I AM SITTING before my typewriter, ready to produce the piece on the thirtieth anniversary of the German Democratic Republic [GDR] Socialist Challenge has asked for.
Easy job that, clear. Bureaucratically workers' state, product of the Soviet occupation after 1945 and the Cold War, call for a political revolution that, in conjunction with the social revolution in West Germany, establish a united socialist Germany.
But about anniversary? Have a drink before I start writing? Do I, a German socialist, born in the same year as the 'first German workers' and peasants' state', have anything to celebrate?
My first semi-conscious confrontation with the existence of another Germany than the one I lived in was on a New Year's Day in the 1950s. Walter Ulbricht, 'the everyone called him because of his beard, gave his annual speech about the inexorable progress staton or socialismn Radio In retrospect, it seems odd that people West Germany actually tuned in to the East German radio to listen to someone who was then the most hated man in Germany. But it was a sort of love-hate relationship, like the one with the fortified border cucial.
that people today go and watch our position is along deformed wall-lowers commemorating Swiss chocolate will chewing gum Uprisings on it, When, the American sector appealing LOE Le C goat' involved government were don't you Socialism. running right through Germany, with the 'Soviet Zone' (to call it GDR amounted to high treason then) in One listened to Ulbricht like Alien, took foreign visitors for a day out barbed wire, the blocks. and the plaques failed escape attempts, and felt quite smug sending heroes Christmas parcels with oranges, real and American to our suffering 'brothers and sisters in the East'.
during the uprisings of June 1953, a column of East Berlin building workers marched through for the solidarity of their brothers in the West, it was chocolate and chewing gum that was thrown down to them About geols But I was too young to remember 1953. It was only much later, when first political discussions, that the events of the day that had been declared a national holiday — 'Day of German Unity' reactionary Adenauer continuously thrown at me and other socialists. Odds 'If you don't like it here, why go and join the goat? But Workers Russian tanks rolling against striking workers!' It was no use arguing. The German working class, once among and | the best-organised and most militant | cle', the long post-war boom? in the world, has seen "actually existing socialism' at work and said, No thanks.
Then came the Berlin Wall, and the bullet-ridden bodies hanging on to the barbed wire on top of the concrete Willy Brandt and John F. Kennedy had taken over from August Bebel and Rosa Luxemburg as the of the politically minority of the German proletariat. The Social Democrats espoused the cause of the 'free market Communist Party (KPD) — or rather, what remained of been banned without a voice raised in protest.
There seems little celebrate thirty years of stain on the good name of socialism. Where could we German socialists be today if it had not been for the free ammunition continuously provided propaganda machine for decades, courtesy of Ulbricht and Honecker?
Have a drink on a state whose population has actually decreased since 1949 largely because over three million of its inhabitants have 'voted with their feet' and fled to the West?
be fair! Was not de-politicisation of the West German working class primarily a result of the fascist terror, and also a product of ithe unprecedented 'economic miraAnd did the GDR not face the most appalling odds stacked against it: slim weakened by the dismantling of entire factories which went to the Soviet Union as reparations, the exodus of hundreds of thousands workers to the West, the denial of the billions of Marshall Plan dollars that fuelled the West German 'miracle', and the had imposed on it diplomacy for two out of its three decades' Junkers to Does it not have to its credit the expropriation of the Junker class, the warmongering landlords of German And what about extremely thorough purge of all Nazis the from the state apparatus — so much in contrast to the brown freckles on the face of the Bonn democracy? Does not the fact despite all obstacles among the top ten industrial of the world and overtaking Britain in living standards prove the historical superiority of a planned economy the first workers' state to shed "poor relation' image?
And is not the international role the the GDR plays in giving substantial material movements of Africa, Cambodia and Cuba a progressive base further skilled entirely in vain.
Learn isolation Wes German building a new astically the dissidents the Biermann, known ones GDR that, today Marxism. A the GDR clearly powers Bahro's.
German the Celebrate On liberation to Vietnam, I can hear the shouts of 'pabloite revisionism'. I must not be soft on Stalinism. But somewhere deep down there is a feeling of affection for the other Germany. Thirty years of toil by millions of German workers, rid by whatever means of the anarchy of the capitalist system, cannot have beca One day we shall have to build or this foundation. Learn from the rict of those many honest communists who set about the task of •Germany enthusi enough not need the Stalinist whip on their backs.
It is from their ranks that many of Havemann, Bahro and the lesser- have come, socialises all of them. Alone among the Eastern bloc countries, the voice of dissent in speaks the language of weak still, but heard in both Germanies book a bestseller, West trade unionists discussin The Alternative. Times are changin the occasion of its 30d anniversary, the GDR declares amnesty for over 30,000 prisoners. Rudolf Bahro is one of them. Now here's something to celebrate.
Socialist Challenge 18 October 1972 1
THE letter by Ken Pritchard (SC No 115, 27 September) completely misinterprets the views expressed by Ilona Gersh in the interview published in Socialist Challenge No 113 and the views of the American Socialist Workers Partv.
In an evening meeting on women in industry at the sw Convention, which several IMG members attended, there was a full discussion about the problems of sexist harassment at work, including problems with fellow workers. The SWP does not take the view that there is no problem of opposition to affirmative action from male (and white) workers.
Their position, however, is that sexism on the part of workers has a different basis that that of supervisors and employers. In the former case it Is an expression of false consciousness, in the latter of class interest. Male workers have no class or material interest in the oppression of women.
-This is where Ken Pritchard goes completely wrong when he writes:
'On the face of it, since management is interested in only one thing — profit — it is quite possible that they would be keener to have women doing traditional men's work than male workers are, since the latter fear for their job security, status and the rest.' On the contrary, affirmative action is in the interests of workers, male and female, because it strengthens the working class as a whole against capitalism, whereas the ruling class benetits trom keeping workers divided.
Ken Pritchard's approach does not provide any strategy for working prejudices of male workers on their own are insufficient to win them from sexism. Explaining that it is in their class interest to fight for women's leno dock.
The widespread acceptance by the American working class of affirmative action is an important step towards women's liberation. This does not make independent organisation of women redundant. In Ine article dona explamca now Lat SWP had encouraged women steelworkers to set up a chapter of the National Organisation for Women on the Iron Range.
The acceptance by the American working class of affirmative action indicates that it is increasingly the working class, rather than other social layers, who are the best allies of the women's movements and the supporters of progressive positions on social issues.
Ken Pritchard's approach goes in the opposite direction because it implies that the working class is generally more backward on social questions than other layers of society. This is a very dangerous position for socialists to take and cuts across a strategy of winning maie workers to support for women's liberation. LIZLAWRENCE Sheffield.
aciates Orallergo 18 October 1979 Page 12 Who lost, the YOUR headline of 27 September, 'They Lost Labour the Election' above pictures of Callaghan and Healey, is very misleading. I thought Messrs Benn and Foot were also part of that government.
Indeed, by refusing to break with the Cabinet over the 5 per cent wage limit they implicitly gave a left cover to Callaghan.
Of course, it is necessary to intervene in the current debate in the Labour Party rather than posture in sectarian fashion from the sidelines. But perhaps a better method of achieving this would have been to lead on the mass action of the engineers and continue to highlight the refusal of the Bennites to come out and campaign for the victory of the strike.
Revolutionary Marxists stand with the rank and file of the Labour 'Party in the fight for internal democracv not to ensure benr replaces Callaghan, but to ensure the resources of the party can be turned to "help the workers in struggle." GEORGE KEREVAN, Edinburgh Blind alleys new avenues TARIO Ali was on the right lines when he described Kampuchea as 'neither fish nor fowl", meaning, of course, that it could not be characterised as either a workers' satura cadilalous le We have to accept the fact that the prolonged death agony of capitalism and the increasing world-wide role of the different variants of Stalinism — Moscow, Peking, Hanoi, Havana -have brought about mutations in state structures, not accounted for in the Marxist text-books.
This is true, not only of Kampuchea but of a number of other states such as Ethiopia, Somaliland, Angola, Afghanistan etc. Marxists should not be afraid to face up to this. As Ernest Mandel writes in his Trotsky: A Study In The Dynamic Of His Thought:
"In the contradictory course of history, mistakes often become sources of knowledge. Having run into a blind alley, revolutionary thought can suddenly discover a new avenue.' The 'blind alley' some of us have run into is to take it for granted that every Stalinist-led coup must result in the birth of a workers' state, however degenerate, forgetting that Stalinism New avenues will only be opened up by the building of a Marxist international party, integrated into the working class, not afraid to subject new phenomena thrown up by the vagaries of history to critical analysis.
CHARLIE VAN GELDEREN, London NW10 A case of amnesia RE your recent articles on Kampuchea and Bob Dylan: Socialist Challenge appears not to have a memory. Who was it in June 1978, selling raffle tickets to raise funds for the organisation? What was the prize from this grand rafile, organised for such a noble cause?
It was a ticket for a rock concert, at Earl's Court, given by an imperialist, Zionist, sexist, capitalist, who masquerades under the name of Bob Dylan. I'm surprised Nigel Hamilton didn't invent a new social evil, for us to be ashamed of — Dylanism. It could almost be on a par with racism and sexism, as a crime against humanity. But where does such lateral thinking leave Trotskyism?
It seems to be a case of: 'Whatever profits Dylan/Trotsky prophets us. (The rank and file)
I'm beginning to think that SC has opened up our very own Pandora's Box. How are we to view our heroes and heroines? Marx was into pornography. Engels was into capitalism. Trotsky was heavily into Kronstadt. No doubt Engels was up his own good works that would, all onto the streets to scream our support for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
As I never węnt to Stalinist is. Perhaps Clive Turnbull could inviting discussion about Kampuchea. Is he wanting to see gives us a line that's safe?
- the bulk of them after the That statement reveals a lot about what we can expect from Clive Turnbull on the forthcoming discussion about Kampuchea.
that Lon Nol, a 'capitalist', killed people shifted cargo.
us socialists supported and the Khmer Rouge. That carefully and placed hyphen before 'the bulk of them' reads like a divorce of convenience.
between Upper Street and the responsibility for what happened in Kampuchea, by mechanically blaming Moscow, Peking, but how much distance can he put between shares an office if not a typewriter.
movement any good if we allow wrote to appear in our newspapers. We can't shovel our own bloodstained history into the ditch and expect to get away with it.
or just as hatchet people. Or maybe even two slightly shabby and homeless seaside comedians who always wanted to live in the big time but never managed to rise above cheap digs DUNCAN BROWN, East London sometimes trust the song.
socialists on the sad decline of Bob Dylan prompted me to make a few comments.
greatly disappointed by his recent wayward turn (and the really bad writer this was merely the final and indeed, there is probably much and more recently for the anti-racist 'Hurricane'. But, you inform us, sented as a crime of fantastic DI OUOLLIOES from which he drew inspiration for and 'Hurricane' Perhaps Socialist Challenge should list other (thought to be) progressives in the music world. supplemented by a synopsis of their 'our" side we should also list their views on the nature of the Soviet Union.
Capitalist?
euphamistic use of the term 'Zionist' or indeed 'millionaire Zionist' can this is not the first time that anti-semitic use of the 'rich Jews' myth has permeated Socialist Challenge's anti-Zionism. fairly pleased with himself, keeping Marx supplied with funds, so that the great scribe of socialism could keep some hundred years later, inspire us training school, consequently I'm not half as clever as I think Clive Turnbull demystify, for me at least, why he is 'which way the wind blows' before he Let me quote: "A staggering two line' on Zionism. million people have died in the 1970s overthrow of Lon Not bythe Khmer Rouge guerillas in 1975' (my italics).
Bulk is for cargo, a non human entity. Thus it appears, to me at least, - Pol Pot, 'socialist', merely He doesn't say anywhere, that all campaigned for the cargo shifter and He goes on to put a lot of distance himself and Tario Ali, with whom he Instinctively I would say I was on Tariq's side. It doesn't do the socialist articles such as the one Clive Turnbull Are we to take Clive Turnbull and Nigel Hamilton seriously as socialists 27 September?
PS It is a truism of Dylan that even if you can't trust the singer you can A sad day for could have waited.
THE recent Socialist Challenge article Southall.
Like countless others, I too was album that came out of it). For your episode of a process started long ago Nevertheless, you praise Dylan for his 'anti-establishment masterpieces' Dylan was/is a Zionist and this is preNo doubt it was his racist Zionism change?
Pawn in their Game', 'Oxford Town' Middlesex.
views on the Middle East conflict, and if it is still unclear whether they are on Would you buy records of a singer who thought that the USSR was State More seriously, it would suffice to say that your blatant and offensively their premises. only be described as anti-semitic, and For Dylan fans there have been many sad days as the once progressive singer declined through hypocritical aggrandisement towards 'born again' Christianity; but it is a sadder day for socialists when a left newspaper uses vile and base anti-semitism in portraying this decline.
In conclusion however far more significant figures have pronouncec on the Middle East. Khomeini — the man betraying the revolutionary hopes of the Iranian masses — has the 'right line' on Zionism Idi Hitler was right' Amin, butcher of the Ugandan people, was a friend of Arafat and has the 'right In view of this is it surprising that many, Dylan and myself included, LOLAAZHOTA SAADITI DAVE ROSENBERG, Ilford, Essex. CAN you explain at all the content of your review page, Socialist Challenge If Bob Dylan was facing a possible prison sentence arising out of his anti-racist activity (like the editor of SC) it would be a bit more understandable. But for most of us Bob Dylan's been RIP for years, and the official announcement in SC In that week something important did happen. An excellent programme by the Southall Campaign Committee was broadcast on TV. It publicised the incredible attacks of the police and courts on the black community of Apparently this deserved only a brief mention in your pages. While the rest of the media have so far ignored the aftermath of the police riot, you could at least have given some publicity to the programme, which was screened on your publication day for the second time.
The programme could at least have been reviewed, not only because of the subject, but as an exemplary use of the mass media to put over The reviews page has been criticised for being trendy, elitist and central-London oriented. Will it ever HILARY DRIVER, Southall, British Movement WE, the undersigned, wish to express our concern at the recent outbreak of fascist violence and intimidation provoked by members of the Nationa Front and British Movement.
We would further encourage the licencees of rock venues to seriously consider the following precautions:
*Refuse entry to members of the public who insist on wearing NF and or BM supporters badges.
*Ban distribution of racist, anti-semitic and fascist literature on *Ban recruitment to, and illegal collections for, the NF and BM.
*Refuse all bookings from the National Front, their Rock Against Communism organisations or the British Movement.
*Ban all bands who encourage fascist support, incite racist or anti-semitic violence or who openly declare their support for the NF and BM. For example, The Dentists, White Boss and Screwdriver.
*Ban all members of the public who intimidate the audience with fascist saluting (Seig Heils) and chanting or, who provoke fascist violence amongst the audience. John Dennis pp. Rock Against Racism, Paul King, Paul Loasby, Gill Khosla, Allan Schayerien, Dan Silver MAM Agency, Castro Brown [Dir. Deb Music], Margaret Duvall (Manager Deb Music), Roger Barrett, Partners and crew of Star Hire, Rob Hallett, Paul Hodsman, Dick Tee, Trevor Phillips, Frances Lass, John Peel.
YOUR review of Alien left out the real theme of this Hollywood blockbuster: the Father as beast.
A crew of long-distance space hoppers is being nursed by the Mother, the crew's own name for. their space craft's computer and life-support system, but the reference would apply just as well to the whole craft, with its endless cuddly corridors Into this womb enters the Alien, first as a growth on the face of one of the crew members who has ventured into the great unknown, but then to emerge from its chrysalis as the essence of the Father and patriarchal society — a grotesque prick witl snapping teeth.
The prick grows and grows, eventually embracing in its voracious jaws the whole crew - barone. The third officer, a female and would-be mother herself, resolves that the only way to escape from the Father is to destroy the Mother, in other words. the family death wish.
But when the Mother disappears in a nuclear cleansing operation, the Father has escaped to threaten the surviving daugula, way suceccus I knocking Him into the void. Whether she has nd Him from the subconscious remains ambiguous.
It is good to see that Hollywood has at last begun to put some of S Freud's ideas up front, but typical that it ignores the Lacan developments, which locate the patriarchy not in the great unknown but here and now JANE FOX, London W11
ABOUT quarter meet ог any attempt to encounter and traditions minorities.
but as vet minority. Unclear
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Workers are sexist - but not out of self-interest
TV Exemplary programme
The father as beast