global restructuring. First and foremost are the tens of mil- Latin America, now have their nation transnationals is over S3 trillion). advanced capitalist countries. geographical and historical reasons conscious of this danger, hence his rapid visit to China after Himhito's funeral: and the US can count on the militarism, still strong in China. The Every capitalist crisis involves major restructuring, both inside the nationally. The effects of recession are always uneven; not every sector of thie world working class suffers equally: In the advanced countries themselves, the example of Britain is a vivid ex- pression of how some industries and areas - particularly those associated for the political evolution of China, a topic which would require a whole ar- ticle in itself. It is obvious that for Japan is best placed to take advantage nE any major opening to foreign in vestment in the Chinese economy. On the other hand, George Bush is very distrust of re emergent Japanese battle for Chinese trade willbe a fas major capitalist economies and inter Piers Cavendish/Reflox Who pays the price? of the US military establishment and cold-warriors like Richard relations with the USSR, there is ly refuses to play ball on the military front, if detente is a non- #tarter, then there is a real ques tion mark about the ability of the Soviet Union to generate the ссопотіс space to engage in trade with the West which it wants. This of course is the line On top of the issue of the tri- angular Europe-Jupan-USA another huge complicating fac- cinating spectacle. Perle. particularly "Numerous universally decided by countries, economic austerity, now have the IMF." America, national in Latin policy, that of Page 18 their
uring." of global "Our job is the interests of wherever restruct- to defend the workers attacked by the effects they are MENT P PL ther loans to Costa Rica's And there is a third set of victims of to prevent fur- $4.5 billion restructur- ing - those who will be the victims of Soviet policy deals which are the trade-off foreign service foreign global banks debt.
banks!" fighting for the demand - eminently democratic and socialist imperialist reasonable, to the ...we should be cancellation of all debts Page 19 certain sense struggle against Gor- lates to the interationalist approach of socialists to the world struggle for socialism. It is true that the world proletariat, and the urban poor, are not confined to the three major imperialist centres we have been discussing. The size of the world proletariat has ex- panded enormously over the last 20 years. Major components of the world working class exist, of course, in the Soviet Union and castern Europe and tremendous speed. A lot depends on the outcome, and the possibility of building a socialist democratic current in these countries. And there are new dustrialising countries' - like Brazil and Mexico. Given the crisis these plosive outbursts of militancy among political organisation in these nations Our second major conclusion re- huge centres of the proletariat and urban poor in some of the newly in- countries are in, there will he ex- the workers of those semi-in- But we should be aware of the sociological and political limits of the development of the proletariat in the semi-industrialised countries, It is use- less to adopt an "arithmetical' ap- proach to the balance of class forces, which says there are X million new workers in the third world and thus the working class is X much stronger, For ness. and hence the trade union and is very uneven. We have the Workers tant new radicalisation in Mexico. But what do we have in Singapore, Taiwan the truth is that the political conscious- Party in Brazil, and we have an impor- tion has created a huge working class movement and the Workers Party in Brazil, but The political consclousness of the working class is very uneven: rapid industrialisa- they are reawakening politically there is no comparable radicalisation in Singapore, Taiwan or Hong Kong. dustrialised countries. them internationalist aid in developing part of forming links with the masses, and the political vanguard in eastern Europe, we should demand aid and trade with the Soviet Union and cast- er Europe on favourable terns, and an end to 'COCOM'-type restrictions against economic co-operation with The demand for a united socialist states of Europe, a Europe of the workers cast and west, is in no way counterposed to an internationalist at- titude towards the oppressed countries of the third world We don't want a 'fortress nocialist Europe' which puts would he a tremendous political and pressed masses in the semi-colonial geopolitical bloc which would give their economics. Here and now, we demand - cancellation of all the debts mum of humanity, let alone socialist sense that he wants to prioritise links up barriers against the third world. Ob- viously, a united socialist Europe economic blow in favour of the op- and dependent countries, a huge should be fighting for the eminently reasonable, democratic and socialist to the imperialist banks! This is a demand which will be supported not just by Marxists and socialists, but by huge numbers of people with a mini- In adopting the policy of a united socialist Europe, incidentally, we should be under no illusions that Gor- bachev is a 'pan European' in the In re-inserting itself in the new inter- national division of labour, the USSR wants to play the field. A struggle for a united socialist Burope will be in a with Europe over those with the USA. the post capitalist states. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 14 April 1989 example. The eviction of the ANC training camps from Angola in another. And we should not forget those millions of Soviet workers who will be the victims of Gorbachev's Socialists are in principle neither capitalist free traders nor protec- tionists. We are not the partisans of any imperialist cconomic bloc. We don't stand with the EEC against the US and Japan. Our job is to defend the interests of the workers wherever they restructuring. But there are axpectrof this approsch which have particular "capitalist Europe' solution. Socialists Atlanticism, but our alterative has to are attacked by the effects of global First, the British Thatcher goven- ment is in a tremendous quandary about whether to go along with a more unified political and economic Europe, orto try to maintain its special links with the US. It is clear that chan- cellor Lawson, Thatcher and Lord Young are at loggerheads on this, and it is becoming a major theme of British bourgeois politics - with Kinnock and the Labour leadership going for a have every reason to oppose cold war be a socialist Europe, a united Europe which includes eastem Europe and creates new ecoconic relations on an internationalist basis with the third world. Such an approach implies an intemationalist approach of linking up throughout Europe, cast and west Ar ing class and socialist forces politically and in struggle with work- A socialist political relevence to British socialists. austerity measures at home. response Nicaraguais cconomic relations the United States. an obvious another. with
36 (Winler "88 edition). Since this use of fusions of this term cannot he claboraled Simon Clarke in Capital and Class no 'Fordism' is confused and unsus- tainable, Marxism Today i discourse on (misusing Gramsci's notion of Fordism tion) to denote mass production/mass consumption capitalism as a particular bere, but see the excellent article by post-Fordism' is doubly confusing. Aglictia coined the thoroughly confusing temm "Fordism' as a particular form of work organise regime of accumulation". WERE BRITS NOTNIPS Michel Aglietta. As transnational capital organises, workers must hit back with active solidarity, not jingoistic nonsense The conclusion is that there is, once ferent crises and struggles in the dif- ferent rectors" of the world. It needs an internationalist response based on socialist answerto 1992 presupposes of the workers in the imperialist tween workers on a European level, which will become more and more ob- vious. Again the examples are endless. again, a growing interaction of the dif countrice against debt-bondage. A an effort of linking up Soviet Union have centre stage today, balance sheet of the relationship of forces, and the extent of the challenge Central America, South Africa and the not much use in drawing up a real and Hong Kong? Very Little. For that ganisation of the working class, despite mass student protests, is very weak. So sweeping generalisations are Even if the political battles in matter, even in South Korea, the or- to imperialism. Carlos Guara/F
tina as not being simply a 'semi-colonial guard of the Vogue by Ben Fine in the country" and even talked about the r- gentinian model', Argentina also went through a further "import substitution' verging on the unintelligible. But for an unscrambling and demolition job see die article by Chris Reynolde in Workers Times* by Gemma Forrest and Mike Freeman in Living Marxism Novemher 1988, Also useful is the article 'Van. * Lenin already in 19l6 recognised Argen- Liberty no. 11, and Old Ideas for New Morning Star of 14 September 1988. "national particularities" will not come " See, inter alia, Late Capitalism (1971: Verso): The Second Stump (1975 everywhere; and the building of an in- temational revolutionary movement with that programmme. In the epoch of global restructuring a retreat into up with political answers in any an international programme which supports workers' everything on the outcome of battles centrism; but it is a plea against the worldism", which often seems to stake or Japan, remains crucial from the Viewpoint of the world transition to socialism. This is not a plea for Euro- the historical task of building a force for socialist transformation in the im- perialist centres, and especially Europe, where the workers' move- ment is much stronger than in the USA somewhat fashionahle
gusting) wealth and power of die US Greed and Glory on Wall Street which charts the fall of the Ichman investment industrialisation betwoen the wans under Peror. Quoted by Manel(1985). Foran account of Argentina's aufonenious vinas and the End of Military Rule by Dabat and Lorenzano (Overso 1984), where Lenin's definition is also dis- As an example of the immense (and dis ruling class sce the wonderful book economic development nee The Mal kept its value artificially high. By ending * Bretion Woods guaranteed that the dollar would be automatically exchanged Tar with gold prices. While this made the dollar literally "as good as gold', it also (CUP 1979). See also Mandel's The Socialist Register 7964. Neo capitalism was an ambiguous and confusing term, since abandoned by Mandel. The fint sign of the oncoming shump was the against gold, thus tying together the dul- Verso) and Long Waws in Capitalism economics of neo-capitalism' in the West German 1966 recession. America; the struggle of the South restructuring a joint crisis of Stalinism and imperialisn - just as we asserted ferent way. Today with the crisis in the USSR; the intifadah of the Palestinian masses; the new crisis in Central African masses: the new rebellion against austerity by the Spanish workers - the examples are endless - you have, in the context of global We can express this in a slightly dif- in the dependent countres. workers and solidarity of the workers poor in the countries indebted need the "The
perial America" by Mike Davis in his " On 'smart" weapon technology see 1986). If you think bitter faction fights shows the bourgeoisie are len times *See The Political Economy of Late Im- Prisoners of the American Dream SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 14 April 1989 hank (Ken Auletta, Penguin Books, are confined to the far left this book Newsweek January 23rd 1989. where founding thenrint is the French political economist lar, allowing US corporations to com- See E.Mandel 'Semi-colorial and semi- industrialised dependent countries' in * The End ofthe Third World Nigel Harris: Alain Lipietz is a leading proponent of thic convertability Nixon devalued the dol- New international vol 2 no 2 p149. pete better on the world market. 'regulation school tension of the revolution in central The crisis is international, and the America. The workers and poor in the indebted countries need the solidarity when the birth of Solidamose In Poland coincided with the uprurge of the central American revolution be- solutions are international. The solu tion of the crisis in Nicaragua is the ex- tween 1979-81. imperialist bondage." countries against in the debt- Page 20
has interwoven these divisions into a complex by sex, race, sexuality and ability. Capitalism mosaic of domination and subordination. They Then there is the seemingly endless con- pression of women. The SWP's answer to this which only the ruling class benefits." As Tony dehumanised as the woman.' Morcover, he denies any importance to the fact that men, not women, even from the ruling class, are: "rapists, pomographers, wifebeaters, ete," as 'these ure the actions of individuals and are small com- pared to the way the capitalist system structures agents.' This raises a numberof points, not least a husband to beat his wife with a stick not larger What is meant exactly by the question "do troversy over whether men benefit from the op is: "an emphatic no!...it is a situation from working man is as and perpetuates women's oppression through its institutions..the blame should be placed squarely on class society, not on its individual of which is the inadequacy of blaming the system" and leaving it at that. Are we not in favour of organising now against raps, woman- beating and so on? If the SWP had their way the "rule of thumb" (the nineteenth century right of men benefit from women's oppression?' Answers to this will differ depending on whether it is being arked in an abstract way or concretely in the here and now. Unfortunately the SWP seem to have confused the two. From the point of view of the struggle for socialism - the only way all forms of oppression will be overcome - men have no interest in the oppres- sion of women. But socialist "man" does not exist today. the will be crealed through the struggle itsell. As revolutionary socialists we can say that working class men have no inter- Page 21 cannot be unravelled by class reductionism. Women workers: discriminated against because of than his thumb!) would still be with us. Cliff says: "The their gender as well as their class geoisie. People in this class have eventually to decide which side they are on. Are we not in ferent issues: the oppression of women is, for favour of winning them to the side of the work- ing class? People radicalise on all sorts of dif- women, one of the more likely issues on which Society is divided not oaly by class but also KEEP IT SAFE The women's movement has consis- tently organised on abortion rights Do men benefit? not in favaur of exploiting to the full the contradictions g inherent within capitalism? g Secondly, it ignores the < appealingly simple solution a number of geois woman to fight for will necessarily lead to the system, clearly not in their in the interests of the bour- gendee equality because it overthrow of the capitalist class interests: in such a conflict, class interests will always prevail. This rather problems. First of all, are we class position of the petty bourgcorsic, squeezed, as the two great classes - the Mars points out, between working class and the bour- to win them over. get liberated Tessa Howland/AFl Tony Cliff's book Class Struggle and Women's Liberation opens with the lines: Two different movements have sought to achieve women's liberation over the past hundred or more years, Marxism and feminism... However, strategies which are quite opposed to He goes on to illustrate this with a series of highly selective historical pastiches: It in this counterposition of feminism and socialism that (SWP) political view of women and women's libration. At the heart of this is the ideu that women have some common interests in ending they explain women's oppression in very different ways, and pursue forms the basic thesis of the book and it is the bedrock of the Socialist Workers" Party's women have no common interests or experien ces, even that: Women are not a separate group". The other side of this coin is a flat denial that men as a social group benefit in any way from the institutionalised oppression of women founded by the tendency of SWP analysis to consistently conflate class society with capitalism and to use the words capitalism and The internal contradictions of this position make the thread of the argument in the book al- most impossible to unravel. If, as even Mr. Cliff agrees, all women are oppressed, as women, under capitalism, then it clearly follows that all that oppression. The common cause of women should not be overstated, as it sometimes is by class, race, sexuality and ability, and the power relations intrinsic to capitalism are reflected in Two examples suffice to show the problem. trol over her own hody, to determine whether, pay to get an abortion while working class under capitalism. The problem is further con radical feminists with dreams of universal sisterhood, because women are divided by the women's movement. But to deny any com- The right ofa woman, any woman, to have con- traception and abortion, unites women. It's true That the wealthy hourgcois woman can always women have to depend on the vagaries of the NHS, but abortion campaigns have always had ly the position of women, all women, in the family is a sbordinate one. As Engels pointed working class family: 'the man is the bourgeois The SWP position seems in be that it is not when and how to have children, the right to con- support from a wide range of women. Similar- out, the role of the bourgeois wornan was little different from that of the prostitute and in the SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 14 April 1989 The right to choose monality is to fly in the face of reality. and the woman is the proletarian. class as synobomous: one another.
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- URES The Socialist Workers Party and women The class struggles, and then the women
MAKE THE - FERRIES HELP US TO SAFER *•0 STRIKE LE. COUP DEAL THẺ N.U9 1988 SUPPORT NEEC HELF TO HELP B SAFER YOU FEEL ELP US HERSE TILL TOGETHE LL im/FL benefit from the oppression of women; but working class men too, in their day to day lives, benefit from the servicing roles est in the oppression of women; that the henefits of socialism are far greater than However, if we look at the realities of modem capitalism, it is clear that there is an institutionalised power relationship between men and women from which all men, in one way or another, benefit. Ruling class men, whose long term inter- ests are served by capitalism, obviously played by women, even if these are ul the paltry benefits men do get from the op- pression of women under capitalism. Male violence timately serving capitalism.
women and wanting to live together does not - Lesbians Perhaps the inadequacies, inconsistencies and unreality of the SWP's line on women's op- pression and liberation is hest summed up in a of leshians ratherthan deny the "bad name'. Car- lin says in Women and the Struggle for Socialism: Most feminists are not in the least like the lesbian separatists pictured by the media.' She genemusly adds: "Most leshians are not like that either, since being attracted to other necessarily mean lesbians have to be extreme need neither patronising nor euphemisms. It all seems so easy! feminists in their political opinions*. Women's self-organisation has become a powerful factor in major struggles political nor important, this includes a distinet anti-lesbianism. Despite a cursory atlempt to sort of channel - of feminist ideas into the SWP Conference on the haris that it offended against Leninist norms and had failed to recruit effec- Another strand that runs through SWP think- ing is a dismissal of issues of sexuality as neither for feminism. The groups acted as the wrong However, the SWP's theories proved no match and of women out of the Party. Women's Voice was closed down by the 1981 SWP National tively. Black Voice, an autonomous black or- ganisation was closed down at the same time. Anti-lesbianism encompassing. Male violence against women is ists in modem capitalist societies, and existed in standing and explaining the world in terms of the organination of society around the mode of different precise forms in pre-capitalist class societies. It is thus an intrinsic part of the struc- tures of capitalism, not outside them. This, afler all, is at the centre of the debate with radical unconnected to the other. This is a profoundly un-marxist, indeed anti-marxist, analysis to have. Historical materialism is about under- production. Capitalism and its structures are all- an expression of the institutionalised power relationship between men and women that ex- uNor most counterposition, of male violence Next there is the total separation, al- against women and the oppressive struc- tures of capitalim - as if one was totally
it was preciscly by doing this that the Women's understand that rape and violence against women are some of the manifestations of the op- pression of women, the inequalities of power, in contemporary society? it is essential that feminists and socialists take up such inues for areas where men and women are at odds - rape, port of men: strikes, opposition to welfare cuts, Women's Liberation Movement of ignoring the issue of abortion? How can he, as a socialist, not passage that appears twice in Tony Cliff'sbook: Women's Liberation Movements ... bave focussed consistently on haltered women, wages for housework - while ignoring or playing down the important strug gles in which women are likely to win the sup- Where has he been aver the last twenty equal pay, unionisation, abortion'. years? How on carth can he "The contemporary there is just a sociological description of the fact centre of the oppression of women. Instead and fundamental analyses nf the women's movement on the social construction of gender and sexuality and the Links between the two, do This ties up with the absence of any materialist or historical analysis of the family, at the very place the oppression of lesbians and gay men in a materialist framework as: "aby-product of the oppression of women, for gayn and lesbians hreak the role stereotyping of men and women which is imposed by capitalist society, Tony Cliff and his co-thinkers" views on the subject range in reality from the patronisingly liberal to the downright reactionary. That sexuality is political is explicitly and contradictorily rejected. Some of the most insightful, original not even get a mention, let alone a discussion. that the family is not very nice. a specific organisation, the wider movement, or strengthen the working class. The example of ng communities during the great strike of 1984- struggle, In fact autonomy is not the same as perience a particular oppression to discuss out together their demands which can then he put to the rest of society. Thin process politically strengthens the oppressed, increasing their con- the self organisation of the women of the mini- movement where they argue consistently and forcefully against the self organisation of port autonomy are denounced as separatists and separatism. Autonomy allows those who ex- These errors of theory have led the SWP to play a very destructive role in the women's self organisation is counterposed to the class fidence and radicalisation and can only women in any shape or form. Those who sup-
women who found it painfully relevant to their dailylives. How doeshe explain that, witha few opposed cqual pay and fought to exclude women from trade unions? But it scems it is all very simple if you just believe that the class Rebecca Flemming * The original Four demands of the Women's Lihera- Liberation Movement involved millions of honourable exceptions, men have historically SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 14 April 1989 • Frec contraception and abortion on demand,