Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions  £20 p.a. [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50 London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd]   
No 0988 March 2nd 1999                                                                                                                                       10p

The class-exploitation foundations of race discrimination and prejudice begin to be revealed, making 'educated' society squirm, as Black and Asian anger and campaigning become more and more difficult to ignore or fob off. A mass party of bold communist philosophy about the crisis of capitalist society needs building urgently.

Scandalous incompetence and hypocrisy has surrounded the Macpherson inquiry report into how badly racist is the British capitalist state and society, because even now the whole real problem of policing in a 'democracy' is being covered up.

Straw squirms, the Met continues to bungle laughably, and 'politically correct' reformists of every variety become tongue-tied with confusion and embarrassment because CLASS domination is the root of the trouble, not race discrimination, and because some of the Black and Asian victims of outrageous police prejudice are beginning to see through and speak out about this corruption.

Race-hatred is automatic and incurable under the imperialist freemarket system worldwide because cut-throat competitive exploitation and its resulting envy and freemasonry attitudes are automatic and incurable too.

Encourage private enterprise winners (black or white) to believe that their talent alone has deservedly raised them above the common herd and has given them a God-given right to rule, — and they will invariably develop feelings of racial superiority as well as of personal vainglory. It happens in every capitalist society on earth, between every mixture of races on earth, the freemasonry clannishness mushrooming naturally around whoever starts to gain a dominant position in the crooked anarchic lottery that is the 'free market'.

In this society, that has meant hundreds of years of corrupt imperialist pride infecting everyone in society who has ever shared any nationalist feeling of 'belonging' to that imperialist success, even if it is totally remote from their real lives.

The vast majority of the white working class have always been outrageously maltreated and exploited by the capitalist-state establishment, — yet for countless generations, their loyalty to the ruling-class authorities has often been unthinking and unquestioning. Some colonial super-profits benefits have trickled down just slightly. At the same time, some of the reflected glory of British imperialist triumphs in the world has also been felt, and has helped to thoroughly corrupt and miseducate the white working class.

The century-and-a-half of trade union and Labour Party 'reformism' (in reality pure class collaboration) has obviously disastrously cemented backward colonial-minded attitudes throughout the organised labour movement, and throughout society in general. Britain is surely one of the most imperialism corrupted societies on earth.

The heroic Lawrence campaign challenge to the police and parliament has sensationally established that the police itself (and much else besides in British society) can no longer deny its automatic racist bias.

But it is for being but a tool of capitalist-exploitation-society that the police are so incurably racist that needs to be brought home to workers everywhere.

Racism as such needs humiliating and putting down wherever its backwardness flourishes. But it is through the far deeper interest that ALL workers have in challenging the entire capitalist exploitation state-power that the best community of interests of the ENTIRE working class (all colours and creeds), and much of the middle-class too, should best be seen as coinciding, and thus automatically beginning to make race-prejudice and cultural snobbery and arrogance between different ethnic traditions appear obviously as the most vicious, reactionary, self-damaging, and self-limiting outlook that only stupid or dominated people could ever inflict themselves with.

Political correctness of every variety has squirmed around the Macpherson report because of a universal sense that this obscene racism is endemic and incurable the way society is run now under capitalism, but none of them wanted or dared to say so.

But Black consciousness is forever teetering on the brink of this realisation in a mass way, — and this makes the politically-correct petty bourgeois hordes even more nervous.

What is desperately needed in Britain is a mass party for socialist revolution which will deliberately harness that Black consciousness for a Marxist-Leninist understanding of the need for a CLASS-war solution to degenerate capitalist society's despicable failure to achieve anything but race-prejudice despite 500 years of successful rule, and despite currently being on the crest of the greatest boomtime wave of prosperity in all history. 

What is desperately NOT needed is the single-issue opportunist politics of preaching Black consciousness as a worthwhile end in itself, encouraging ideas of separate Black identity and development. Within capitalist society, that can only end up with encouragement for a Black wing of the ruling bourgeoisie to be formed, lumbered with many of the same class and political prejudices of the white bourgeoisie, — something already widespread in Britain and absolutely rampant in US imperialist society, (a pro-imperialist Black bourgeois elite helping the imperialist state to rule over a mass Black working class which still easily suffers the very worst conditions of exploitation that American capitalism can impose, relative to the rest of society and absolutely bad approaching Third World conditions) in a few of the more deprived and demoralised areas.) 

'Reforming' capitalism out of its racist backwardness, is ultimately a lost cause and a giant diversion, — as is all 'reformism' at the end of the day. It detracts from the stark reality of world imperialist CRISIS as the great driving force of human history and one which finally makes possible a completely REVOLUTIONARY transformation of society wherein racism and all other manifestations of class exploitation can truly begin to become a thing of the past because the whole working of planned socialist society will create a completely different motivation for how people look upon each other and how they will consider relating to each other.

The 'reform' of capitalism ALWAYS merely means a slight shake-up in the pecking order and new faces on the gravy train but essentially the same opportunist and elitist system continuing with all its inbuilt unfairness and injustice, and periodic outbreaks of catastrophic and irrational barbarism which endlessly require "inquiring into" (to no purpose), — both in personal lives (Stephen Lawrence, etc, multiplied by THOUSANDS of outrages every year which do not make the headlines), and in national life (World War I, World War II, etc, etc). 

It means that the essential CORRUPTION and injustice, of the system, from top to bottom, also goes on endlessly, because it is a system actually BUILT ON opportunist exploitation and hoodwinking, exploiting other people's wants and needs for profit. 

It was this dirty frayed thread of corruption that some who played a part in the Lawrence tragedy have been determinedly pulling at. The police service is essentially a service for big business crooks, or a system called capitalism. It is a system now completely out-of-touch-with and unsuitable for modern needs. It is crooked in every joint, and cannot be sanitised. Bring it down, build Leninism. RB

Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary practice; and without discussion and debate, there can be no revolutionary theory and understanding at all. Dumbing down the SLP is the road to total frustration, not socialism, exactly as killed off the old CP.

It is obvious that not all of the more class conscious elements around the SLP have instantly agreed with every part of recent critical analysis in EPSR articles of Socialist Labour developments, — and disappointment at the turn of events is entirely natural.

But the record needs to be put straight that it is Scargillism which is making the running in expulsion moves against Marxist-Leninist influence, and it is Scargillism which is grotesquely distorting the real picture in order to deliberately keep people politically limited or politically confused.

Outside the conference hall of the weekend's reconvened SLP women's AGM, Carolyn Sikorski and the Trots screamed hysterical abuse at the delegates, trying to prevent the meeting taking place, and calling on "all genuine women's sections" of the party to attend instead the Trots' own rival version of the "SLP National Women's Section" in seven weeks time.

But not only did the 'authentic' SLP National Women's Section AGM pass by still leaving Carolyn Sikorski on the National Executive Committee of the SLP representing the women's section (!),(presumably under 'constitutional' instructions from Scargill to leave it that way), but the general Barnsley edict to "avoid discussion of all internecine warfare" also seems to have applied, even in these ludicrous circumstances of the Women's Section NEC member staying outside the hall, shouting in abuse.

And this is not a one-off situation, either, — should anyone insist that other aspects of the scene around the Women's AGM were more important to stress. It is precisely this SLP refusal to give political leadership and education to workers via detailed exposures of the WRONG kind of leadership on offer (from Trots and other anti-communists, etc) which is at issue.

It is a routine feature of an entire SLP strategy to discourage political debate as much as possible at every level of the party. Socialist News is clearly under orders to tone down all rhetoric; to keep polemical discussion to a minimum or exclude it altogether, and permit no letters column; to avoid taking a strong line on anything controversial, if possible; and in short to be all things to all strains of opinion coming towards the party.

At least twice from platform speakers at Congress, the notorious philistinism "no one wants to hear what one dead Russian revolutionary said to another" has been used to damp down debate or to avoid answering difficult questions.

The demand for such more openness in discussing the party's internal affairs runs into the complete non sequitur: "But we are trying to build a mass party; challenging workers on the doorstep with Marxism Leninism will never achieve that", etc, a different question entirely (as well as being an illogical connection anyway, see below).

There is a clear culture at work of wanting to sweep difficult political differences under the carpet, or else to try to 'solve' them purely on a legalistic or constitutional level (i.e. administratively or bureaucratically) rather than to genuinely solve them by clear and sharp political divergence and exposure, i.e. by the creative split from incurable reactionariness (analysed below).

And the question to ask is: "Can such a dumbing-down strategy for a 'mass party' win socialism?"

"Can it take a mass movement far enough forward to be on the verge of winning socialism?

"Can it even build a mass movement FOR socialism, using such methods?"

The original conception of Scargill's SLP project was of a centrist movement in which communists could openly participate, and the fight for a Marxist understanding of the modern world crisis be tolerated.

That can still happen, and the EPSR is currently debating an analysis which would still recommend communists everywhere to keep on building the SLP.

But Scargillism's deliberate political decision to try to get the EPSR closed down, and then to expel its editor from the SLP after his recent election as party vice president, has to be considered as an event of some significance.

Scargillism is making a signal statement with this action, — unmistakably so in the light of the utterly trivial ostensible reasons for the expulsion compared to the totally ruthless disruptive all-out opposition to Scargill's leadership which the Heron-Sikorski Trots have kept going for a year and are still stepping up even further even at this minute, — anti-communist sectarian factionalising which then gets treated with kid gloves by Scargillism.

What would have been the point of a 20-year struggle for a method of Marxist-Leninist scientific analysis if, at the moment of richest living experience & rapid change in brand new political phenomena, — that struggle deliberately dumbs itself down into, effectively, non-existence??

Marxism is either a theory of everything or else it is a theory of nothing. Try analysing the world from a British labour movement perspective but with one highly significant factor deliberately missing from the equation (namely Socialist Labour and all the issues it raises and which are currently swirling around it), and it immediately becomes a nonsense analysis. 

People urging the EPS Review to 'be tactical' and row in with Scargillism's wish to see the EPSR dumbed down are people who don't really believe in the fight for theory anyway, or else don't think that the EPSR's contribution to contemporary Marxist-Leninist understanding is really serious or very significant. 

Every issue of the Review which has ever been published is living disproof of that, but this current issue will do as well as any to test this out. It seems obvious Marxist science to stress the CLASS role of policing in a modern capitalist 'democracy', and to draw out from turmoil surrounding the Macpherson report, the uneasiness of all political parties, NGOs, and voluntary bodies engaged in commenting and promising action (all of them basically PC and petty-bourgeois-reformist dominated), — and the sharp and courageous grasp of some of the Black and Asian campaigners in tugging persistently at the 'corruption' link in Met Police lawlessness, — meaning its capitalist system links (see lead story).

It would be important for a potential mass party of socialism to hurtle into action around the furore created by the Lawrence-case report and raise high the banner of CLASS action against the whole of rotten capitalism, and not just for 'race-awareness-training' (a fat lot of good that will do) against its rotten police force.

But the SLP was not visible, and when Socialist News does come out again, it is as likely as not to totally cock-up its coverage as get it right.

Even Lalkar, which has a heroic record of class-war fighting against world imperialism, has just published a brief (for Lalkar) review of the pre-publication leaks of the Macpherson report (acknowledging "institutional racism") but fails itself to bring out the fundamental CLASS question of policing in a capitalist 'democracy' which lies behind every aspect of injustice, brutality, and discrimination, etc. (see lead story).

So no great class war campaigning guidance from Lalkar either, and it will normally be another two months before Lalkar can publish again.

Meanwhile, the Weekly Worker, on some issues usually the more perceptive of the Trot papers of fake middle class 'revolutionism', has completely obscured its own front page Lawrence lead, grasping that capitalist state policing can survive intact the Macpherson 'race awareness' recommendations, and that even the Daily Telegraph now officially condemns "the incontestable evil of racism of every kind", — and grasping that some of the new capitalist state intrusive legal reforms (about what people think and say in private, and what potentially offensive weapons might be around the house) could conceivably be used for yet more harassment of working-class political activists, —  but turning their story into an attack on immigration controls as the best way to answer the 'new black-and-white national chauvinism' which the WW sees Macpherson unleashing via a soon-to-be completely non-racist British police-state machinery.

From the frying pan into the fire.

Correct to grasp that the bourgeois state can survive comfortably being officially anti-racist, and that the Met Police can easily formally embrace Macpherson.

But completely obscure to jump from one non-class and now redundant demand (of a purely reformist character) that the police should be "non-racist", to a completely identical non-class and purely reformist demand that the working class should lay siege to the capitalist state to force it to open its immigration doors to ALL incomers, without regard to any discriminating conditions but also without regard to any numerical limits whatever. 

Clearly, such a demand would severely challenge the tolerance-level of any capitalist state, but it might be just as likely to challenge the tolerance-level of any state in history in certain conditions.

And what is the point of picking on something so obscure, and something likely to arouse less than 0.00001% of working class sympathy. How does the notion of emigrating away from the disasters in other capitalist states inspire the workers in this capitalist state to stay and fight the horrors here with a programme for socialist revolution? It would certainly be far easier to persuade the working class in Britain to overthrow the whole capitalist system here because of the monstrous injustice and elitism that its class exploitation produces, and because of the terrifying slump, tradewar, and warmongering catastrophe which capitalism's incurable crisis of overproduction of capital is soon going to impose on the whole of mankind, just as it did in World Wars I and II, — than it would be to persuade the working class to gird itself up for a class war solely in order to convince the ruling class to reform its immigration controls.

The EPSR's role can equally be justified on the question of Land and Freedom (see subsequent article), the Loach anti-communist film which reached millions of new viewers via TV on Sunday. 

Omitting here the well-aired argument about why the whole of post-1917 Cold war brainwashing must eventually he countered by the mass workers party's own anti-imperialist propaganda, only the EPSR is willing or capable of potentially doing something about it at the present moment and for the foreseeable future. 

Every other publication or party leadership either lacks the grasp, the will, or the ability and capacity to instantly counter all Cold-war brainwashing propaganda in time for the working class to hear the counter-arguments while the issues are still raging. Lalkar could manage it in due course, but would it be willing to resume its attack on Loach's anti-communist distortions of history now that Ken has kindly volunteered his services for the SLP's last election broadcast?

Circumspect decisions on tactics and timing certainly play a valid role in politics, and that debate will run and run in forthcoming EPS Reviews. And the question of how many people does the EPSR reach anyway is also not irrelevant, and will also be discussed at length.

But the matter of telling the truth to the working class, and not misleading it, must come before all other considerations.

All three volumes of 'Capital' cannot be reproduced in every factory leaflet, but deliberately withholding information from workers "because it is not good for them", or "because they don't need to know that", etc, has played a disgraceful role in Revisionism's ultimately disastrous history. Just saying "yes, yes, yes" as a 'circumspect tactic' towards a leadership with a debatable grasp of Marxism, to put it mildly, has played a tragic role in labour-movement history until now, and it can only get worse.

The old CP dumbed down disastrously, for years refusing discussion on burning internal questions in the international movement, or fatuously denying that they existed or were important. So that when Arthur Scargill is reported in Lalkar as telling the Midlands SLP school that:

"Anyone in these circumstances who thinks we should be spending our time having internal discussions about the internal working mechanisms of the party has to be living on another planet". 

Just because elections and other campaigns are going on, — the very worst memories of incompetent and paralysed bureaucracy are summoned up.

It was precisely this school of non-thought which for years told the CP membership "There are no differences at all between Moscow and Peking. At this important moment in the fight for socialism, anyone who thinks that these internal differences are worth discussing has to be living on another planet", etc, etc, ad infinitum.

EVERY burning question slowly throttling the life out of the communist movement was similarly fobbed off.

It is an utterly FALSE premise that is posed to start with, as it was then. What a completely phony 'contradiction' is artificially set up between workers taking the liveliest, healthiest interest possible in seeing that their party is being put into the best order possible, internally and externally, and then going out to actively campaign on the public front-line for the party.

Any fool can see what is happening. The stifling censorship on discussion of what is happening in the party, and the unresolved total MESS in administration and organisation has knocked ALL of the early-on enthusiasm out of vast sections of the party. Scargill's refusal or inability to deliberately LEAD his party into NON-STOP lively discussion of how Trotskyite defeatism, anti-communism, and manipulative factionalism has to be POLITICALLY defeated soundly THROUGHOUT the SLP has resulted in not more activism but a near-complete collapse of activism in many parts of the country.

Political inspiration is the key to solid political activism, but the total political FUDGE dispensed by Scargill, just breeds total frustration, especially in circumstances where Socialist News is deliberately organised to be totally unresponsive to internal party clamour.

And now comes the issue of the deliberate attempt to silence the EPSR's input into SLP affairs. Once again, no discussion anywhere in the party about such a move, and an attempted complete stifling of discussion from the Scargillites. 

The last minute NEC motion rammed through without discussion by a mixture of fraud and bullying deception, it is now obvious. And then the 'complaints procedure' (partly described in last week's Review) which refused all discussion about serious issues of propaganda and education facing the SLP and instead automatically arrived at a prearranged 'expulsion' verdict based on ludicrous trivial 'rule breaking' charges from Scargill which were all shot down in flames.

A discussion of where this demented attempt to recreate 1960s Stalinism leaves the SLP will continue next week. 

Royston Bull

Loach's 'Land and Freedom' completely misrepresents the true history of the Spanish Civil War period, comically exonerating Western fascist-imperialism which master-minded, supplied, and protected the entire military coup and trying to make the tiny volunteer communist resistance responsible for this 'free world' outrage.

The Loach film Land and Freedom shown on national television at the weekend was the classic example of a vicious Cold-War anti-communist diatribe treacherously delivered from the completely fake-'left' position of Trots & Anarchists.

Supposedly attacking "Stalinist murderers and exploiters of the working class", the movie foully miseducates today's viewers via melodramatic scenes of heartwrenching tragedy and 'Stalinist betrayal' at a personal level, — all complete fiction, — and via an outright distortion of the historical background which will leave bourgeois ideological brainwashers who control Western propaganda purring with delight.

Who needs the imperialist police agent George Orwell with his Animal Farm and 1984 when there's Ken Loach?

The infantile 'revolutionary' militia group of Trots and Anarchists (who play such 'jokes' on each other as directing a newcomer towards an attractive woman comrade as 'the trench's whore' who will give a 'good time very cheaply', thus deeply offending both of them (and the viewers too if they had any sense); - and yet who get killed because of arguing so passionately (without taking cover) about whether or not to shoot at fascist soldiers (who are massacring villagers) because they are using a woman as a human shield); — are all only slightly more credible than Dad's Army.

Their vivacious jollity and humanity is contrasted with the self-righteous earnestness of an American volunteer who coldly and woodenly puts up the official CP/International Brigades line in defence of the Popular Front Republican government coalition in Madrid, in support of which the worldwide appeal for help to Spain was launched in the first place, but really only as Aunt Sallies for the fervour of the 'all-out revolution' Trot/Anarchist line to knock down.

This insultingly depicted automaton (bearing in mind that all of these international volunteers gave up ordinary lives in the West to go and face near-certain death to fight internationally-supported fascism in Spain in a completely unequal battle) melodramatically ends up giving just his jackboot to the Spanish Trot heroine as she is shot in the back by the Republic's "Stalinist army" allegedly just for wishing to continue as a freelance militia unit against Franco and Hitler. Buuullshit, as Mel Brooks would say.

It is a film of disgraceful total historical distortions from start to finish, best captured in the concluding sad letter home from Spain, touchingly read 60 years later by a fist-clenching granddaughter, wallowing in nostalgia.

"We could have changed the world, had we won," reads the long dead David's voice. "And we could have won."

Could they really? Has back-stabbing Trotskyite indiscipline and anti-communism ever won anything, — anywhere, —

 anytime??? It was 'Stalinism' which won power in Beijing in 1949 after an epic 20-year civil war and national-liberation war. It was 'Stalinism' which won the revolution in Vietnam and the rest of Indo-China in the 1970s after an even longer period of struggle against even greater and more ruthless imperialist intervention forces and odds which tried to napalm, high-explosive, and chemically defoliate 100 million people back to the Stone Age.

It was 'Stalinism' which ousted fascist regimes all across East Europe. It was 'Stalinism' which overthrew US imperialism's Mafia-stooge Batista in Cuba. Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

And from the Loach logic in Spain, 'Stalinism' nearly bankrupted itself after 1945 trying to help the worldwide anti-colonial national-liberation struggles with fabulous aid and military help and generous scholarships of all kinds for training and education inside the Soviet Union for MILLIONS of international comrades, — all in order to "exploit" all these nations and peoples of the Third World???????

What a sick and outrageous fantasy.

The USSR was the only country on earth to offer serious support to the elected democratic government in Spain facing a Pinochet-type coup by Franco backed by German and Italian imperialism openly, and backed by the rest of imperialism surreptitiously and by default in that Britain, France, the USA, and the rest all pretended to be "refusing supplies to either side" but in reality only making it impossible for the beleaguered democratic government in Madrid to get supplies or international aid, — the fascists being openly backed by Germany and Italy including tanks and bomber squadrons, using German and Italian full-time military pilots, and liberally supplied with aid of all kinds.

The Soviet workers state's position in this outstandingly brave and generous help to Spain (its own economic recovery from the catastrophic devastation of the Great War, the Civil War of the revolution, and the War of intervention which then laid waste the whole of Russia in Europe by the armies of 14 capitalist states (Britain, France, and the USA among them) so that the victorious Bolshevik Revolution should have nothing to build on; and still surrounded by enemies itself) — was precarious.

Aggressive warmongering imperialist reaction was on the march all over the world, fascist brutality breaking out everywhere. German imperialism, industrially and economically three times more powerful than the still puny Soviet workers state, was deliberately being encouraged and built up by the rest of the imperialist powers precisely in order to eventually find an excuse, — any excuse, — to wage invasionary war on the Soviet Union. The Munich sellout of Czechoslovakia by the West, feeding it to German imperialist 'lebensraum' ambitions to conquer East Europe, was taking place about the time of the Loach film action.

One false move by the Soviet Union in Spain, — and the imperialists would have had their 'cause' for all getting together, to back a German imperialist invasion of the USSR.

The imperialist powers had to be kept divided at all costs, from Moscow's point of view, thus delaying a German onslaught to give the Soviet workers state more time to build up its defences and prepare for the most massive war in all human history, which eventually was unleashed on the USSR in June 1941. The Soviet state in Europe was again totally destroyed, and more than 20 million Soviet people perished. But the Soviet main strategy of keeping imperialist powers divided from making a joint attack on the USSR, brilliantly cemented for two further years by the clever 1939 Non-Aggression Pact with German imperialism, was desperately bearing this in mind throughout its Spain involvement from 1936 to 1939.

The grand strategy was for non-stop international propaganda and agitation for a mutual security treaty of all the major powers so as to prevent the drift to war (coincident with the incurable imperialist economic crisis of the 1930s) and avoid the more aggressive imperialist powers (Germany, Japan, Italy) making victims of weaker or smaller countries as an extension of the savage trade war and arms race, and jostling for more international political influence that the powers were all conducting against each other.

This strategy for mutual international security dictated to Moscow that it must be seen in Spain to be only there to aid the legitimate Popular Front government, threatened precisely by international imperialist aggression, backing Franco fascism.

Understandably, Moscow caution led it to frown on 'left' agitation in Spain to transform the Soviet-aided defence of the coalition government (which included business, farming, and other bourgeois class interests) into an anti-capitalist revolution, —  manned, armed, financed, and dominated by the forces of worldwide socialist intervention.

Could Spain's own anti-capitalist forces have taken power anyway, on their own, minus the pro-Soviet workers movement in Spain??? Well, they tried, which is what the film was about and it was a monumental laughable failure, and has NEVER succeeded anywhere else in the world either. No workers-revolution with an anti-Soviet tinge or history has ever taken place, anywhere, anytime.

Was it just because of 'Stalinist betrayal' that this 'revolution that never was' failed to get off the ground?? 

But the question	 is pointlessly unreal. The policy of the Spanish Communist Party (and of the international communist movement) was what it was, and those class forces (which dominated the labour movement everywhere), had built up their own standing in the world. It makes sense to critically review the Third International's own assessment of the international balance of class and national forces, and of its tactical decisions about its own strengths and strategic possibilities.

But it makes nonsense to claim historical seriousness or judgements about what use might tiny groups of confused and ill-disciplined Trots and Anarchists have made of the Third International's forces in Spain. It was never remotely a realistic prospect, and is even less interesting than the local pub bore's views about who should be in the next England football team, and why, etc.

Moscow's supposed 'treacherous crimes against humanity' are a total nonsense from start to finish. Policy decisions were made and enforced under the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is the only notion Marxist-Leninist science has ever conceived of for taking civilisation from the total chaos of imperialist revolutionary war crisis to the socialist/communist society of the future; carefully built for and educated for under the strictest workers-state discipline against all kinds of regularly recurring petty bourgeois ideological indiscipline and irresponsible activity, such as eventually undermined the Soviet workers state, bringing back the capitalist counter-revolution).

Wrong or bad decisions there may have been, and the EPSR has voiced many criticisms of Soviet history and will return to them repeatedly. But 'crimes against humanity' is a concept utterly irrelevant to a Marxist-Leninist analysis for a more successful REVOLUTIONARY understanding of world developments than Moscow eventually came up with. 

It is a concept of born middle class losers who have never willed a serious revolutionary attitude towards stable Western 'democratic' society in their life.

What was the political record of this bunch of Trots and Anarchists that Loach presents for our admiration? They didn't have one. Most self-respecting workers in the 1930s did have splendid records of anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggle.

What was to be the political future of this rabble? Loach doesn't say. He doesn't care. He just wants to present a bunch of 'free spirits' who can play at war for a while and shout out "Stalinist bastards" for cinematic effect in the well-fed Western imperialist boom of the 1990s (but in fact utterly corrupt, falsely 'democratic', and totally doomed).

The Spanish Civil War was above all in history a world-shaking event of unbelievable and unprecedented imperialist ferocity in which the fascist military coup in Spain carried out such barbaric massacres, torture, and slaughter as to seriously make Pinochet's reign of terror in Chile after 1973 look almost feebly mild by comparison, and in which the German imperialist air-bombing blitzkrieg of Guernica and other defenceless Spanish towns was the deliberate warning to the rest of the world to appease German revanchism or face the penalty, which duly happened, — forewarning of the indescribable slaughter and genocide to come in World War II. 

It was the most significant dress rehearsal for bourgeois-democracy system degeneracy and savagery that could be imagined, full of enormous political significance for all imperialist-powers' conduct of the future, such as the Pinochet coup in Chile, and countless HUNDRED other reactionary coups like it since the 1930s.

And what does the 'left' Loach make of it all, given capitalist money to make a Western-oriented film?

Present the whole Spanish Civil War and the whole historical period as nothing but a record of a few grubby little 'human rights' crimes, all completely fictional, committed by some 'nasty Stalinists', (i.e. ordinary workers volunteering their lives to defeat fascism), thus spoiling the pathetic fantasies of a bunch of indisciplined Trots and Anarchists playing war games.

Given the overall CP strategy, it is just making cheap points for Loach to create a film set-up lecturing the 'Stalinists' on the socialist merits of land collectivisation. Loach would be better employed teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. 

The same with every other cheap point-scoring trick such as the official government coalition forces not allowing women in the front line. It was the Soviet-workers state which alone pioneered genuine work-emancipation for women in history, — doctors, engineers, scientists, cosmonauts, etc, and women partisan fighters behind German imperialist lines, — not any other society.

Loach's totally amateurish and cynical view of politics in reality (in other words he is not seriously committed to a political struggle at all) came right out with his heroine's bollocks remark getting out of the shower: "I want to forget politics and betrayals today; I want to feel human for a change". 

This Loach-approved scepticism and contempt for political struggle is shown again when the hero cannot put two thoughts together in argument against Republican recruits in a café and tries thumping them instead. His sad stuff about 'Stalinist torture chambers' on the Republican side, presented without the slightest attempt at historical authentication, was the most cynical sheer irresponsibility.

There are some genuinely serious question marks over Third International policy in this period such as the failure to assess fascism's full menace in Germany (not repeated in Spain), 	and the linked tendency to agitate for an international security pact against imperialist aggression implying that 'peace' could in fact prevail, — an illusion sown again in the postwar anti-nuclear movements.

In the long run, imperialist crisis will ALWAYS lead to war sooner or later, and Stalinist misleadership and mistakes on some crucial theoretical questions has a lot to answer for in the ultimate degenerate reformist debacle of most Western communist parties, and, of course, in the ultimate self-liquidation of the Soviet workers state (dictatorship of the proletariat) by stagnant Soviet bureaucratic complacency.

The EPS Review has alone produced a forward-looking creative analysis of contemporary history, without which serious political mass movement back towards the fight for socialism is impossible.

Build Leninism. RB

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(Edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Black propaganda agents gear up

The chief obstacle to progress has been and always will be the hard-line unionists who simply refuse to share power, or anything else for that matter with the the nationalist community.

Unionists want the status quo. Don’t change a thing. Don’t touch that dial. That’s why the words uttered by Gerry Adams more than five years ago need once again to be taken out, dusted off and hung up like a banner.

Everyone say it out loud -The British government must act as a persuader - thank you very much.

The British government has to tell the unionists— Look, here’s the deal, in 20 years, we’ll be out of this place - no British Army bases, no British Army guns, no British Army soldiers, no British funds - and it’s time you got used to it.

Unionists know what’s happening. Ian Paisley, for all his buffoonery, has been right all along. The Brits are going to get out and Dublin will one day be the capital. Adams’ fifteen years to a united Ireland’ probably isn’t too much off the mark; it fits a 20-year plan nicely, seeing that the process began a little over five years ago.

But the key to all this happening is the formation of the new executive and that’s got to happen pretty soon or the whole thing could collapse.

That’s exactly what the unionists hope will happen. If it does, they’ll simply blame it on the IRA - no matter where the fault rests.

The unionists feel pretty safe. British troop levels are not much different than a few years ago; the Royal Ulster Constabulary is still plenty strong, plenty bigoted and plentifully supplied with British weapons; and if a few innocent people buy the farm to save the province, it’s acceptable. Been there, done that.

In short, unionists know what needs to be done to scuttle this (remember Sunningdale in 1974) and they’ll use every excuse to convince people that no good can come from allowing Sinn Féin in the game.

We’ve already seen the desperate attempt by the RUC to paint itself as a regular police force.

The RUC failed in its efforts in the U.S. to convince even the grandest of supporters of the British crown that they are doing a good job. No editorials in the ‘royal press in the U.S.’ Nothing in the New York Times or the Murdoch Post.

The odd editorial supporting early IRA decommissioning has popped up, but the meat of the message betrays a lack of understanding and a lack of commitment.

Last week the Baltimore Sun ran an editorial that was certainly British-government-inspired, although it had enough errors in it to make one wonder why they wasted the time pasting it up.

Among other errors of fact, it claimed the new Six-County executive would have 12 seats, and that the IRA had been welcomed on the council. This sort of half-hearted support can be expected as the unionist hold on Ireland further slips.

The black propaganda folks will be working hard in the coming weeks. They’ve already focused on what’s being called the dramatic rise in paramilitary punishment beatings. This is to take attention away from other beatings - like the one that resulted in the death of Robert Hamill in Portadown, not 20 yards from a police car filled with uniformed members of the recently reformed RUC.

James Clarity of the New York Times has been at it again, adding wit and wisdom to the process. The man who saw nothing new in the first ever meeting of Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party at a 1995 Fordham University debate, just spend a fortune and a few thousand words explaining the language of ‘Ulster.’

He objects to Catholics referring to themselves as nationalist and Protestants referring to themselves as unionists. It would be much simpler for Mr. Clarity if everyone was just labelled by religion - and it would fit the British line the Times has championed for 30 years, that this is a religious war.

So keep your head about you out there and get on with writing letters and phoning your local editors - especially the next time they run one of those 300-word works of fiction submitted by Shawn Pogatchnik at the Associated Press.

Don’t let the Brits or the Orangemen - or the lovers of the English royal family on the editorial boards of America's major dailies - screw this peace thing up. You have a right to say how you want this to turn out.

If you like, clip this column and send it along to them. Let them know in no uncertain terms, it’s united Ireland or nothing. •

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(Edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

The snail's-pace British imperialist retreat from colonial-occupied Ireland in the face of unbeatable national-liberation struggle, opening the door to reunification, creeps forward inch-by-inch.

IT WAS certainly not the stormy week some had predicted it would be. However, the flurry of meetings, Assembly debates and political statements transformed this week into one of the most decisive of the Peace process.

The vote held on Tuesday was a further milestone on the path towards the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. The dynamics born during these past few days have to now be a motor for a long-awaited change.

The events that unfolded between Monday and Wednesday are not only a mere step forward. They may yet prove to be determinant in bringing forward the global process aimed at ending British occupation of the Six Counties.

The first determinant event of the week was the vote held in the Assembly on the Final Document that outlines the structures of the Assembly Executive posts, the All-Ireland Ministerial Council, the All-Ireland bodies and the Civic Forum.

The vote, endorsed by 77 members of the Assembly proved that the support for the Good Friday Agreement is not only secure. The vote further marked the third and most significant defeat of the No-camp.

The vote, by the positive dynamics it has enhanced, also signals the end of the anti- and pro-agreement politics. The Assembly members, having voted in favour of one of the most crucial documents of the peace process, must now be focused and act together to ensure that the will of the people, through the mandate of the various patties, be fully respected.

More importantly, the vote lifted the last technical obstacle to the setting-up of the Assembly Executive. It "cleared the undergrowth" and proved that David Trimble, whatever difficulties he faces, has the support of two-thirds of the Assembly to proceed in implementing the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement.

The onus is now on him to show resolute leadership and stand by his commitments. In light of the opinions expressed by an overwhelming majority of the Assembly members, he has no other choice but to recognise Sinn Féin’s electoral and democratic mandate by accepting the fact that there is no precondition to the setting-up of an inclusive Executive.

The vote, by lifting the last technical obstacle to the implementation of some of the most substantial chapters of the Good Friday Agreement, also puts the responsibility on the shoulders of the British and Irish governments. Mo Mowlam can no longer cave in to unionist stalling tactics. The vote is a minor of the will of a vast majority of the people of the island.

The British Secretary of State must therefore immediately issue the standing orders which will trigger the d’Hondt system. It will then be up to the Presiding officer of the Assembly to call the different parties to choose their departments, of which two will go to Sinn Féin ministers.

Mo Mowlam can no longer stand back and content herself by congratulating the Assembly members tor the ‘progress reached'. She and the Dublin government have now to stand by the pledges they have made to the people of this island and trigger the setting-up of the Assembly executive.

The second most significant development was the first ever meeting between high-profile Sinn Féin and Ulster Unionist Party delegations. On Wednesday, for over an hour and a half, — members of the two parties outlined their different positions.

This historic meeting that Sinn Féin has requested for a long time was a key development and highlighted the new political landscape that has emerged as a result of the Good Friday Agreement.

In the past weeks, republicans have acknowledged the difficulties that unionism is facing. However, 'the latest developments have also signalled that David Trimble can no longer apply obstructionist and stalling tactics to a peace process that has been endorsed by a vast majority of the people of the island of Ireland.

At this stage in the process, difficulties and challenges are not relevant to only one tradition of Irish or British politics. They are shared. These difficulties can be overcome with the new positive dynamics that have emerged and the focus of all the parties must be to implement the Agreement in full. Sinn Féin has so tar stood by its commitments. It is more vital than ever that the unionists recognise this and act to implement the Agreement in full.

The meeting between Sinn Féin and the Church and Government Committee of the Presbyterian church was a further important development. This meeting, held at Stormont with the current and previous moderators of the Presbyterian Church, was a result of years of grassroots meetings and mirrored the anti-sectarian philosophy of the republican movement.

After these developments, the plucking-out of one particular issue of the Agreement has to end. David Trimble and the unionists have so far focused on the issue of decommissioning. Yet, David Trimble has done nothing to prevent the wave of sectarian violence directed at nationalists.

The residents of the Garvaghy Road and the potential victims of the thousands of legally held unionist and loyalist weapons have again been sidelined by unionists, loyalists, as well as some elements of the SDLP.

As Gerry Adams stated after the meeting with David Trimble, the issue of decommissioning has to be dealt with within the terms of the agreement and the mechanisms of the agreement. The respect of both, the spirit and letter of the historical Agreement depends on this.

Since the late 1960s, the rising expectations of the nationalist community has forced the British government into a process of renegotiating its relationship with nationalism and unionism. At this state of the peace process, unionism gives a clear impression of being on the retreat

However/unionism has signed up to a political agreement where it has finally conceded equality of political power with Six County nationalists and which introduces an all-Ireland dimension to political affairs. David Trimble’s delaying tactics are symptomatic of its inability to negotiate change.

The onus is now on the British government and unionism to face up to commitments made through the Good Friday Agreement It is time to prove that David Trimble, as a leader of the Unionist tradition, can handle the absence of conflict or the negotiating process.

It is time that the principle of equality is respected. David Trimble, the British and Irish governments must respect the voice of the nationalist community. The can be no more artificial delay of the setting-up of the Assembly Executive, All-Ireland Ministerial Council and the formation of the various All-Ireland bodies. There can be no more exclusion of Sinn Féin.