I AM not entirely happy about the way in which the first issue of Revolution was sprung on all outside the IMG. Nevertheless, it could be important in building a united revolutionary youth organisation. The open letter from the IMG printed in Socialist Challenge (12 October) was, however, several serious flaws: it failed to explain the most important reason for independence, and a large part of it was not a0oui organisational left unity although connected. is not directly relevant.
The importance of independence is made clear on the back Revolution 1. It says: "We think that we can teach many of these "parties" a thing or two about how they should fight for real freedom.' I was very pleased to read this, indeed this is a lesson that has been learnt from the autonomous women's which has taught the whole of the lett what women's oppression is.
However, the letter gives a less important reason argument: an independent organisation is 'the best way to fight for the VOULD grasp Marxism'; and again, it is "the most practical way to convince thousands of revolutionary-minded youth of the necessity of joining a revolutionary party The letter also endangers the building of an independent youth organisation by confusing it with another issue, that of the unity of revolutionaries into organisation: i am not opposca to either objective, but surely we should regardless whether committed to the separate project ol building a new organisation. structures are well off the mark. Why Lastly, YOUI proposals should national organisations have ECOICSCHLaLIYES body in a privileged position? On 1 the Revolution is to be truly independent, then surely it should be run entirely by its membership. That is not to say that someof these members will not also be members or mauotal organisanons. and they should have the same rights as any omer kevomnon supporters.
GERRY ROBERTS (North London Big Flame)
1 REALLY must social Darwinism, marred by the revisionists International took sophy of DUL aDOU which, be easily funnily enough, Nature.
Engel's purpose in page of ception things. movement, its own devices, only reformism of revolutionary tional on Engels.
Secondly, belief CIne socialism.
single of youth other, these they are inense yes.
for character as forces inevitable under doubt on that score.
Lastly, placed upon a real basis.
BOB LLOYD (Oxford)
Idealist view SUdICEy.
"science" protest at the panoramic twaddle about Engels and attitude etc., that Tony Sharp has written (2 November).
Firstly, only someone who hasn't read any Kautsky would claim that of the Second over the philo dialectical materialism "without question'. The illusion can Stalin's corrected by writing the book was to attack the static conwhich had dominated science up to that time. He wanted to emphasise that things change, that the world is dynamic, and further, that people can change Engels knew very well that, left to capitalism would crush the working class down and down. Put that recognition back into a study of The Dialectics of Nature and it is impossible to blame the the Second Internathe reformism which allows so-called socialists to sit and by wait for socialism is not simply acceptance of the inevitability of the the collapse of capitalism — it is also the nuclear only And this is a revision of Marxism. And as for Engels, he said:
*On the one hand...the capitalist mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct These productive forces. On the productive forces science to social practice and political In opposing the fatalism of Second International Marxism, Sharp falls into utopianism leading him to base upon pure activity. basis for science is this? Such on the part of Spartacusbund committing the opposite error to the SPD majority's dererminism prevented effective challenge to Kaursky et al Similariv. on the Soviet industrialisation, Sharp tries deduce Stalinist terror crude and mechanistic philosophical conceptions. same way, such as Sydney Hook and Burnham, in their polemics Trotsky in the 1930s, Tocussed their attention upon the conceptions dialectical materialism held by the Soviet leaders, rather than developing a concrete analysis of the new Soviet social formation and an appropriate political strategy As Marx/Engels said: "History. can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off. As long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned. (The German Ideology)
Hence politics cannot be reduced to pure and unconditioned practice individuals. Such anthropocentrism is clearly quite inadequate IC modern technological age weapons and ment no longer suffice in the era of advanced capitalism.
JOHN MUNSON, STEVE SMITH, RASHPALSINGH (Hull] Sharp. loo, has his lineage and no one has traced it better than the Italian Marxist Sebastiano Timpanaro who, in On Materialism, finds some of the origins of left idealism in the shift from positivism to idealism in late 19th century bourgeois ideology. Thus he the writes:
*The most conspicuous characterisic or ine snilt at tne ena ortne last century is an increasingly radical antiobjectivism. of departure are real problems in the epistemology of the sciences, related to the need for a re-examination of the very foundations In the of scientific knowledge.
*But this epistemological crisis is quickly used in order to reassert an absolute, mythological creativity and of freedom belonging to man (sic!), and in order to be able to disregard both the real conditioning to subject and the way to overcome it. It then becomes possible to proclaim a completely rhetorical and mystifying subjecuvism- voluntansm.
PAULTICKELL [London SW9]
IF IT is a Marxist principle to educate super- the masses to the level of revolutionary International Marxist Group is sadly lacking in itsapproach.
No-one in the movement takes the time to explain political positions to outsiders; it is assumed that by talking to members you sympathetic. If you pluck up courage Dobson Affair":
Generally, its points of and serious 'Dobson remember it for!
believe which man Umbrella so-called written by then I feel that the are already over incidents. is the way we categorise the world, the meanings we see around us. Clearl these are fantastically important, as it is on the basis of our ideas, values, etc., and them alone that we decide to act in any situation The article by David Lusted, ***The How the media constructed histor!, shows how the media was able to utilise existing consciousness to defuse the political issues to one of son betrays his father'. Lusted poses a very pertinent question when he asks how many people outside the left remember the Affair" and what they There is a need to develop ocu thire retical understanding "culture' which goes beyond the immediate campaigns of the lett. Wedge, I has made an important DEREK BROUGH (London NW6 of repression I WAS recently shown an article on repression Bulgaria Richard Carver (12 October). As an active trade unionist and frequent visitor to that co:: Inrough the Anglo-Bulgarian Trade Union Association, I must protest most strongiy against the smears and innuendos it contained.
expect so-called aoe HOE "socialist' publications to indulge in the hysterical outbursts of the kind recently seen in the capitalist press entirely unproven, alleged to have been the work of Bulgarian nationals. No evidence has
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Panoramic twaddle
vast powers. The ideas of the Enlighten-
Need for education