The acid test of any party that calls itself a Democratic Socialist Party, as Labour does, is in its attitude to the Welfare State. This is not just a matter of caring for the most vulnerable members of our society - the children, the sick, the disabled, the aged, widows and deserted mothers and the unemployed. It must include that, but it must do that as a matter of solidarity and not of charity, so that in basic rights all men and women are treated as of equal worth.
This is a principle and not just a rhetorical phrase used constantly by Tony Blair, as a cover for the blatantly unequal condition of those being encouraged, for example, to take out individual pensions insurance; nor does it mean, on the other hand, that every body is equal in physical and intellectual endowment, and that there should be no differences in incomes, although the huge differences between the fat cats and most of their employees must offend the principle.
It means that social provision should ensure that in the health service, in education, in housing, in the social services and in policing and legal process there is no discrimination according to class, gender, colour or other differences among persons.
This is needed not only for the sake of justice but for economic reasons, in order to correct the inequalities which capital accumulation generates and which have led to the current world economic crisis.
The aim of the post-war Labour Government in setting out to implement the recommendations of the Beveridge Report were quite clear:
Provision for sickness, for disability, for unemployment and for old age was to be universal, the same for all - to be financed by contributions from the individual employee, the employer and the state - and enough for a decent living standard without supplement.
This aim was very largely fulfilled. And comprehensive schools and increased numbers of places in higher education were added to the universal provision.
Since then much has been whittled away, first by prescription charges initiated by Labour and deeply scored by Tory governments, then by steady erosion from rising prices in the value of provision and the introduction of means tested supplementary benefits.
Labour attempted to re-establish the universal system with an income related pension scheme, the better off paying more and getting more and the payments being related to rising incomes.
The Tories removed the income relation and Labour promised to restore it, until New Labour went back on that promise at the last election.
It appears that the cuts are to continue - first single parents' benefit, then disability benefit, then widows benefit, next housing benefit, and conditions are now attached to unemployment which is withdrawn if training and short-term jobs offered to young people are not taken up - and the link of pensions to average earnings is not to be restored.
The aim is said to be to get people off benefit and into work - to end what Tony Blair calls the 'dependency culture' - and to this end Gordon Brown has reduced the tax on low wage incomes that has for some time created a poverty trap of lower real income if you took a job than was available on social security.
The trouble with this and other 'welfare into work' measures is that in many parts of the country there simply isn't any work available. This condition is spreading across the country as Britain is sucked into the world capitalist crisis.
New Labour's explicit aim is to 'target' welfare payments at those said to be 'in real need' - the implication being that many claims are fraudulent. There is little evidence of this, according to official reports, and much evidence of real want and suffering.
This includes the condition of the million pensioners who do not claim income supplement that they are entitled to. The main reason being the difficulty and often humiliation in making the claim in an atmosphere of talk about only those 'in real need' being eligible.
All such talk and New Labour's emphasis on help for the 'socially excluded' goes entirely against the socialist principle of universal provision originally accepted by Labour in 1945.
It is also largely meaningless, because expert studies have shown that the unemployment of young people and long term unemployment, housing problems and family poverty are all a function of the general level of employment. All improve when the general level of employment rises - and that is not the same as the level of Unemployment falling, as recorded in the official statistics.
It is said that people today went to make their own individual provision for old age, sickness and unemployment and don't like state schemes, which give money to people who don't need it. Certainly those who can afford it have wanted to supplement the state scheme, as its value has deteriorated. But much more of the money in private schemes goes into administration than in the state scheme, and many private schemes - like Maxwell's and Barlow Clowes - have defaulted. According to opinion polls, there is still strong support for an improved state scheme.
It is said that the old state scheme needed reforming, particularly in that it was based on the man's income and did not provide for the much larger number of women in paid employment today. But that is a reason for including them as individuals in the state scheme, not for ending the scheme. In fact most women in part-time employment are not insured with the state scheme and do not get the employer's contribution and can't afford private schemes.
It is said that welfare payments have grown too big and cannot now be afforded. In fact, as a proportion of the national income they are no bigger than they were in the 1950s, comparing like with like, and you might think that with average incomes three times what they were we could afford a higher proportion.
What is more, the share of welfare payments in the national income in the UK is lower than in any other country in the European Union, barring Ireland.
It has been made quite clear by Mr Blair that to be competitive in international markets and to attract foreign investors into Britain, a regime of low wages, low taxation, low regulation of the use of resources and of pollution is needed. This has manifestly failed as one factory after another has had to close in recent months.
Mr Blair and Mr Brown are still arguing that they will not increase public spending to create jobs and to improve the infrastructure of the country as the alternative to their low cost competitive economy.
Yet they are prepared to go on with building the Millennium Dome and with ordering a new generation of bombers and new nuclear submarines. They are evidently frightened of the reaction to higher taxes of their Middle Class, Middle England voters. Yet opinion polls have shown these voters to be prepared to pay higher taxes for education and health.
The arguments in favour of increased public spending on health and education and on public transport and the housing stock and on our whole neglected environment, and on supporting the spending power of poorer people, as squalor and inequality steadily grew in our society, were strong enough before the world crisis. They must now be overwhelming. But these things cannot be tackled by Britain alone. We are part of the European and global economy and must act jointly and in common with socialist governments in Europe and elsewhere, to correct the inequalities that are the very cause of the crisis.