broad clawing back of legal and
democratic rights conceded in the past. The methodology of our programme
remains the same, but we naturally have to take account of recent changes. But
it would be a fatal mistake to abandon a programme of transitional demands in
relation to the state, the police, etc, in favour of bald denunciations of the
'repressive capitalist state' and calls for 'workers' power'. This is all the
more important given the general setback to working-class consciousness in the
period since the collapse of Stalinism. There will be many struggles to recoup
past gains that have been lost in the recent period. As we have always done, we
will link our immediate and transitional demands to the need for the socialist
transformation of society.
Continued ...
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