From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 26, 26 June 1950, pp. 1 & 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
What is the thinking behind the British Labor Party’s declaration on “European Unity”?
Is it “doctrinaire socialism,” as the U.S. press commentators are calling it in somewhat heated abuse?
Is it simply old-line British nationalism, isolationism or provincialism?
We think it is neither: the first is demonstrably not true, and the second is superficial. And what it is does not have as familiar a label as those two epithets. It might help understanding to leave the label for the end rather than the beginning, and to consider first the two interpretations being put forward.
As Labor Action mentioned last week, the New York Times and other sources have been presenting the British statement as if it were a product of the “left wing” of the Labor Party, said “left wingers” having put their document over behind the backs of the sober, undoctrinaire Laborites like Attlee and Ernest Bevin. Or at least such was the frame in which it was put in the first dispatches.
As this is written, the Times at least is carrying the report that this is not believed in England, certainly not in the Labor Party. “In reality,” writes its correspondent Raymond Daniell, “there never was much difference between the government and the party except over the choice of words and the time for speaking bluntly.” And he quotes the (British) Press Association’s diplomatic correspondent that “[Paul] Hoffman [ECA administrator], the principal American critic in the early stages, has now come around to the view that the National Executive’s pamphlet and the cabinet’s statement on the plan amount to very much the same thing instead of being, as he at first thought, sharply divided.”
In any case, the view that the party declaration was a product of left-wing thinking could make sense only by ignoring a couple of facts about its sponsorship and authorship.
One is Hugh Dalton’s role as godfather of the declaration. It would probably not be accurate to say that Dalton is to the right of Ernie Bevin, but to find him a milimeter to the left would be a sea-change indeed! The foreign correspondents also rang Aneurin Bevan’s name in beside that of Dalton, but so far this seems to have rested on a pure deduction that if the declaration was a leftwing plot, Bevan must have had something to do with it.
In any case, while nothing so far has appeared with regard to Aneurin Bevan’s role in the matter, it is reported (By A.M. Schlesinger Jr. in the N.Y. Post) that the Tribune group of the Labor Party has not at all taken the Dalton line. The Tribune is the paper around which is grouped a number of the figures in the Labor Party who are associated with Bevan’s type of semileftism.
The Tribune line is the obverse of that of the Executive’s declaration. Where the latter reject the perspective of Western European union, the Tribune looks with hope and expectation to – the Schuman plan for a capitalist integration of European economy. Rejecting the reasoning of the executive (and not because of its “doctrinaire socialism”) they see only the alternative of the Schuman Plan; as advocates of European unity, they embrace it, with qualifications to be sure but also with hope.
It may be added, as a straw in the wind, that the Independent Labor Party’s weekly, the Socialist Leader, like the Tribune group, also editorially supports Britain’s entrance into the Schuman Plan, because the plan “provides the basis for a searching inquiry into the possibilities of union,” and because Britain can better keep the proposed setup from being dangerous to socialist objectives by being in than by being out. Unfortunately, the Schuman Plan is a plan for more than a “searching inquiry,” and the argument does not really meet the cogent objections raised in the Executive’s declaration.
If the LP executive’s declaration is the product of “doctrinaire socialism,” there has surely been an unexplainable and amazing reversal of roles!
But this has to do only with the sponsorship of the declaration. Isn’t it true that the declaration itself bears down heavily on “socialist principle”? This is certainly so – in particular sections – the sudden splurge of “principledness” in some of the language is, to put it mildly, not characteristic of its authors. It might even be considered grounds for suspicion ... If these “principled” passages were really the heart of the document, it would be reasonable to consider it as an expression of “doctrinaire socialism” – but then there would be no reasonable explanation for the abrupt accession of galloping orthodoxy to its authors.
The fact is that the declaration presents, side by side and coordinately, two reasons for rejecting European union. The “principled” passages appear only in the first. Like this:
“The Labor Party could never accept any commitments which limited its own or others’ freedom to pursue democratic socialism, and to apply the economic controls necessary to achieve it ... the Labor Party’s socialist principles demand that the movement toward European unity should be such as to permit the continuation of full employment and social justice in Britain and the extension of those benefits over the rest of Western Europe ... No Socialist government in Europe could submit to the authority of a body whose policies were decided by an anti-socialist majority ...”
The principledness and doctrinaireness end with these proclamations, which are useful for the purpose of rejecting any orientation toward European union and play nd role in the declaration’s consideration of what is to be done.
If the LP Executive really saw European union as a desirable aim (as it says) and if they really saw European capitalism as its main obstacle, then it would be impossible to explain three outstanding characteristics of the main body of the document:
(1) The declaration consistently poohpoohs and plays down the very perspective of a socialist Europe.
In one curious passage, it sees no possibility of practicable union even if the other countries did have socialist majorities, because of something it calls “civic and administrative traditions.” It speaks of a “permanent anti-socialist majority” on any supra-national authority.
In a summary paragraph it flatly labels European union as “excluded” – without any qualification such as “at present” – because of the “unattainable degree of uniformity” it would require. It considers the subject exhausted, in another passage, when it makes the point that such uniformity “does not now exist and is unlikely to exist in the immediate future.”
It “fundamentally” rejects the abolition of intra-Europe trade barriers on the interesting ground that this would cause “economic disturbances and political tensions which would throw Europe open to Communism.” Surely a revealing “fundamental” objection!
For one thing, the present system, which the LP leaders obviously fully expect to continue indefinitely, produces no lack of political tension and economic disturbance – their own “principled” passages even make a special point of insisting on this, but since it appears on a different page it does not get in the way. For another thing, the socialist transformation of Europe, which the “principled” passages claim to look forward to, can hardly be expected to come without those two dread accompaniments (not to speak of the even more horrid term Revolution), just as they accompanied the Labor victory in Britain.
Any reference to a socialist. Europe is purely ceremonial; the thinking of the pamphlet is entirely based on the indefinite continuance of capitalism in the rest of the Western world.
(2) The “principled” socialist objections of the LP Executive, however correct in themselves, are further seen to play no decisive part in the thinking of the document when its authors counterpose to European union the kind of unity they themselves aim at. This alternative, so counterposed, is unity of the entire non-Stalinist West, not only including but especially including the U.S.
It would be superfluous to ask how they can speak of this either more hopefully or more favorably than European union if they take their principled passages seriously!
(3) If it is the capitalist character of Europe which stands in the way, what do they propose to do about it? As another article in this issue points out: nothing.
Conclusion: the passages in the declaration which understandably impressed correspondents as representing insistence on socialist principles are undeniably present but play no integral role in the thinking of the LP leaders. To put it bluntly, they are strictly window-dressing.
Window-dressing for what?
The document is not coy on that matter. It is given as a second and coordinate reason for the LP policy, alongside the socialist principles, but it is given without too much doubletalk. The frankly imperialist Lord Beaverbrook had no difficulty in getting the point; the document shouts it at him and the reader, stridently. Here is the most concentrated passage:
“Britain is not just a small crowded island off the Western coast of continental Europe. She is the nerve center of a worldwide Commonwealth which extends into every continent. In every respect except distance we in Britain are closer to our kinsmen in Australia and New Zealand on the far side of the world than we are to Europe. We are closer in language and in origins, in social habits and institutions, in political outlook and in economic interest. The economics of the Commonwealth countries are complementary to that of Britain to a degree which those of Western Europe could never equal. Furthermore Britain is also banker of the sterling area. This is the largest multilateral trading system in the world – within which exchange controls are hot applied and all transactions are conducted in a single currency. We believe it is in the interest of the world at large that this system should be protected and maintained, in any case it is a vital British interest.”
Further quotation would re-emphasize the point but not change it. The economies of Western Europe, the document argues, are parallel and competitive. “The cause” of slow progress toward unity, it says, in another place, “does not lie in any inadequacy of the institutions which exist. It lies in real conflicts of interest which cannot simply be ignored dr suppressed ... But these and others are only footnotes on the above-quoted clear statement.
That this is the heart of the document is not a view peculiar to our analysis. It is clear that it is the interpretation of the document in British opinion right across the board, from right to left. The U.S. press has played up criticisms of the declaration in the British right-wing press; but it is now clear that this criticism is mainly on secondary points – timing, etc. – not on the main line.
The LP declaration itself more than once goes out of its way to insist that a Conservative government in power would have to take the same attitude if British interests are to be conserved. (Tie that up with the “doctrinaire socialist” reasons for the policy!) In fact, they charge by clear implication that Churchill’s role in the Western European Union movement is insincere demagogy.
This point was already made in last week’s Labor Action and the question we raise now is a further interpretation of it. It looks indistinguishable from the motivation of the capitalist elements who are applauding it; it looks like a mere continuation of the long-standing British imperialist aim of hanging on to whatever remnants of the empire are not yet in America’s bag economically or independent politically. That it is narrow nationalism and imperialism cannot be gainsaid. In this respect it is of a piece with the foreign policy outlook evidenced by the Labor government since it took power: continuation of the old imperialist aims and methods throughout the world, from Palestine to Africa. Whatever may be said about the Labor government’s domestic policies, it is certain that its foreign policy has been consistently on the reactionary side. And the question we are dealing with is in the province of foreign policy.
But it would be a mistaken simplification to consider it as being merely a continuation under Labor Party auspices of traditional British imperialism, though it meshes and dovetails completely with British imperialist needs and ideology. From the point of view of the political thinking of the Labor Party general staff, it is rather a lesultant of two factors: national and imperialist interests AND the reformist socialist perspective characteristic of the Labor Party itself.
To call the combination “national socialism” may be undesirable only because of the tie-up of that term with the name of the Nazi party, which would be quite irrelevant. The “national-Bolshevism” of the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia in its earlier stages, as Trotsky called it, would be more to the point. A New York Times editorial of the LP declaration was titled Socialism in One Country. Though the editorial itself had virtually nothing to do with the title, the title at least showed a glimmer.
For the nationalism of the Labor Party leadership (and of its declaration on European unity) IS the nationalism of the theory and practice of socialism-in-one-country.
The Labor Party leadership sincerely believes that the national interests of Britain and the maintenance of its special hold over the Commonwealth is the “overriding” consideration for the sake of building “socialism” in Britain. They believe this as sincerely as the Stalin of 1924 believed that it was necessary for Russia to turn its back on the world and European revolution and concentrate on its own national development, for the sake of building socialism at home. (To believe that Stalin started out with the sinister aim of creating a totalitarian despotism is as superficial as to believe that Attlee and Bevin are simply acting as the agents of Lord Beaverbrook’s empire-rebuilders.)
This reference to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution can be both a help and a hindrance to understanding. It would be a hindrance if, taken outside of historical context, it is mechanically used to imply the automatic necessity of an identical line of development. It is relevant if it is used to understand why the Labor Party line cannot, on its basis, lead to democratic socialism in England, whatever else it might lead to; and if used to understand why it does, in fact, lead to the continuance of all the forms and methods of imperialism by the Labor government.
What stands out in the Labor Party Executive’s declaration (and what bridges the two motivations they give) is the conviction that the narrow nationalist interests of Britain, its Commonwealth and the remnants of its empire, are identical with the interests of socialism.
Even of world socialism! In a remarkable sentence, the LP declaration states baldly that “The Commonwealth now represents the nucleus of a potential world society based on free cooperation.” The parallel is striking with the early Stalin’s (sincere) belief that lie was not abandoning world revolution by turning inward to build socialism in Russia: he was finding another road to the same goal, which. would be achieved around a socialist Russia as the nucleus. His departure from Marxism was merely a new means to an end – but the end did not long-survive the impact of the means.
But there is quite another element in the BLP’s socialism-in-one-country. For Stalin, it meant striving toward self-sufficiency and an approach to autarky on the one hand, and maneuvering with the capitalist states on the other. Britain has not the natural resources of a Russia to waken the will o’ the wisp of self-sufficiency. The Executive’s declaration even insists on the degree to which British economy depends on that of the world, on the “predicament” of British economy, on the decisive role of the dollar gap, etc.
The specific contradiction of this British version of socialism-in-one-country is the fact that this socialism, it would seem, can be built only with the aid of the United States – the only going-concern capitalism left in the world and the last-ditch rooter for “free enterprise.”
The Executive’s declaration in fact insists on the impossibility of getting anywhere economically without American dollars. Not only with respect to its remarks on the dollar gap (which, indeed, it makes into a virtually insuperable obstacle to European economic unity). “In the building of unity throughout the free world,” it says, the U.S.A. must play a major part. For unless America’s strategic, economic and political activities are closely integrated with those of Europe, Africa and Asia, the non-Communist world will be dangerously weakened. Moreover, America alone at present commands the resources needed to support the development of world unity in its early stages.”
There would be a doubtful usefulness to asking how the Labor Party leaders expect to get the main bastion of capitalism in the world to help build their socialism for them. For one thing, whether with conviction or not, they argue in one place that next to Britain itself and the Scandinavian countries, the U.S. government is the most progressive in the world, and it should surprise no one if Attlee and his colleagues expect the Fair Deal to wake up one fine morning to find that it has made the U.S. socialist unbeknown to itself.
For another thing, they too believe that they can maneuver their anti-socialist allies across the sea into tolerating their socialism. For is not the U.S.’s main problem its struggle with its Russian imperialist rival? Can U.S. imperialism, for all its distaste for British socialism, afford to turn it from its door as long as it is at death-grips with the bear? Can’t they buy tolerance and aid for their socialism-in-one-country – especially if it is confined to socialism in one country – by swearing allegiance with double vehemence to the cause of the cold war?
So at least they count. It would be otherwise hard to account for the presence, precisely in the LP declaration under discussion, of what is probably the most extreme statement yet made by any European working-class movement rejecting the very idea of (even lip-service to) the idea of independence from the struggle between U.S. and Russian imprialism, certainly the most point-blank statement by the Labor Party rejecting any kind of neutrality.
Economically we fight for our own interests within the Western bloc; politically we line up with you – they offer the deal to America.
Socialism in one country of one bloc in the cold war – with world war hanging over its head: such is the basis of the Labor Party’s perspective and ideology. Considering what war would mean for this pretty prospect, Stalin’s socialism-in-one-country was a somewhat more reasonable proposition in comparison.
It is not only foreign policy and world orientation which is conditioned by this perspective, but it is these that we are discussing here. The Labor Party declaration on “European Unity” is founded on it, and not on any internationalist socialist principles.
Last updated on 7 January 2024