WHEN Tariq Ali and Charlie Van Gelderen stress, in the SC correspondence on Kampuchea, the need for an analysis of the situation in all its concreteness and uniqueness I agree that this is the Marxist approach as opposed to the dogmatist one.
But at the same time 150 years of Marxist analysis of world-wide class struggle, and of revolutions especially, has presented us with genuine gains in our theoretical knowledge. One of these gains has been a set of criteria by which we judge whether a revolution led bv non-Marxist forces has succeeded in setting up a workers' Trotsky's defence of the Soviet Union in the 1930s as a worker's state, and the long discussions on the overturns in China, Yugoslavia and mastern curope should have some bearing on the Kampuchea debate. The discussion on Cuba, which led to the reunification of the Fourth International in 1963, underlined and reinforced the validity of the criteria established in the previous debates.
Those criteria: the smashing of bourgeois property relations; the nationalisation of the economy; the establishment of a monopoly of foreign trade; a planned economy; and a state committed to the preservation of these gains.
When we apply these criteria to Kampuchea we find that the revolutionary process which included peasant uprisings in the Bettambang in 1967 and proletarian general strikes in Phnom Penh in 1974 and which Spring of 1975 led on to the creation of a workers' state in Kampuchea by sometime in 1976 albeit by brutally bureaucratic and barbarous means.
Now, when Tariq and Charlie challenge this orthodoxy — as they have every right to - - they nevertheless bring upon themselves the onus to prove it to be inadequate and outdated. "Ihis cannot be done in a letter and SC should immediately release major resources for a full debate. When it is begun I predict serious problems for the comrades' 'fish-fowl' thesis.
Of course what we all agree on is the fight for a healthy proletarian democracy in Kampuchea. I'his has not yet been seen there for a single. day Unfortunately neither Clive Turnbull's original article, nor the letters in reply, took a position on the event dominating the process leading to the creation of a proletarian democracy. That event is the civil war.
Clive's line of 'aid for Kampuchea' is meaningless while the major obstacle to it being distributed is imperialism's continued recognition of Pol Pot. While space does not permit me to argue the case, the immediate recognition of Heng Samrin's government and solidarity with the fight to smash Pol Pot's army should be the demands which precede the calling for international aid. AILEAN O'CALLAGHAN, London NW10 Monster...
I thought Alien was a monster movie until I discovered Socialist Challenge. one of those is.
Unlike Liz Lawrence, I would say that men do have a material but not a class interest in oppressing women.
But even if I am totally up the creek on that, what consolation is it to women that men's sexism 1s not in men's interest? We know it's not in ours, and as far as I can see Liz's argument implies that men are not only sexist but stupid too - after all, they gain nothing according to her.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, we are then told that male workers' sexism must be explained to them — if only they understood it was not in their interest they'd stop being sexist. I think not.
In my humble opinion and experience sexism has to be confronted before it can even be explained, preferably by large numbers of angry women.
One example of this might be the continual barrage of sexist rubbish emanating from the Nottingham News, a paper run by people sacked by the Nottingham Post and funded by my union. repress female sexuality. Repression the result of anti-abortion laws.
enemies are. Nuns, women who have been encouraged into a repressive religious institution because of superstition and fear, are not women's enemies. It is the ruling class, which preserves its own wealth and power through the family, which is the real enemy.
individual nuns. But they are powerless target, and our method should be the the caption motivate such involvement? It explained nothing to those beginning to think about the abortion issues; it did not involve them.
even nuns have come to support the pro-abortion movement. Such peopic who are associalea with the the illustration is grossly sexist. Why choose female members of the Church to ridicule priests or vicars in Britain?
JO'BRIEN, London N16 ERING WITHIN UNITY!! • NEED of female sexuality is not the cause but The caption disguises who the real It did not tell us how we should fight, unless we are supposed to insult The state should be our largest possible mobilisations. But did In some countries Catholics and flippant captions do a disservice to the Court.
Finally, the photograph used in - aren't thereany AND WHAT IT IS now six months since Blair Peach was killed in Southall. The Memorial Fund was set up immediately to cope with the many from individuals and workplace collections, and to help organise a campaign to ensure that Blair's assailants) was brought to justice Over £17,000 was collected, of which £4,000 was promptly paid to his dependents, 25,000 set aside for a long term memorial project, and to date approximately £7,000 has been spent on our public campaign. Already, though, we are about to run out of money, and we have yet to face what might be the costliest part of our campaign: full scale legal representation at the Coroner's The law, as someone once remarked, like the Ritz Hotel, is open to all. Whereas all police expenses involved in this case come from public funds, ours we have to raise ourselves. We could be involved in finding up to another £10,000 simply to bring the immediate campaign to ascertain who was responsible for Blair Peach's death to a prelimiary conclusion.
MUST GOe the movement, a class struggle perspective. Who is Valerie Coultas that she is able to say which group is or is not part of this broad, unstructured movement?
Her article went on to applaud the movement's lack of structure, having already stressed that 'hectic' though it might be, all views are welcome. Charming though this amateur approach might be, it is the view of Womens Voice that the struggle for women's iberation must belinked to the struggles of the working class, and that in order to put forward this view consistently, imaginatively, and convincingly we need to be organised.
Without a structure any view out forward, orally or on paper, becomes Womens Voice is an independent organisation based on the politics of the SWP — quite openly. It was at a More as passed there h motion was passed, there was no behind the scenes wheeling and dealing as Coultas suggests.
Womens Voice has actively campaigned around all those issues which affect working women: the low pay campaign last January, new technology, women's health, women in the unions and the anti-Corr campaign. As an organisation it has women who have never been active before and who found the main
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Funds for Blair Peach
A BUTLE! (CALLAGHAY