As we have seen, Holland wants to use the state to ‘discipline’ capital in its own best interests. Much of his argument rests not on any proof that this can be done, but on rejection of the alternative: that the workers should take power into their own hands. Не states his case in a chapter of The Socialist Challenge entitled ‘Against Violence’.

Revolution, he claims, leads to absolutism and the loss of civil liberty. Page 24 Moreover, violent insurrection has succeeded only in Eastern Europe and Asia, and is not suited to Western conditions: ‘The most effective answer to the case for violent transformation of capitalist society lies in the fact that a violent overthrow of capitalism may in some countries be the only means of progress, but in others is simply a painful means of changing the form of exploitation…

‘But there are further arguments against violent revolution. One of the most important is the failure of such attempts at armed uprising in Western Europe in the twentieth century. (The Socialist Challenge, pp. 162-163.)

This polemic against violence neatly ducks the real dilemma Holland faces Democracy is more than just ‘involvement, ‘opening doors’, or even civil liberties. Properly speaking, democracy- the rule of the people- does not exist unless the majority of the people have the right to decide what society is to do, on all the crucial issues that face them.

But the right to decide must be real, and not merely formal. The majority has to be able to implement its decisions. The bourgeois state administration is, and always has been, the central obstacle to genuine workers’ democracy, in both autocratic and bourgeois-democratic countries. It is a hierarchic and non-elected body whose ruling members draw their privileges from the monopoly of executive power they hold in trust from the ruling class. Using this monopoly, the state always usurps decision-making power. It is the Civil Service, and not Parliament, that dictates the most important government decisions. The police, the army, and the courts command the coercive power to ensure that these decisions are carried through.

Real power lies in the hands of the majority of society only when executive power is held by the workers themselves. But this is possible only if the old bourgeois state bureaucracy is dismantled, and if the means of administration and coercion cease to be the monopoly of a privileged professional caste. This is why the mass of workers must really enter into the process of government, which means not simply passing laws but carrying them out as well.

But Benn and Holland’s entire approach to workers’ democracy is built on the premise that the state must retain its monopoly of administration. This leads them to abandon any real project for workers’ control, and to entrust the state executive with the job of carrying out the government’s economic strategy. They reduce the working class to a cheerleader that can only encourage the home team, throw toilet rolls at the other side, or shout foul at the referee. But the referee is the away side, and the home team has been nobbled. The only way out is for the workers to take to the field and run the game themselves.

Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) supporters tend to overlook the fact that the state is actually very unpopular. It is a bloated, hierarchic, and bureaucratic machine whose role is to suppress and regiment workers-not only through its bodies of armed men, but also through countless petty acts of authority at schools, dole offices, public service counters, and even hospitals. It is run by arrogant mandarins drawn from top ruling class circles and exudes an atmosphere of petty officialdom. It defends the rich against the poor. Far from generating working-class enthusiasm, making use of the state is far more likely to demoralize and divide workers who want to take their future into their own hands.

Indeed, it is just this sentiment that lies behind the unpopularity of ‘dogmatic nationalization’, which is why Thatcher made such mileage with her calls for tax and spending cuts. Tom Forester makes the final, ironic judgement when he writes that Labour’s industrial strategy came to be seen simply as the old leftwing “nationalization” campaign writ anew. (What Went Wrong, p. 89.) State intervention, and not so much nationalization, is the millstone around Labour’s neck: it is the central barrier between the workers and workers democracy.

But the most damning objection is that the state is the instrument of the capitalists. It has played an even remotely autonomous role only when the working class was thoroughly smashed, as in Germany under Hitler, and then only because the capitalists were compelled to pay this price to extract themselves from the mess they were in.

At all other times the interests of the state are tightly linked to those of capital, for running the country is a closed, hierarchical profession. The top civil servants, carefully screened by the institutions of the ruling class, hold the careers of their subordinates hostage. Their privileges and livelihood are bound up with preserving their monopoly of administration. They can hardly make a move without recourse to the country’s money-lenders. They see every challenge to smooth capitalist functioning or to their divine right to administer as a slight and a threat to be put down by any means necessary. This is not an article of Marxist dogma, but a plain fact freely admitted by the Labour left themselves, now that their noses have been well and truly rubbed in it.