OPPOSITION is mounting in the South of Ireland to the Irish government's proposed restricting the Sale availability of contraception.
The Bill is the most savage attack democratic women's rights that has been launched by the present Fianna government. Measures proposed include:
GLASGOW Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 12 *Sales of contraceptives will be made only to those with prescriptions or written authorisation signed by registered Bill medical practitioners.
*The doctor issuing prescripand tions must be satisfied that the person concerned is using the and contraception for 'bona tamily planning purposes'. The assumption is that this means that the person concerned will nave to be married.
Movement *The advertising and display of contraceptives banned. *Penalties for offences under the Bill would range from six months in jail and a E500 fine to a year's imprisonment and a nine or 13.000. fide The Bill, introduced by Health Charlie Haughey, is an attempt by the government to clarity the existing confusion - organised by the United Troops Out will be ColTaLCDEVes.
tion.
BIGOTRY which Was Minister of January.
are essentially EDICSSUEC legislation around the sale and use of impressively oeuvre, using But the measures proposed by Haughey will further restrict the availability of contracephelicopters.
Leading the opposition to the new measures is the Contraception Action Programme, who in December defied the existing forced to legislation when they opened a shop in Dublin providing the open sale of contraceptives.
The shop is still operating, armoured cars. and CAP will be organising a demonstration in Dublin on 29 ABUSE The government's proposals the result of the Catholic Church. Haughey is allegedly one of the most Republican' of statesperson Fianna Fail ministers, but his reflects greater allegiance to Catholic bigotry than to Irish Republicanism. the march was to show that the only opposition came and his family.
The marchers refused the ban. In an organised mandecoy and COME local geographical knowledge, we fooled nearly a thousand police who were using two army By taking to the lanes and then to the fields, we left the RUC thugs well behind.
As we reached the last field outside Bellaghy, we saw that the army and police had been occupy small town with massive forces in order to try to keep us out. The main street was filled with army It was at this point that Overend re-entered the picture. We had unknowingly occupied his field, and this impressive running from his farmhouse with a gun.
Hurling abuse at us he fired a shot, and only the fact that the police then rushed to protect
THE basic attitude of the Russian revolutionary movement to Marxist theory was well illustrated in a story told by the Bolshevik Krupskaya in her book Memories of Lenin:
Vladimir Ilyich [Lenin] and ecalled a simile that I somewhere: Once when walking, he spotted in the distance the figure of a man squatting on his haunches and moving his hands about in an absurd way; a madman, he thought - but on drawing nearer, he saw that it was a man sharpening his knife on the paving-stone.
*It theoretical controversies. from aside, they do not seem worth quarrelling about, but once the gist is graspea, it is reansca wat une matte is of the utmost importance.' (p84) rich rapidly become apparent to which rapidly become apparent anyone coming into contact with Marxism.
At first glance, Marxist theory does freouenty sound like abstract squabbling. 'United Front', *Popular Front', 'reductionism', 'revisionism', labour and labour power', and innumerable other pieces of apparently incomprehensible jargon dot the pages of Marxist works.
Yet any knowledge of the history working class shows that these 'abstract" questions in IdeL had importance.
PHRASE Take the dispute between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks Russia — between what became the revolutionary and lutionary wings of the working class movement. This first appeared in the form of a difference around a single phrase in the party rules concerning whether a member was one engaged in "personal participation in one of the party organisations' or one who *renders it regular personal assistance organisations".
Similarly, the struggle Trotsky and Stalin fundamental form on the apparently ultra-abstract question of whether it was possible to build socialism in one country or not.
So why have the most tremendously important struggles in working class movement inseparably bound up with questions of 'abstract theory"? To answer that it is necessary to go back and look at the nature of revolutionary theory itself.
When Marx and Engels developed their positions, adopted the term Socialism' to describe their theories. This was not merely a grand phrase but exactly expressed the relation of their theories to material reality. As The first two articles in this series looked at the contrasting paths taken by the Russian and British working class movements.
The Russian movement, historically characterised by its extreme interest in what Lenin referred to as the 'last word' in international revolutionary theory, overthrew capitalism in one-sixth of the world. The British movement, characterised by its national insularity, disregard Engels explained in *Herr Heinzen Nadezhda principle as its core and Tolstoy used Heinzen is movement; IL p303)
FACTS socialism. •Yel Marxism will rapidly find out. mere 'economism, expressing ESCH different' movement contradiction theories.
facts of reality.
JF] is nothing. in material world human mind and translated counter-revop 19)
In Communist Manifesto:
between that would be universal assumed They terms, actual relations La historical movement under our very Engels. Collected the p498) been QUIBBLE by Marxism. approach loved in first height of impracticality. they *Scientific that on the state.
The position criticising the German theorist Karl Heinzen:
imagines communism is a certain doctrine which proceeds from a definite theoretical draws further conclusions from that. Her very much mistaken.
Communism is not a doctrine but a proceeds not from principles but from facts.' (Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol 6, rapidly A socialist system basing itself on the facts of reality. That was what Marx and Engels meant by scientific they based their positions on facts, Marx and Engels obviously brought about a tremendous revolution in socialist theory — reality. as anyone who has tried to read Capital or any other major work of For the British tradition, technically known as "empiricism', this relation of facts and theory is an insuperable problem. That tradition counterposes facts and theories such everyday phrases as 'that's all very well in theory, but in reality it's In reality, however, there is no betweet tacts and Theory precisely someting waich renecis, or i raist Class: fails to reflect, the real forces and As Marx put it, 'the ideal [theory else than the reflected by the into itself forms of thought'. (Capital, Vol 1, In short the theories of Marxists are nothing other than the reflections of the material reality of the class the words of the *The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or reformer.
CHOOSI In general springing from an existing class struggle, from going on eyes. (Marx and Works, Vol 6, Compared with the forces analysed for sense' CLIC -COlOn Britain is the This can be seen in one of the most famous theoretical debates' in the history of the workers movement -of Marxism, put forward in Marx's The Civil War in France and given its classic statement in Lenin's The State and Revolution is that the apparatus German Social Democratic capitalism must be -Smashed. Kautsky, however, argued that the state machine must be 'taken over' or "transformed'.
"Smash' or "transform'? It might seem an obscure quibble over words at the reflected in these terms, then it becomes obvious something far more is involved the realion of a force of taundreds o thousands of people with tanks, guns, atomic bombs, law courts, the army, the police, etc. The debate about "transforming or "smashing' the state is not about words but about how that tremendous armed force and apparatus will act in When the socialist positions of the working class achieve a majority, will the army quietly dissolve? Will the capitalists surrender their wealth? Will Prince Charles meekly pack his bags and leave Buckingham Palace? VIOLENT Or, on the contrary, will every single weapon which the bourgeois class has at its disposal be turned against the oppressed in one final violent ALICHIDE maintain the power and wealth of the capitalist That is far from being an abstract debate about words. it is literally a life and death question for millions of pethe working class does prepare beforehand, if propaganda and organisation among the rank and file soldiers against the officers, if it arms and organises the ranks of the working class, then historical experience shows that the capitalist state can be smashed and eared be read men same, such as Chile Pinochet Germany under Hitler show only too clearly what will happen.
REALISTIC In Chile, country population only one-fifth that Britain, over 20,000 people murdered by the army within six months of the military takeover of September 1973. That is equivalent to 100,000 people - one in every three shop stewards in the country example - being executed in Britain.
In Germany, the fascist takeover milioner led and hundreds ot Jews hundreds thousands of trade unionists and socialist activists, and the unleashing of a world war in which 50 million people were killed. of these labour movements and their historical fates.
The people who led the working class to those terrible slaughters precisely prepared these catastrophe The y rejecting armed resistance to th leader ruling class under the banner that the capitalist SLALC This is what is involved in the "quibble" over apparatus of the capitalist class must De "taken over'. that be organised to defeat the attempted armed counter-revolution bourgeois class, defenceless to be capitalism's heel in the name of 'taking over' the state?
That is a far powerful reality than the day-to-day "practical' questions which dominate the majority tradition of the British labour movement.
That - is why Russians were working class to power while the 'practical' CRITICA defeats. The Russians, 2 pm makes Name..
Address were This article looks at the connection between the two different traditions but towards it.
The forces could be "transment whether the whether it can be dues collection, Will the working class of the form of or will it be led completely crushed under bigger and more forces the "theoretical' able to lead the because achieved only -In their THE ALTERNATIVE IN WESTERN EUROPE One-day school on Eurocommunism and revolutionary strategy in the West Introduced by ERNEST MANDEL and followed by discussion 10am Economic Policies of Eurocommunism and the Socialist Alternative The State and Revolutionary Strategy Saturday 13 January, 10am-5pm Holborn Assembly Rooms, London (2 minutes from Holborn tube) Tickets £1.50 at the door or in advance from Socialist Challenge, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP.
Please supply ........ tickets at £1.50 JUJUL HIGH HOLRORA questions, was obsession with what Lenin called the "last word" in revolutionary theory, were not turning away from reality reflected in thei theories — the state, political parties, the trade unions, economic develop were the overwhelming powerful forces of reality. The so called 'real issues' of the British administrative efficiency as an end in itself, day-to-day economic struggles as the highest class conflic were insignificant compared the forces dealt with in the Russians' 'abstract theory'.
The theory of the Russians was the sole realistic and practical approach, Most firmame basic on ental most fundamentall at work concentration on 'day-to-day que tions was and is totally unrealisti Bondamental and powerful face ignored which shape reality.
Labe Str Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979
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BLOODY SUNDAY COMMEMORATION Demonstrations 28 January LONDON — organised by Provisional Sinn Fein
of Marxist theory, and obsession with 'bread and butter' overthrowing capitalism in Britain today.
movement thoroughly defeated in the General Strike of 1926 and is still very far from