The new ten point People Before Profit “charter” sheds more than a little light on how the Socialist Workers Party views its role in the growing economic crisis and the role it expects the wider labour movement to play.

The “charter” is, in fact, a “minimum programme” of the sort put forward by pre-1914 Second International social democrats. Socialists used to operate with a “minimum” and “maximum” programmes — “minimum” being an everyday list of practical demands, “maximum” the full-blooded but far-off revolution. The party and its relationship with the trade unions provided the link between the two.

This parallel system of programme’s was based on a mechanical, evolutionary view of working class struggle. Rather than making the links between demands in the here and now and the possibility of revolutionary struggle — that is, educating and mobilising the labour movement, linking everyday struggles to the goal of socialist revolution — the social democrats related to the working class on a fairly conservative basis.

And “conservative” pretty much describes the People Before Profit charter. Even the name suggests political timidity. “People” — don’t you mean workers, comrades? “Before Profit” — what about “Not Profit”? But the name is only the start of the problem.

Wages: The charter demands wage increases no lower than the rate of inflation, opposes the two percent pay limit and demands an £8 minimum wage. But even the Retail Price Index fails to reflect the real increase in costs — food is up 10.6%, road-fuel is up 24% and the massive increase in gas and electricity bills. Simple calculations tell us that inflation is closer to 10% in real terms. Wages should be linked to inflation as a minimum, but the labour movement needs an enquiry into the real figure. The demand for wages linked to inflation will lift many workers out of poverty pay, but many unions already have pay demands well in excess of inflation.

Big Business: The SWP demands: “Increase tax ... windfall tax on ... superprofits” but fails to (a) explain how we get Alistair Darling to take these measures and (b) doesn’t even hint at renationalisation. Even the TUC has policy calling for re-nationalisation of the energy and other industries — the SWP place themselves to the right of Brendan Barber!

On other issues, the SWP offer a series of timid demands without linking them to any practical strategy for advancing the class struggle, without any concrete connection to the labour movement and without linking demands to their self-professed politics. The closest they get — and this is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the charter — is to ask trade union branches to support SWP front organisations from UAF to the Stop the War Coalition.

People Before Profit exposes the SWP as sectarian to the labour movement, as an organisation with no real understanding of how to organise and agitate for socialist ideas. They see themselves as above and apart from the working class as it exists, they see themselves as the solution to the current and future crises. “Join the SWP”, who needs the working class and the labour movement?