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Fra International Socialism (1st series) nr. 36

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Editorial: Incomes Policy

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‘Industrial relations are in a bad way and will not be improved unless the trade-union leadership is subjected to heavy pressure.’ (Andrew Schonfield, member of the Donovan Commission, quoted in The Observer, 19th January 1969.)
Ever since the British ruling class began discussing ‘incomes policy’ seriously, it has been clear that legislation restricting the right to strike must follow. The White Paper (humorously entitled In Place of Strife) is therefore no surprise. Its proposals make sense in relation to the government’s general wage-freeze strategy.

Editorial: Students

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Few people on the Left still question the significance of the present upsurge of student militancy. Originating only three years ago in Berkeley it has already transformed the political scene in its spread from campus to campus. It has not so much leapt national boundaries as ignored them; the same slogans are taken up everywhere (often with their foreign origin not even concealed in the literal translation); a common vocabulary links Prague and Paris, Berkeley and Warsaw, Tokyo and the LSE.

Ibrahim Ali: Survey: Palestine: Guerilla Organisations

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On February 1st 1969 the new Palestine National Assembly was convened in Cairo to discuss means of unifying Palestinian guerilla activities. At a previous preliminary meeting Al Fatah was allocated thirty three seats, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine twelve, the Vanguards of the Popular Liberation War twelve, the PLO Executive eleven, the PLA five, the Palestine National Fund one, the Student, Trade Union and Women’s Federations three, and twenty eight independent members to be appointed by the guerilla organisations. The PFLP and the PLA delegations did not attend.

Nigel Harris: Survey: Pakistan: Feb. 14

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For the first time in its history, the regime of Ayub Khan looks very close to collapse. The continuous opposition within the country throughout Ayub’s rule has at long last achieved a wider movement. In the past, the opposition has been fragmentary, isolated and often regionalised. In particular, this opposition has been generated in East Pakistan, separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory from the capital in the West.

LO (Lutte Ouvrière, Frankrig): Survey: France: Results and Prospects

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On January 31st a public meeting was held in Paris, organised by Rouge and Lutte Ouvrière, on the theme Building the Revolutionary Party. Some 4,500 people attended. A joint communique at the end stated that the numbers and enthusiasm of the audience showed ‘The desire of these revolutionary students and militants to see the different tendencies of the far Left undertaking, everywhere possible, joint work with the aim of working towards a united front or even a common organisation of all revolutionaries’.

Martin Glaberman: Survey: Detroit (The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement)

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The first major stage has ended for a new form of black organisation based on black industrial workers. The organisation is the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and is made up of black workers at the Hamtramck Assembly plant, formerly Dodge Main, of the Chrysler Corporation. Hamtramck is an industrial suburb completely within the city limits of Detroit. Both the town and the plant were for many years overwhelmingly Polish. Now the plant is 70 per cent black but the union local (UAW Local 3), the plant management and lower supervision, and the Hamtranick city administration is essentially Polish.

Martin Shaw: Survey: LSE: Lockout and After

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On 24th January the students at the London School of Economics tore down steel gates erected to control sit-ins and occupations, bringing on themselves a three and a half week closure of the School in which police and law courts were used by the LSE authorities against the students. Although the authorities have now been forced to open the college, legal and disciplinary action is still (at the beginning of March) under way against some staff and students. Students are still faced with a long fight against these measures.

Jim Kincaid: Survey: Welfare: Pensions Plans

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After many promises, the government’s major review of social security which began in 1964 came to eventual fruition in a White Paper on old age pensions which appeared in January 1969. Never was reformism so creeping. The higher pensions proposed will not come fully into effect until 20 years after the inception of the new scheme – i.e. probably not before 1992. No one who is over the age of 42 will get a fully matured earnings related pension. No proposals are made for alleviating the poverty of existing pensioners.

Duncan Hallas: Survey: Teachers

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When in February, a special conference of the National Union of Teachers voted by 130,000 to 90,000 to accept the employer’s final salaries offer it voted to accept, without protest, a cut in real wages for the majority of its members. The increase offered and accepted was 6 per cent on the basic scale to operate from 1st April 1969 until 31st March 1971. A 9 per cent increase was needed to restore the purchasing power of the basic scale to the level of 1st April 1967!

Tony Cliff: On Perspectives

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On May 22, 1968, the French Prime Minister, Pompidou, told the national assembly: “Nothing will ever be exactly the same.” Today such a statement sounds platitudinous. We shall continue to work and struggle in the glow of the French May events. Just as between 1789 and 1848, the imagery – the personnel, the dramatic events of the first French Revolution – were the terms of reference of all revolutionaries and when one reads Lenin or Plekhanov prior to 1905, the events of 1848 and 1871 are central in evaluating the current events in Russia decades later, so France 1968 will be central to the analysis of the tasks and perspectives of revolutionaries in advanced industrial societies in the years to come.
What is necessary, however, is not a euphoric generalisation about the great days of May and June 1968, but a sober analysis of the lessons of those events.

Letter to Readers

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This is our first attempt to produce IS bimonthly. This should enable us both to publish more material and to link what we publish to the current concerns of revolutionary activists. We hope that the enlarged Survey section in particular will play a role here.

Chris Gray + John Palmer: Ireland and the British Left

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For some years now the defenders of British Imperialism have asserted that the ‘Irish question’ – the problem of Ireland’s relationship with Britain – was essentially solved by the 1921 Treaty, which divided Ireland into two halves and created, on the One hand, an ostensibly independent ‘Free State’ comprising twenty six counties, and, on the other, ‘Northern Ireland’ comprising the remaining six counties, an integral part of the United Kingdom possessing its own local autonomy.

Dave Purdy: Prospects for British Capitalism

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The road to socialism is paved with bad predictions. Cautious realism and millenarian optimism tend to succeed each other in the socialist movement in a way which is itself almost predictable, in as much as this political prognostication cycle seems to be inversely related to currently held intuitions about the economic prospects for Western capitalism.

Michael Kidron: Maginot Marxism: Mandel’s Economics

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Mandel’s "Economics" is a Marxist failure. It is unsure of the central capitalist dynamic. It evades the essentials of the system as it operates today. It is more concerned with defending Marx’s categories of analysis than with applying them. In consequence, it does little damage to the system intellectually or, by derivation, in practice.

Ian Birchall: Lukacs as Literary Critic

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The publication of "Goethe and his Age" is a welcome addition to the works of Georg Lukacs available in English. If Marxism is to offer an acceptable world-view to a new generation, the need for works of theory to embrace fields such as literature is very great, and Lukacs’ work can help to break down the deep parochialism of the British Left. At the same time Lukacs’ literary writings contain many weaknesses associated with his political acceptance of Stalinism.

Peter Sedgwick: Review: The French May ...

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André Barjonet: La Révolution Trahie de 1968
Tony Cliff and Ian Birchall: France: The Struggle Goes On
Edgar Morin, Claude Lefort, Jean-Marc Coudray: Mai 1968: La Brèche
Partisans, special issue (No 42): Ouvriers, Erudiants: Un Seul Combat
Angelo Quattrochi and Tom Nairn: The Beginning of the End: France May 1968
Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville: French Revolution 1968

James Higgins: Review: Morning Star

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History of the Communist Party of Great Britain: Vol 1 Formation and Early Years 1919-1924
James Klugman
Lawrence and Wishart, 63s.

Nigel Harris: Review: Foundation and Empire

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Industry and Empire, An economic history of Britain since 1750
E.J. Hobsbawm, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 50s.
+ The Development of British Industry and Foreign Competition, 1875-1914
Derek H. Aldcroft (ed.), Allen and Unwin, 60s.

Stephen Marks: Review: Student Theory

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Education, Capitalism and the Student Revolt
Chris Harman, Dave Clark, Andrew Sayers, Richard Kuper, Martin Shaw
IS, 1968 4s 6d

Books Received

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