The most heated discussion was on the vexed question of Women's Voice and the relation of WV groups to the SWP. At its last conterence the had evolved the formula of but political independence'. This was an attempt to avoid taking a clear decision and it Witer internand rae W inside the WV groups and the similar debate took slace en the relation of Flame to the manv readers ot sociaisi Challenge these debates will appear as we are The internal regime of the SWP has, since 1974, resembled that of an organisation operating in conditions clandestinity a military dictatorship. Less than militants (all full-timers) constituted the leadership organisation after the 1975 expulsions of former leaders who resisted steered to the left.
According Martin writing in the 1978 Sociatst Register *Faced strone challenge. the keadership bad hanget the rules and made other hand pragmatism and 'Cliff's instincts' are not going to be sufficient in this period.
There was little or no discussion on ruling class strategy and tactics a major dozen victory and discussion on Labour mas essentialt SOIEC being HEg ie sTicy Shar Lint mar 1 Brist policica
LETTERS published on this page will normally be cut to at least 400 words, of readers can express their views.
Anonymous letters will not be published unless there is a very special reason, but real names will be withheld from publication on request.
I AM forwarding this letter on the miners' pay claim for publication in Socialist Challenge, because I live in a mining area and work on a coal face. I feel that we have to explain the implications of the pay deal involving the present Tory government and the National Union of Mineworkers.
On 30 November there will be a pit-head ballot to decide the outcome of the £140 per week pay claim for face-workers. This would be scaled down by work differentials to give a minimum of £80 per week to surface. workers The NCB has offered only 20 per cent, stating that this is their final offer. The national executive of the NUM has requested a measly 5 per cent more. But this was refused on the grounds it would cost a further £55m on top of the £180m already offered — as if a further 5 per cent would be adequate anyway.
Sir Derek Ezra, for reasons of marketing coal, has said: 'It is a very, very sad day mine mie or tac coal industry.' Guardian 22 November. He is right - but his reasons are not.
For the past two years the miners pay claims have been for £110 and £135, now it's for £140 per week. Even last year's claim of £110 would not be achieved if the 20 per cent offer is accepted. The face-workers' basic pay, at present £15.79 a shift, will only be f94.75 if the offer is accepted.
Those who argue that the 'bonus system' will increase this figure are unaware of the unfairness of the productivity scheme.
The "magic' £23.50 extra in every face-workers pay packet was hammered home in the media but in reality some pits have been on a lot less bonus than this. On the other hand, some pits have bçen payıng much higher bonuses.
This is only to be expected when geological and working conditions vary so much between different pits. roadways for new panels of coal to be worked) have been on the highest bonus rates of all.
These only outline the unfairness. of the miners' bonus scheme and so they should not be taken into account in any wage claim at all. Basic pay for a basic week is what we need. that 20 per cent is the best offer ever If the miners believe, as many do, made to them by any government then they had better look again.
If the 20 per cent is accepted it will mean a drop in living standards for the ininers with inflation running at nearly 19 per cent. When the tax is deducted from the 20 per cent rise we'll be losing money.
Sir Derek Ezra has also stated that: When the mineworkers know all the facts and bear in mind what is at stake they will feel it worth carrying on', Guardian 22 November. Again he is right, but only for our reasons.
Selling cheap coal does not mean cheap labour and falling living standards. During the Labour government the miners accepted 10 per cent here, t6.50 across the board there and negotiated a productivity deal. These did not achieve the original demands and it is obvious that the 20 per cent offered during the Tory (cut the services profits) government will not achieve our aims again.
On 6 December the result of the pit-head ballot will be known. 55 per cent is needed for national strike action.
The only way to combat such offers and safeguard wages is by having a 'sliding scale of wages (index linked with inflation) determined by the trade union movement toral workers. Ihis would protect the buy power' of our wages and prevent a further failin living standards.
PH Wilson, M Alsop (NUM North Derbyshire), H Alsop (NUM North Notts) AS A feminist I would never presume to talk for the 'vast majority of women', (Tommy Cusack's letter, SC 22 Nov), Tommy Cusack obviously thinks he has such a richt. Not on v this, but he can also define what a feminist is!
When the hell will men on the left get off our backs, and stop defining what thev think women to be in order that they can dismiss us and our politics? What access does this particular man have to the WLM that he can decide who and who is not a feminist!
Naturally, though, being able to claim to be such an authority enables some people to go on to spout the biggest load of crass and sexist bal vage Isn't it marvellous, for what some have been struggling to ana vse tor years, has all of a sudden been summed up in a nutshell: 'the material basis for sexism is quite simply class society."!
Such a crude analysis is what the WLM is constantly fighting against. Perhaps the comrade will inform us little cliched statement?
Iam glad, however, that Cusack does not want us to leave the fight for women's liberation until after the revolution; some of us came to that very conclusion quite some time ago. LOUISE SMITH, Leeds Tracking Blunt SOCIALIST CHALLENGE'S coverage of the Blunt affair (SC 123) sèems to have missed out on what is the most revealing aspect of the Philby-Burgess-Maclean-Blunt saga, The whole network was recruited at the time of Popular Fronts and Moscow trials, when all pretences of building revolutionary parties were being abandoned. Only in these circumstances is it explicable how a number of intelectvas attracted towards socialism and mistakenly seeing it embodied in the Stalinist regime, were so easily manipulated by the bureaucracy.
If revolution was off the agenda, and defence of the Soviet Union was the key task, then what better way of helping than by exposing bourgeois secrets. Much more useful than devoting one's time to bulldinz a revolutionary party that was no longer needed.
Stalinism succeeded in demoralising a whole number of intellectuals by turning them away from the task of building a revolutionary leadership for the working class, some to build a Stalinist party in Britain, others apparently to practise 'entryism' into the state.
Blunt is just one tragedy among many. Perhaps if he'd realised the real meaning of the Moscow trials he might today be art critic for Socialist PETE EVANS, Stockport IAGREE with Gerry Kelly's view (SC 123) that Roots: the Next Generation had limitations. This arose from the constraints of its narrative structure centring on a family over 100 years. Therefore it concentrates on the America black experience of racism and consciousness in a restricted way.
Similarly to maintain narrative continuity there seemed to be an obsession with births, marriages and deaths.
But to dismiss it in Gerry Kelly's terms as a black 'Waltons' is to offer merely a superficial response. The series might not have had as much misery as he would have liked but it did attempt to allude to problems of class and race in American society.
The coverage of blacks' campaigns for the vote, of the political nature of the KKK's anti-semitism and anti-black views, of the question of participation in the First World War, of the struggle of black and white sharecroppers, of the growth of black consciousness epitomised by Malcolm X, cannot be dismissed as soap opera 'wholesomeness'. portrayal of women as not simply wives and mothers but as oral transmitters of black culture was surely positive?
that the last episode suggested open racism was confined to the American Nazi Party. Racism was shown as a continuous presence from the KKK, rednecks, Nazis, racist motel owners, to white liberals who invited token blacks to parties appearance was missed. Here was an actor known for his liberal stance on the oppression of American Indians acting a Nazi leader in a deliberately exaggerated and distanced style.
of racism, Brando's condensed appearance drew together many of the themes of racism presented earlier.
did the series have on working class awareness? Was it better than the normal Sunday fare of God and the Onedin Line?
me a powerful essay explaining that Roots 2 was a history of racism in America and that it was showing black people their history and why they should be proud of it, I begin to wonder whether Gerry Kelly would have been better off sticking to the pub on Sunday nights!
RANDALL THOMAS, London E5 IWOULD like to add my voiceto Ailean O'Callaghan (Letters, 8 November) for a release of major resources for a full debate over it raises about the criteria for a workers' state, proletarian democracy, and permanent revolution.
the recent disagreements and state debate back on the agenda for reconsideration and reformulation.
find the strongest elements of each position are its criticisms of theweaknesses of its opponents' position. Ailean O'Callaghan's statement of the FI's 'theoretical gains' over the criteria of a workers' state — private capital eliminated, a nationalised and planned economy. monopoly of foreign trade — is only specifies economic features.
The concept workers' state the location and exercise of power.
transition towards socialism, ie. towards the self-emancipation and class etc.
in no very long run to expropriate of production cannot exist without proletarian democracy, le. soviet power.
Marxism-as-it-were-Leninism as a party or state ideology, the ruthless the expense of the working class although in its name, even passive popular support for various anti-imperialist measures, cannot constitute a workers' state if the its own political organs. In what criticism that to abandon the organised political activity of the working class as a fundamental the resulting workers' state, as . Further the He is also mistaken in thinking The point of Marlon Brando's and his opposition to the Vietnam war Rather than being an isolated example Wealso have to ask what effect When a 12-year-old student writes S M 12 13 14 Challenge, 01-359 8371.
Kampuchea and the urgent questions Marxism?
The recent political developments in Iran, Latin America and Southern Africa, as well as in Kampuchea, and disastrous splits within and from the Fourth international relating to these developments, have surely put the old state capitalism/ degenerate workers' In trying to follow these debates, I fundamentally inadequate because it requires political criteria that specify direct self-government of the working Within a nationalised economy, to expropriate the workers politically is them economically. Socialist relations The existence of some form of primitive accumulation of capital at "semi-fascist project' working class as such do not exercise a significant degree of power through discontent.. so-called Marxist state is this the case?
Surely the FI must respond to the support of it.' feature of proletarian revolution and T W 2 3 16 17 18 19 20 26 27 28 29 30 NOW available: Socialist Challenge's 1980 calendar on the life of Trotsky, containing many photographs never before available in Britain and exclusively designed by David King. Individual orders f2 plus 40p p&p from Socialist ; PO Box 50, London N1 2XP. For bulk rates telephone Mike on Mandel seems to have done in his • Intercontinental Press article, isto abandon the proletarian basis of Does the logic of the American comrades' analysis of Kampuchea in Intercontinental Press lead to a form of bureaucratic state capitalist model as the recent IS critique claims? The state capitalist must also answer Mandel's demands that the operation of the law of value be demonstrated in the nationalised economies of Russia and Kampuchea. The claim that international competition plays the role of the internal competition of private capita s lt bourgeon economies needs also to be substantiated in particular instances.
With the spread of national liberation movements and the virtual Marxist party anywhere, the current crop of anti-imperialist overturns are going to produce more regimes that are not in practice proletarian (whatever their claims to be socialist or Marxist), but bear some as yet undefined relation to capital modes of development and exploitation.
Surely this is an urgent priority for all sections of the rourth International if more splits and disorientations over these new developments are to be avoided and political progress made?
JOHN FLETCHER, London N16 Anti-imperialism MOHAMMAD J'Afar's letter on recent events in Iran (22 November) paints a gloomy picture. He characterises the occupațion of the US embassy and the demands for the extradition of the Shah as Khomeini's He argues that 'Khomeini is engaged in a populist manoeuvre designed to head off growing .. and chastises SC for "falling, hook, line and sinker for such an obvious manoeuvre, just because the Iranian masses are backward enough to mobilise in Unfortunately, J'Afar takes no position on the role of the US in the 'Iranian crisis'. Yet this must be our M T W F S •9 10 11 21 22 23 24 25 which dislodged the Shah struck a massive blow against US impenalist interests in the Middle East.
We must oppose any intervention We must support the Iranian people against imperialism, not because of 'guilt complexes but from a clear position of class solidarity.
Opposition to US intervention does not amount to support for Khomeini. His war against the Kurds, his attacks on the left and on press freedom, his contempt for women's rights must be severely condemned. • We must reject the formula that because there is nothing anti-imperialist in Khomeini's mobilisation on... the American hostages', it follows that there can be nothing anti-imperialist in the demands which the masses raise Did the fact that, in February, Khomeini was at the head of the anti-Shah movement make it any less anti-imperialist? Of course it didn't!
J'Afar asserts that 'Khomeini is clearing the road for the consolidation of a fully fledged clerical state.? This is no doubt his intention, but the road is littered with pot-holes.
Defeated by the Kurds; confronted by continuing unrest among the Arab nation and in the oll-fields; under pressure from the Turkomans, Azerbaijanis, and Baluchis; and with the pro-clerical forces divided, it cannot be seriously maintained that Khomeini is in an uncontestably strong position.
The low vote in the referendum strengthens this argument.
The struggle which erupted last year has not yet run its course. Despondency at the reactionary character of Khomeini's policies should not cause socialists to abstain when the masses are raising demands that strike Western capital in its very heart.
Imperialist threats are real. They seek to re-establish US hegemony in the country. Bazargan's fall and the US embassy mobilisations are ensuring that this path will remain blocked for some time. Barring intervention, this is a gain for the Iranian masses , and one which even Khomeini will find difficult to steal. JOHN LEADBETTER (London ₩CI)
----- pull-quotes -----
Miners on the cheap
Socialist Challenge 6 December 1979 Page 14 Sexist garbage
'Roots' reviewer deserves night out
Workers' states re-visited