Since the strike started, the workers have taken the following steps to advance their Strucole.
organised demonstrations through the area to publicise their struggle, and factory gate collections; maintained 24-hour picketing of the factory; called for blacking by workers in the car industry; *organised meetings with Kent and Welsh miners to raise funds, as well as factories nationally; *adamantly opposed going to a tribunal, with a very clear understanding of the need to rely on struggle and not legislation; produced a regular strike bulletin which has areativ assisted in informina those involved of all developments and the need to maintain solidarity; *visited the Trico factory in Northampton with the aim of unionising the women there and discussing improvements in their conditions and pay, as they earn E23 for a 4U-nour week. *lobbied the special TUC on 16 June; *approached Labour MPs Syd Bidwell, Russell Kerr and Jo Richardson to ask questions in the House of Commons on social security payments, the police role in strike-breaking, and general problems of Ine SErIKel * called for a ballot of the district for a strike revy.
All this, of course, would take an enormous amount of organisation, but the AUEW has the necessary machinery - all it needs is the push. That is why it is necessary to take up the Trico strike at all levels of the councils, AUEW branches, shop stewards committees, Labour Party wards - to ensure that these women win their fight for equal pay.
The Trico strike is extremely important because it brings into issue the commitment of the workers movement to equal pay and the fight for women's rights in general. The present deals between Healey and the trade union bureaucracy the Executive of the AUEW - can only be a barrier to equal pay and any improvements in the living conditions of the working class as a whole.
Through their fight the Trico women are showing how to confront the attacks on the working class by the Labour and TUC leaderships. They deserve the maximum support from the labour movement — a victory for them would be a step forward for the entire working class.
PAT MASTERS
castern curope A WRP-type hippopotamus was career ing through the pages of Red Weekly last week, leaping from one distortion to another whilst the dollops of mud were flying in every direction. Its name was Oliver MacDonald. It was in the resulting confusion attempting to justify its theory that in Poland there is some form of workers state.
Listen to this: "The picture in Poland is very different. Whatever Socialist Worker may say, there is no cass which privately owns the country's economic resources. The ruling social group in Poland has absolutely no independent power base outside the political system. Its power comes not from the nature of the economic system, out Trom is col trol of the political system......"
So does IMG stand Marxism on its head. here is Marxism in the language and manner of Harold wilson, as solid as a custard tart. Let us attempt to translate it into precise terms, maybe an a wu mean someuiing.to us.
There is no class which owns the means or oroduction ane dIstrioUtIOn Is there a class which controls and directs the means and distribution or production in its own interests? We all know how the abstract theorists love hair-splitting over such words as 'own. Under feudalism here in Britain, did the Moman Catnolic Church Dishops and archbishops privately own' the ten means of production the land and the peasants) under their control, that they controlled and directed in the interests, the collective interest, of the Church as a whole? Maybe this was a degenerated state also, and like the curate's egg, good in parts?
"The ruling social group has absolutely no independent power base outside the State." Ah! Now it is beg inning to mean something.
Now that the State has been mentioned, maybe we had better teach the IMG a lesson in basic Marxism, they seem to nave torootten so much lately. Marxists say that the State is the tool with which the ruling class in society imposes its rule over all other classes. Its army, navy, air force, prisons, law courts, police, etc, are used by the capitalists to enforce their rule.
Marxism says that different classes require states that are suitable to the requirements speciar to meir class That the workers would be required to smash the bosses state. and replace it by themselves organised as a State. They would substitute the standing army of capitalism with the armed working class. They would elect judges, magistrates, police, etc, trom their own ranks, paying them workers' wages, and subjecting them to recall and replace ment. They would administer society by way of their committees or soviets.
Should for some reason say that there was the lack of a material base tor their type or society they lose con trol to the capitalists, then capitalism would nepc to smash the workers state пса теслі and replace it with their own model before they could regain power over SOCIeTY.
Can you imagine pickets, or Des Warren, being brought up before a militant trade union magistrate, one who was subject to election and. recall by his building worker buddies? Or the bosses reimposing their rule faced with an armed working class? • One of the first things they and their henchmen do after a revolutionary outburst is to get the workers to surrender their arms. Look at Portugal.
To look at Poland is to see none of the criteria that add up to a workers state. The rolish worker nas never run Poland by way of his armed com mittees, paid his elected officials the wages of ordinary workers, and had them subject to recall and replacement. Capitalism, private capitalism, could run Poland with the existing State, just by changing the personnel, maybe not even that.
When MacDonald says that our state capitalist theory is an accommodation to the pressure of capitalism, it is the biggest laugh of all. Today, anyone who professes to be a Marxist, and having in mind the Marxist theory of the State, can say that there is any similarity between the regimes of China, soviet Union, Cuba, Casterr Europe, etc and workers states, are themselves making an accommodation to Stalinism, and to the intelligentsia, who cannot see the potentialities and capabilities of our class, nay, who des pair of them. Who see themselves as ruling in our place-in our interests of course-and who chant workerism' at all who differ from them.-DAVE HALLSWORTH (Tameside IS).
War. e7 July 17/0 society: capitalism.
OF THE ECONOMY DY We SaLe MACDONALD REPLIES 1. THE CLASS NATURE OF THE STATE Marx, as a materialist, insisted that the class nature of a state was deter mined by the nature of the mode of producton which tne state machine defends. A capitalist state can have many different forms: democratic, fascist, military dictatorship, etc. But these different political superstructures have the same class content because of thi dominant type of production in the Yet comrade Hallsworth tells us that key question deciding whether a society where private capital has been overthrown is a workers state or not is …... what? Not the mode of production, but the political form of the state: if the state is democratic in form it is a workers state, but if it is not demo cratic ten it is a capitanst state!
2. OWNERSHIP AND THE NATURE Comrade Hallsworth then tries to attack me tor aostract nair-spatting ove legalistic detinitions of ownership. What are the legal property titles in the USSR? You have co-operative property in the Kolhoz; co-operative property in sectors of industry and trade; you have substantial chunks of property legally owned by the Communist Party; you have very large chunks legally owned by local governments and various Republican governments; and only in addition to all these legal titles do you have prop erty legally owned by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. That is the legal But the Fourth International has always approached the question of ownership and property not trom these legal fictiens, which are at best ideological reflections of basic economic categories, but precisely from the point of view of basic economic categories. And in the USSR it is evident that the basic means of production are owned This makes the entire internal workinas of the Soviet economy radically nomic resources inroucnour une economy And this again must happen whatever the type of government, whatever political form the state may take.
But this view is rejected by the theorists of state capitalism. They insist that the nature of the mode of production changes depending on the type of government and regardless of the fact that the type of property remains the same: state property. Thus from a Marxist boint of view the IS confusi ownership and management