grip on the Party and state apparatus, and transforming Lenin's party into a monolithic parody of itself, [Stalin] was forced to wipe out every vestige of Leninist tradition, even while he erected a facade of statues'. But the history of the real state of emergency, that is the 20th century, shows that human beings have as deep a desire to tear down the existing statues as they have to erect them.
Lenin erected statues of dead revolutionaries to raise the cultural level of the Soviet masses. Now that cultural levels have been raised, those same masses seem intent on tearing down all the statues of Lenin.
The lesson for revolutionary marxists is a simple one. The fate, not of Lenin, but of statues is not yet decided by history.
Terry Murphy Oxford Your May 1 article describes the Your editorial (SO 3) asked what attitude socialists in take to the decision of the Liverpool Broad Left to stand candidates against Kinnockites in the local elections and in the Walton by-election. The question was not answered and the lack of a clear and direct answer to a question like this is a big problem.
The editorial was trying to say that it-was correct to stand candidates for council but not for parliament. But it does not give readers and supporters of he paper, who may i be voters or activists in the area, any indication of what they should do.
Providing political leadership and direction for the left should be the primary task for this paper. Unless prepared to state boldly what our view is on the important questions facing our class, we will win neither respect nor authority within it.
Now that the Broad Left has decided to stand against Kilfoyle, supporters of Socialist Outlook should be active in the campaign, since that is where the most class-conscious socialists in Liverpool will be found. Yet the decision to stand was wrong:
I have no special access to ronically I find myself ver among Militant supporters, but that is the key to this question.
Militant and the left are now marginal in the Labour Party. What is different for Militant supporters is that they have convinced themselves that their leadership of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign defeated the tax and brought down Thatcher. The rest of the world knows that this is some way short of the full story, but the point is that Militant sup porters are intoxicated with success.
Their intoxication has befuddled their judgement to such an extent that unless they correct their line, very soon they could be marching out of the Labour Party to become a more strident version of the SWP, but born on a wrong analvsis and, after ten vears of major defeats for the working class, without even any notion f attempting to regroup the left. The conse quences for the left in the Labour Party and for Militant itself could be catastrophic.
These issues are too extensive to be covered in a single letter. I hope, for the political level of the paper, that they generate as much passion as Madonna and Tim Morrison.
Liam Mac Uaid London E13 got to go hand in hand with 1930s by film stars like Mae West and Marlene Dietrich.
No-one would have been misguided enough to call these women feminists - although they explored sexual and gender roles in a provoca tive way.
These film-stars flaunted their sexuality and reflected changing attitudes to women in a post-suffragette era, very much as Madonna has done in the 1980s. They reflected changes at the level of culture but they did not campaign for real chan ges in women's lives.
To be even a bourgeois feminist you have to campaign for women's rights. Madonna stands up for herself no doubt, but she has never campaigned for women as a group.
It's a shame that Socialist Outlook didn't get its definitions of feminism clearer before it became entangled in this debate. If feminist' simply meant strong or independent women (or women with lots of money then we'd haveto include Margaret Thatcher on Nor can I agree that Madonna's 'sexual radicalism' is a particular challenge to men or a role model for women. Far from subverting male fantasies of women I would suggest she actually reinforces them.
Can't we move on to some more interesting female performers like French and Saunders, and Annie Lennox? At least they have the merit of some artistic originality.
Valerie Coultas London