neye lines, whether the drue die soncerned e in London or Sheffield or South journalism soring and stereotyped (although it can), but because most strugles are based on the workplace nd most industries and services, meiner rue by private corporations or by the centrally organised on at least a basis. The problems countered by workers will be be same from beyond, Iternations orkers in the same in istry, bur in different towns, will often have more in common than workers in different industries, but side by side in the same city.
Now think about the way leftwing groups are organised. Des pite some brave ON CE 5 AL work-place and industry-based organisation, they are still largely centred on localities. This can be put down partly to the weakness and marginality of the left — many or our activiste are not themselves involved in the workplace, and there are few industries and services where any socialist organisation is strong enough to have a really viable set-up. But it is also because there are real ties between people in localities. Outside work people's lives revolve around connections which are mainly local - family and friends, pubs and clubs, sports and volantary activities. Reflecting this, many activists see the local ties as the Importaat ones - through the Trades Council or the Labour Party, rather than the national Now go one step further. Ask say about all this? Marxists have always had a great deal to say about the geoeral, national theories have reflected the cenand governments are orginised dimension of the struggie remains very important.
econdly, however, there an new forms of struggle inberently more local in nature. On the one hand, movement are necessarily dec entralised, The strugcle are directly, so fragmented th urse, it does involve a who ries of issues, economic, soci and and political, which ally. Then the sonen do bewerten e concerned with consumption facilities and services, means that their struggles do centralised pattern. And finallly they are often relatively marginal to be less involved in centralised ивов вашус Lan maci, and relate their interests more to other worden's struggles al a local level.
Apart from struggles which are specifically women's there are bowever cinss struggles over suca things as housing. social services and transport tacilities, recreational amenities. etc., which tend to be localised in nature. They are local struggles partly because they concern all, or many, of the working people in a given locality as "consumers" ar users of the same 'product or Tacility, They are local because, despite the fact that national policy usually diciates 90 per cent of what a local council can do, the immense size of the local authorities and the range of activities they control give them a new Importance as the mediate coens in many struggles. and 'THE URBAN QUESTION' What we need now is an undermany not fit a because education, 1oo, in the localities terms, that as such. this brocess emphasise centralising tendencies and to ignore the structuring of localities. But from the point of view of the reproduction of labour power, "ciries" or "urban as they can be defined in social - are basically units in the labour power, just as factories of commodity production. The city, urban area or region, is the level at which the housing education, bealth, transport, distribution of consumer goods, etc., are organised in spatial Ofcourse, Castells is aware that not all the actvities connected with urban areas fall under this heading, just as not everyching goes 00 in factory -Production log the factory also helps to reproduce the dominant relations). But be thinks be has picked out what is crucial to cities, or "sperial units" generally.
From this definition of che urban", Casrells can move on to define the nature of "urban politics'. This centres first of all on 'urban planning", which he seea as an interventioo of the political, i.e. che stare, in the of reproduction of labour The ams of this he further defines as those of assurille lurtber recroduction and the Interests of the dominant class in Secondly, he defines turban social movements' as movements deriving both from general and "urban' social relations, which tend towards changing either the urhan system or the general power relations in society. While urhan planning is a fairly obvicus reality, the iden of "urban struggles can. Castells recognises, suggest & faise unity between struggles relating to diverse economie and social 15s local component of the naticaa state — the 'localstate". Cockhurn extends Castell's by pointing out hoa the local stare netos to reproduce the socia relations of production as well as the actual labour power of the workers. It is because of this, she points out, that the local state defines its popalation largely in terms of "families" ratber than mariouais, sod Enat more ollet than bot it deals with the woman, COMMUNITY ACTION OR CLASS STRUGGLE?
The point of this analysis is to show (as Cockburn does in much more detail! that the commun ¡ty' approach is actually a part of the new "corporate management' proces of the local state. In addition, Cockburn several rensons for rejecting the idea of 'communicy action" In the struggle agninse the local state: I accepts a territorial, rather than social, definition, of the forces in conflict; it is tied up with a purely "consumer" approach; it is all too often defined in classless terms; and it is all too casily taken over by reformist parties for electoral purposes.
The alternative is to see the local class struggle, the fight againse the local state, as part of the strugale in the field of capitalist reproduction'. This tie tagether the action of the usen of bousing, health and orher wich tbat of workers employed by che struggles, first with the struggles ot wonco in le home and second with the workplace strug gle — to the extent that workers ane seeing facilities outside work as relevant, "For years,' Cockbura asserta "revolutionary parties of the let have reglected all forms action but those of the inctory Noor: because in the employer you come up against the real class enemy, directly, in person Not only is this crude (she adds).