calist currents frequently claim to represent "socialism-from below'. The debt to Draper is often made explicit.
Moreover, Draper was a leading member of a group of American Trotskyists who broke with the movement in 1940 in the belief that the Soviet Union represented a 'bureaucrane concouvist society, Tulco by an historically new exploiting class. These misleading no. tions are currently being resurrected by Socialist Organiser.
Draper bases his world-view on the fanous opening lines of the rules of the first international, which stress that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.
He argues that this social ism-from-below is the sole socialism; Stalinists, Fabians, Social Democrats, Labountes, anarchists and national liberation movements offer all, and will always end in disappointment, if not bloody repression.
Draper argues: 'Before Marx, nowhere did the line of the Socialist Idea intersoct with the line of Democracy-fromBelow. This intersection, this syminesis, was the greal conti bution of Marx; in comparison, I USED to think that those guys at the Inland Revenue were on our side. Now I've discovered they expect top executives to pay tax on the freebies that go with their jobs, I'm not so sure.
But Robin Leigh-Pemberton. outgoing governor of the Bank of England, found an easy way of getting round this minor inconvenience.
Robin was in the habit of taking his wife Rosemary with him on business trips, with the taxpayer ultimately picking up the tab for the first-class flights Jaunts included visits to Washington for the annual international Monetary Fund shindig, and a tour of China, all of which sounds like nice work if you can get it.
When the Revenue ruled that this counted as a perk. and weighed in with a tax bill salary by the same amount, taking his annual earnings to {209,165. This just goes to prove that, with a good employer, there is absolutely no need for trade unions. Nose candy my earlier tale of how eighties junk bond supercrook Michael Milken turned over a new leaf on release from prison and set up an caucatons cabie chant nel for kiddies, in league with singer Michael Jackson.
It now seems that Milken, who once earned £324 million REVIEW in a single year with Drexel Burnham Lambert, is helping inner-city school students to fight the drug menace.
This is not, however, volunteer work. A New York court has ordered him to do 1,800 hours of community service every year for the next three years.
That should keep him out of mischief. I wonder if he was ever partial to a spot of the old nose candy himself?
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 44 June 12 1993. Page 12 PART TWO of a series on marxism and the trade unions HEADOOARIEES GO GEOMA SE •NeT HeY NOT Marxists could only hope to convince militants of their policies and programme if they were seen to be concerned with the problems faced by the workers - and themselves active in the front ranks of the day-to-day battles in the "... In entirely exceptional cases. when the party considers impossible the submission of its members to some reac tionary decision of the trade union, it sequences that flow from it, that is, removals from trade union posts, expulsions and so forth."
Trotsky is also quite explicit in expect. ing marxists active in the union to carry out visibly political work:
"The number of Communists in lead. ing posts... is only one of the means of