spreading Looked At Johnny was only dedication LUIE viously hasn't the incoherence and Challenge outlining As Hegel once pointed out — al harassment events in rock culture occur twice: the scum elite of have hearings. speed! You They seriously inform us that "speed it ISSUCS in persons This seems to me a OTTHe omnipotent ravings of And their concept of politics. Here A clearly.
mane mppy are re-veied Instead of endless endiess invocations of Reprint. Still only guess their available.) entusiasm springs from the fact that the Persons Unknown supporters we busy engaging In support for the prisoners, publishing pamphlets and Une word aOUu -S'alC repression, to be bothered with such COUnIC-DrOGUCLIVC LaCLICS As for criticising the group for 'underground", Carver been reading the weekly press bulletins sent to Socialist the continual by the police detail. supporters. People have been arrested on their way to meetings, houses have been raided, and at least three people been arrested at remand complain that Persons Unknown are in some sort of ghetto that they cannot spread the important , but whv are vou complaining?
It is the kind of attitude that your WHY PAUL FOOT SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST The case against the Socialist Workers Party A recent Communist Workers Movement publication sd how to get usere: Time Duc.
"socialism and how to get there" *A serious critique of the politics of the Trotskyist tradition... Doing this in an amusing and readable style (another first for a Marxist-Leninist group), they at the same time give a clear outline of their own politics. The Leveller. A 'devastating critique'. Undercurrents £1.20 (200 pages).
October Books, 4B Temple Court, Liverpool 2. (25p p&p, trade terms heard'?
DAVE Laing (23 November) is wrong to minimise the criticism of Monstrous Regiment's performance of Gentlemen Please in Leeds and wrong to raise ine queston or Ene Ictts internal democracy and right to be heard without arguing his point in any There was some private discussion during the show about whether to quietly walk out in protest at the, at best, mistaken polities coming out in theshow, or whether to stay and argue at the end. I was among those who wanted to stay and argue, but many walked out. When some feminists started shouting their protests, saying that the show degraded and exploited written contribution to the debate on All good bookshops, or by post from
women, and the performers and some of theaudience claimed that they had a right to perform/see the show, became a case of "which side' the rest of us were on.
The claim that the left has a right to put over is ideas has to be dismissed n my opinion, the oppressed, whether incy be ine working class, women, black people, or gays, have a right to use whatever means they see fit in their effort to throw off the exploiter. There Can Deno aosolue nEns lo Have you! arguments heard.
Dave Laing has got it the wrong way round when he says concerned about the fact of the left being disrupted than The first question always be 'do these ideas and activities further our liberation?' In the case of Monstrous Regiment, some comrades felt so strongly that the ideas were harmful that they had to disrupt You can disagree with their judgement of the ideas in the play, and you can disagree with their tactics -you can't deny their right to employ whatever means they see fit, unless you want to deny their autonomy. AT the end of July the government issued its long-awaited White Paper on broadcasting which intentions for new legislation. I have waited with increasing impatience for a response from the document.
So far as l am aware the only radical critique of the White Paper (and of the Annan Committee корог preceded it has come broad-front pressure group. Community Communications Group (COMCOM). This has policy statement calling for the setting up of a Community Agency to foster the development of democratically controlled, profit-distributing local radio and cable TV stations which the Annan Committee proposed.
COMCOM sees these stations as a potential 'third force' in local broad casting: alternative establishment paternalism of the BBC and the populist commercialism of the so-called 'independent' supervised by the IBA. Local people would be ensured access production racilities of the station and its governing board; and station staff ale volucers woue.oc accountablc to a local policy board representative of communitv interests. which in turn would be accountable to the proposed Community Broadcasting Agency.
but publishing the reply by Manson, Smith case may be.
some less than serious OLE into publishing it.
That letter left to this neil do you participate in which are the produced a Broadcasting nonthroat, comrades.
S. KERRY (Trawden)
Materialism as the philosophy stations to the popularise Marxism, nature rently Kautsky IAM puzzled (well, not really) at your comrades and Singh (16 November) to Tony Sharp's letter (2 November). Such intellectual bicker- that ing and comic in-fighting should be Tree set aside for ine contines or som theoretical organ (or comic, as the I could only explain the letter as parody. But they could at least have done it in a less exclusive wav. presume it was the letter's pretentious verbosity and intellectua gloss which conned you is not an isolated example. Articles and letters of this nature appear frequently. How the want WORKERS the debate about socialism wnen tne columns or you devoted to such intellectually elitist subject matter?
In a vain attempt to sound learned, I too quote Lenin: "The flaunting of high-sounding phrases is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals. So I await your answer with interest - and a dictionary!
Let's not cut the revolution's class THE five comrades who took issue (16 November) with my first letter (2 November) misunderstand me if they think 1 accuse Engels of reformism. But he is guilty, while attempting to of creating a materialist philosophy. This is quite contrary to Marx's intention - reformist practice. A dialectics of only be Hegel "materialism' transposed for "idea.
only appapredates Kautsky's. underlying assumptions were similar.
argues that 'materialistic conception of history the Marxist laws are quite universal and general; the proletariat is quite incidental. Hilferding's Marxist economics are TOlE the philosophical background.
Do the comrades deny that the First War would have been a HOn-StarCE if the Second national's position, instead of being equivocal, had been anti-war and for revol dialectical use terialism ane dialectical materialism immutable natural law, reformism and later Stalinism were able to give their crimes a socialist gloss which is still a quite acceptable position in ine workers movemica today, albeit with the admission of mistaKes The Marxian system is taken exclusively from the standpoint of the proletariat. It is concerned not with supplanting bourgeois philosophy, sociology or history with a new philosophy, sociology or history, but with their criticism; it uncovers their class conditioned ideological character. Capital is a critique of political | socialism. economy, not a socialist economics TeX DOOk When I say do it now' I mean that capitalism gives us the conditions fo socialism. Weconvince the rest of ou class that this is so in "practical critical activity'. Of course it will take a conjoint political/ economic crisis and development of consciousness to socialism. The necessity' of this we infer from Marx's theory of history.
Could it be, though, that the five comrades mistake my attack historical materialism!
TONY SHARP (Liverpool)
averse to jokes, but where are the signs serious investigating the issues of food on the part of your paper?
Their These are very important to take up It isn't enough to talk dismissively of agribusiness. socialism demand an understanding of wnat nappens shortages and also how the beginnings of a *value socialist life-style can be found in Sally vegetarianism. A few facts, lifted from The Vegan.
370 million tons of the world's harvest is fed to cattle in the West (?) every year Inter- — enough to meet the combined needs of all the people in China and India, a large fraction DOLE Meanwhile we eat steak, and the agricultural producers of cash crops in Third World countries often starve because the staples of their diet have become too scarce and expensive. An acre of good land used for pasture will produce 18lb of dry matter protein ir a year. Soya bean yield would be 500lb Thus, as the affluent, capitalist, COULETC quantities, it comes close to eating the poor of others. Obviously much work both in research and publicity, still needs to be done to tie these issues in to the others that we associate with However, resolutely cranky organisations have held the initiative. •Their utopianism puts many off, but if there are no others at work the struggle, doesn't Socialist Challenge take the initiative?
PAUL HUBERT (Newcastle]
realise on •ULI THE Scottish information office has issued a form on the abolition of tel duties. This may puzzle some folk, who believe that feudalism has passed commitment to siderable Now and create the food of which we read so much, world's power than that.
especially Consumic vasi refuse to pay, until nOW superior.
So why protection, the population gave a conpart of their substance to their feudal superiors this system still exists technically - in Scotland. Every year those who own a house or flat which is not freehold have to pay feu duties But for wnat reason!
The old feudal superiors of my great great great grandfather's days at least offered protection to him. The modern feudal superiors screw cash out of me and give absolutely nothing in return. Why should this be? Just because his forefathers screwed cash out of mine by menaces, does that allow him to do the same with me?
Well, the law is on his side. If refuse to submit to nis will, ne can poind (impound) my goodsto the value of the reudal payments I owe him as ms superior. And he has a whole lot more The feudal superior can appoint me in a street. What is more, he dos not have to pay me for doing this. If refuse, he can take out a court order against me, sell my gear to the value of his dues, and leave me with nothing If I get wiseto my position in the eyes or ine law, and conccay mastcr dues from his other vassals, and they complaining to him. I must take the Il IS CHIC offender to court myself, and poind his gear, until he learns sense and pays up like a good vassal of his feudal Thisis an issue which should be part of the platform of any organisation calling itself by the name of socialist. Let us totally abonsn reudar dues What is more, let them not be given any compensation for their loss of this revenue of extortion. Feudal superiors are mere parasites in our society. Let us treat them as such. •H.C. MULLIN [Glasgow THELENGTH of letters printed wil usually be kept down to 400 words in
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MAX FARRAR (Leeds Big Flame] broad- Local casting
TASTER must Intellectual bickering?
population. Ninety-fiveper cent of US soya bean production is fed to cattle.
Feudalism lives - in Scotland