Economic and social policies.

The immediate aim of the alternative strategy's economic proposals is to boost the economy.

 

Value added tax (VAT) should be cut and direct taxes on working people’s incomes reduced. The burden of taxation should be shifted onto the rich, for example through higher top rates of income tax, a wealth tax and stricter measures against tax evasion.

 

Council tax should be replaced by a local income tax based on ability to pay. The national minimum wage should be raised to half median male earnings immediately, rising to two-thirds over time, with no discrimination against young workers.

 

At the same time, there should be a renewed drive to achieve equal wages for work of equal value for women, ethnic minorities and other sections of the workforce that face discrimination.

 

In addition, there needs to be a massive and sustained increase in public spending in several priority areas. Particularly necessary is a big investment drive in the traditional heavy and manufacturing industries, and in the newer industries based on modern advanced technology.

 

Such a drive would have to be accompanied by measures to ensure an all-round increase in employment and equal opportunities for access to these jobs for all sections of the working population.

 

Alongside that, a regional economic development strategy will have to be rebuilt to stimulate industry and employment in those regions suffering economic depression and severe social inequalities.

 

Within the framework of planning at an national level, the peoples of each region must have the powers to ensure that industrial development is made accountable to them, and that curbs are placed on the freedom of big business and property speculators to wreck and distort local economies.

 

Implementing a shorter working week would help to ensure that investment in new technology does not lead to an overall loss of jobs. Funds should be made available to provide high-quality education and training for all young people, particularly for working class youth.

 

It is also important to provide a programme for training and retraining adults, especially women and ethnic minorities, to allow them entry into the more skilled, secure and better-paid jobs in the manufacturing sector.

 

The education system should be of the highest quality and free to all sections of society. Nursery and childcare provisions need to be improved and made available to all, thereby ensuring that women with children can escape casualised work on the margins and obtain better jobs in the mainstream of the economy.

 

Primary and secondary education should be adequately staffed to enable all children to receive a full and comprehensive education. Further and higher education, including the universities, must be accessible to every section of society, with grants generous enough to support students without recourse to loans or family contributions.

 

Student grants should be a right for all adults engaged in full-time study, with no place for tuition fees.

 

Another priority is social and welfare provision. There must be a substantial increase in public sector spending on housing, hospitals and other health services, and on leisure, cultural and recreational facilities.

 

The involvement of private capital in the public sector and services will have to be stopped and reversed, thereby securing local and democratic control.

 

The basic state pension needs to be immediately upgraded, and the link with earnings restored. It should be equally available to men and women at the age of 60. The state earnings-related pension scheme must also be reinstated, and social services expanded to enable the elderly to live in dignity and comfort.

 

The job seekers' allowance, incapacity benefit and single parent benefit should be replaced by mandatory benefits at least equal to the upgraded national minimum wage. Child benefit and maternity grants should be increased, and the Child Support Agency abolished.

 

The arts are not something apart from life. But the potential flowering of community arts has been hamstrung by lack of money. The labour movement must take funding of the arts seriously, and help to mobilise people involved in cultural production in order to widen the appeal of progressive advance and socialism.

 

How are these alternative policies to be financed and what types of controls are required?

 

Firstly, the government will have to take back control of interest rates from the Bank of England, to end the domination of the City of London over financial and economic decision-making.

 

There would also need to be capital and currency exchange controls to ensure that the huge sums of capital being channelled abroad are repatriated and invested in domestic industry and jobs.

 

In addition, selective import controls would be necessary to protect and redevelop key areas of industry such as vehicles, electronics, textiles, steel and coal.

 

The protection of these industries would be crucial to the restoration of England's manufacturing base, and would allow for balanced development of other interlinked or dependent sectors of the economy.

 

Secondly, we should make clear our unequivocal opposition to wage restraint or controls of any form as a means of forcing one section of the working class to finance improvements for other sections.

 

On the contrary, the Alternative Economic Strategy seeks the collective improvement of the living standards of all working people, forcing the capitalist class - and its monopoly sector in particular to foot the bill out of their profits.

 

This could involve higher rates of tax on company profits, a levy on dividends, and “windfall” taxes where super-profits arise in specific sectors such as oil or banking.

 

There also needs to be a system of price controls. A prices' commission must be set up to ensure that wage increases are not passed on to consumers through price increases, but are absorbed where necessary by a reduction in monopoly profits.

 

At a more fundamental level, there should be a system of investment controls which must, as a priority, include the policy of democratic nationalisation.

 

The major areas of industry and the utilities that have been privatised should be re-nationalised; not on the old lines, but on a new basis which ensures worker and consumer representation in management, to guarantee that they are run according to social criteria and not the criterion of private profit.

 

There also has to be democratic nationalisation of strategic sectors of the economy, including the banks and financial institutions to ensure that the vast funds at their disposal are directed towards investment in industry.

 

There also needs to be a comprehensive system of planning agreements whereby government, with the fullest participation of the trades unions and workforces concerned, can, if necessary, impose guidelines for investment and growth on major private companies.

 

In the struggle to control those transnational corporations still in private ownership, the potential of the public sector as a powerful economic lever will need to be exploited to the full.

 

The role of the Co-operative movement should also be strengthened and expanded through the promotion of workers' and consumers' co-operatives.

 

To enable industrial and social development to take place in a planned and balanced way, the big landed estates in town and countryside will have to be taken into public ownership.

 

The free market in land will have to be brought under local and democratic control, within an overall national plan. Monopoly domination of both agricultural supplies and food distribution will have to be broken, with a state support programme to guarantee decent incomes to working farmers and agricultural workers and safe, affordable, high-quality food to the consumer.

 

Strict measures are necessary to protect the environment. The atmosphere, the oceans and the land can no longer be treated as dustbins. Manufacturers must be required to minimise their energy consumption, and waste - both domestic and industrial - must either be recycled or used as the starting point for another process.

 

Reliance on fossil fuels for energy production must be reduced by conservation measures, the expansion of cheap integrated public transport, the shift of freight from road to rail and the development of renewable resources. Existing nuclear power and reprocessing plants are unlikely ever to be safe and should be phased out.

 

Finally, arms control is necessary. The end of the Cold War removes the last false argument against a massive reduction in military spending and the conversion of industrial production, research and development to socially-useful projects.