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as lully nt ch rs' ice nd nd It was not 'un-American' to oppose Reagan's budget cuts.

There was no mention of any solidarity with international struggles, and some march organisers tried to squeeze out groups with 'political' slogans such as those many which called for the US to get out of El Salvador.

AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland and other union leaders are participants in US imperialism and anti-communism in a more naked way than their equivalents in Britain.

Even Len Murray would not call on 250,000 workers in an anti-government demonstration to stand and sing the national anthem - but that is what happened on September 19 in Washington.

The one international struggle which made itself felt strongly in the demonstration, however, was the workers' movement in The AFL-CIO leaders had their own anticommunist reasons for bour Franklin D. Roosevelt the Democratic Party.

After World War 2, there was another labour upsurge, with a huge strike wave in 1946-7. But once again repression - McCarthyism -followed by boom, set back the movement.

Dignitv

Now new opportunities are opening up for an awakening * of American labour.

The US's world supremacy is rapidly decaying. Its economy is slumping and stagnating. Colonial liberation struggles have roused the US's black population to a new sense of their dignity and power. Women in the US are more confident to fight for their rights. And the Vietnam war has shaken up the whole political structure. After Solidarity Day, the fight is on for a labou party to overthrow imperialism in its chief stronghold. boosting Solidarnosc, but it was clear that thousands of rank and file workers identified strongly with the workers of Poland.

The Washington Post the next day said quite baldly that 'The protest was inspired by the Polish workers' movement".

That was a bit oversimplified. But the Polish inspiration was everywhère to be seen, on T-shirts, placards and banners which drew out every possible visual and political parailel between Solidarity and Solidarnosc.

The AFL-CIO did make a real effort to link their protest with the fight against racial and sexual discrimination.

Composition

The leaders of the main reformist black and women's organisations, the NAACP, the Urban League and the National Organisation of Women, all spoke from the platform.

But more important than that was the composition of the demonstration itself, which included a very high proportion of black and women trade unionists.

The broad and representative base of this vast demonstration may already have begun to have an impact on US politics.

Two days after it, congressional leaders told the White House that Reagan's latest $16 billion additions to the budget cuts for 1982 will not pass Congress.

If that is true, it will be the first reversal in Reagan's long line of good fortune.

Will US labour leaders now use the power of the movement they head to make this reversal real turning point?

If not there will be far more than a quarter of a million people who will want to know the reason ACHED ON THE problem of maintaining the exploitation and oppression of the masses in the neo-colonial countries is a growing headache for. the Reagan administration.

Coming to office as the sabre-rattling cold warriors, pledged to exterminate revolutionary movements Central America, Africa and elsewhere and make the world safe for capitalism, his government has found real life more complicated than the simplistic plots of Reagan's old movies.

Nowhere is this more true than in the 'test case' of Central America.

After six months of mounting economic, political and military commitment to supporting the vicious junta in El Salvador, Reagan's advisors survey a scene in which the liberation forces of the Ignored: Haig FMLN guerrilla command now control twice as much territory as they did before, and have suffered no serious defeat since early 1981.

Worse still, the militaryChristian Democratic junta of Napoleon Duarte has been openly opposed by the governments of France and Mexico. They have issued a joint statement recognising the opposition coalition as a "representative political force" with whom they urge negotiations.

"I personally think we've lost El Salvador," one gloomy official told Newsweek magazine two weeks ago.

Worse

Since then things have got worse. The Senate, convinced that in backing Duarte's flagging junta Reagan is throwing good money after bad, voted last Thursday to cut military aid until Reagan certifies that the regime is "protecting human rights', moving to control the armed forces, and implement other reforms.

Since the junta's tenuous grip on power rests precisely upon wholesale intimidation of the working class in the towns through right wing murder squads, and the slaughter, mass arrest and illtreatment of peasants in the countryside, the Senate's request is beyond Duarte's scope.

The death squads are attached to the armed forces. In the first two weeks of July they slaughtered no less than 316 people - mostly men between the ages of 16-35.

In the province of San Vicente, where FMLN forces recently stood their ground and fought off an attack by the army, the junta has engaged in wholesale slaughter - pouring 105mm and 120mm shells into unprotected villages.

Talk of arranging "elections" in the future has been followed up by the stipulation that parties should each present the names and addresses of 3,000 members in order to qualify for the ballot - an open invitation for the right wing death squads to wipe out prominent leftists!

Meanwhile Salvadorean army chief Gutierrez has been on a visit to the vicious Uruguayan dictatorship, stopping over in Chile to present El Salvador's highest military medal to General Pinochet. And it has become clear that the Salvador National Guardsmen responsible for the much publicised slaughter of four American nuns will be released without trial by the end of the year.

In throwing his full resources — a colossal $126.5 million in 'economic aid' and $35 million in military aid -behind this butcher regime Reagan has painted himselt into a corner.

Without this material support, the junta's days are numbered. Yet Duarte's other main backers are a bloodstained gang of dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras and Brazil, together with pro-Us "democracies" in Colombia, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Hardly a plausible group of guarantors of "human rights"!

Elsewhere in Central America, too, Reagan's plans are in crisis. The brutal regime in Guatemala which Reagan would like to bolster with added cash, continues a daily slaughter, torture and repression of opponents that has seen it branded as the most repressive regime in the world.

Attempts by Secretary of State Alexander Haig to prod the Guatemalan junta into adopting a more respectable public face with offers of military aid have met no response.

In Panama, the death of pro-US dictator Omar Torrijos has brought to office Aristides Royo, who has denounced the US role in furnishing "arms, training, technical and logistical assistance and war material" to the junta in El Salvador.

In Costa Rica the formerly pliable government has run into acute economic crisis following the slump in coffee prices: yet Reagan's refusal to offer economic assistance offers the regime little room for manoeuvre.

As Reagan's diplomaticmilitary house of cards falls apart in Central America, however, there is an ominous warning that imperialism is preparing to take desperate action.

Manoeuvres

Joint US-NATO manoeuvres under the title "Ocean Venture 81" have been taking place in the Caribbean in what appears to be a dress rehearsal of an invasion of the island of Grenada.

The petty bourgeois nationalist regime in Grenada, headed by Prime Minister Maurice Bishop has formally protested at the exercises, pointing out the reasons why they regard them as a threat to the island:

"1. The country subject to invasion in the manoeuvre is code named Amber and the Amberdines which clearly refer to Grenada and its sister islands in the Grenadines, namely Carriacou Petit Martinique. FMLN guerrillas in training 2. An amphibious landing of forces took place on the South-eastern tip of Vieques. There is in fact an area on the Southern tip of Grenada called Amber which is in close proximity to a security zone and the site of the new International Airport.

3. Vieques like Grenada has a mountainous terrain. A combat unit of "rangers" pecially trained for warfar in such rugged conditior was used in the manoeuvres , 4. As part of the manouvre, the 75th Ranger Battalion was flown from the Norton Air Base in California, non-stop to Vieques, covering approximately the same distance needed to attack Grenada.

5. The reasons for invasion of the islands code named Amber and the Amberdines are similar t propaganda themes used by the Reagan administration against Grenada. These are:

al to take power from the Amber government, which is described as "un. friendly".

b) To station troops in the island until an election is called.

c) To install a government favourable to Washing. ton's brand of democracy."

The Reagan war-machine is not invincible: but neither is it being constructed simply for show. Still less is it being constructed simply to pose a threat to the Soviet Union.

The workers' movement must be prepared to combat the open use of US military force in an effort to prop up tottering dictatorships and a system of cruel exploitation.

Reagan's America is belligerent, bullying imperialist power: only the revolutionary action of the working class in the USA and internationally can end such aggression.

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Tony Benn's proposal for a British national liberation movement is - as we shall see - a proposal to turn away from socialism as the immediate goal of the struggle against Thatcher, and towards a new Labour government which will essentially be like those that have gone before. He does nat seem to recognise this, and for sure his rank and LIBERATION?

EEC headauarters: imperialist partnership, or conspiracy arainst the British working class?

Varional liberation' in the rich capitalist countries is an old line of the Stalinists. This Freet CP poster says: "I love my country - so I'm joining the French Communist file labour movement supporters do not.

That is why we must pay careful attention to and promote discussion on it in the movement. Tony Benn promises that his proposals will liberate 'colonial' Britain. But, as we saw, they cannot - even if Britain comes out of the EEC.

And the whole project leads away from socialism, away from working-class internationalism, away from the task of 'Tefounding the Labour Representation Committee' on a better political basis, and Socialist Organiser has argued that the labour movement needs to arm itself with the perspective of an immediate struggle to replace the Thatcherites, Labour government, but with workers' government - a government militantly committed the WUIKLE Class. responsive to the labour movement. and.

extent, under its the great importance of the Labour Party reforms like re-selection of MPs and democratic election of the leadership s that they are steps to making thi possible. We have fought for Labour Part (and labour movement) democracy in the spirit that they are central to gaining what we need above all else now - a working class answer to demolition-squad Toryism, a workers' government that may open the road to socialist revolution.

However, not possible in an economically isolated Britain. It is not on go in re was old ring op a MOSSAC HoW It never will be possible. only go a limited way towards setting up a stable working-class alternative to capital. ism if the revolution remained isolated, co confined • Is as essential to be clear on this n the need to fight now for a worker government. Otherwise we get everything late struggle out oi the socialist success or the rich workers' struggle completely out of perspective.

Socialism is international, not national Socialism is a system in which the basis of capitalism has been superseded and suppressed - in which, that is, wage-labour exploitation will be overthrown together with its historical twin, private ownership of the means of production and exchange (including ownership by a state which is 'owned' by another class and acts as its agent or 'locum'). Profit, the regulator and goal of capitalism, will be replaced as the economic mainspring by planned production according to the needs of the people.

For the working class to take power and control out of the hands of the ruling class is necessary and decisive, but it not sufficient for the creation of socialism. Socialism is only possible on the basis of the great progressive achievement of capitalism in history — the development of the forces oi production.

Socialism as an ideal is, after all, thousands of years old. The Marxist perspective of socialism presupposes the possibility that the means of production, havine been taken out of the hands of the ruling class, can be reorganised to provide abundance of at least the staples of life for everyone.

Only on that basis can the spontaneous division and re division of society into classes of oppressors and oppressed, owners and chattels, lords and serfs, owners and wage slaves, exploiters and exploited, be eliminated. The organisation of society on formally socialist lines amid economic backwardness would inevitably see the suzence of such divisions - as Marx put i all the vid • =2 =Il intably re.

Ruse I 191° became DOt rIpe loI socialism. The icInE Di DonE. in Russia was seen by the Bolsheviks as the first act in the world, or at least the EuroA new crusade for 'national liberation' - that is what Tony Benn proposes as the radical mission of the labour move ment in his recent article 'Britain as a Colony'. Through US domination and entry into the EEC, Britain, he argues has itself become a colony.

In this third part of a discussion article, John O Mahony argues that the radical-sounding rhetoric would in fact lead to 'a new version of Labour's subordination to the national interest'.

Mecha, Pour

The Europe alie ou Parti Cranesen 45005 ms "No to a German Europe"

the world aconomy develonad ty capitalison, seized, democratically planned and a new lease of life and re-knit an international economy, pulline down the tariff ¡dea of a retreat to a nationally self-sufficient economy is a nonsense. To set it as a goal is necessarily to opt for something other than working-class socialism.

Today, socialism is possible on the basis of the existing level of the British economy. But Britain's economy is completely enmeshed in the world economy and (by many extra ties) in the European economy. It is sheer illusion that there exists such a thing as British economy apart from these arteries, nerves and sinews of the world economy which feed the British economy, take off its products, and in the final analysis regulate British industry as a whole could not exist for a mere British market. If it declines under pressure of EEC competition, then it would also decline if the major links with the world economy were severed or attenuated to wall off competitive pressures.

What could a British socialist workers' government do about reorganising the economy? What could it do about the EEC, IMF, international capitalist companies, etc? It could expropriate the British bourgeoisie and capitalist assets in Britain. Through state control, it could manipulate trade and the pressures of capitalism in the interests of the working class.

However, if a British workers' state were isolated, the cost in economic and social terms of severing its existing economic links would be tremendous. The possibilitv of a qualitative économic advance beyond _capitalism would be pushed back and probably disappear for the duration of Britain's isolation.

In fact, though, it is highly improbable that the British workers' state would remain isolated. The general conditions that would lead to revolution in Britain would be sufficiently similar throughout Europe to make wider movements possible. And in any case, if the British workers were the first to take power (something not at all preordained), it would be an inspiration to the workers of France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, and so on.

The prospect of socialism in Britain, in the most minimal sense, would depend on the movement catching and spreading in Europe.

Why Benn's proposals US our 30p plus postage fsom 28 Middle Lane, London N8 * Britain is an imperialist country, with ig overseas investments, and a semi-colonil relationship with many countries. It is till one of the ten leading countries in the rorld.

* Voluntary agreements entered into y the ruling class, like the EEC and the IS allance, do not make such a country 'colony'. These are the results not of armal surrenders of rights, but of the real hanges in the economic weight of imperlist Britain. The basic relationships will ot and cannot be reversed or seriously hanged to Britain's advantage as a result f formal political, institutional changes ithin the bourgeois order.

Benn confuses Britain's formal relaonship to the EEC with the basic condit›ns which led to those arrangements. He rinks the EEC links create the weakness, 'hereas it was the weakness that led -litially against the ruling class's will - to le links.

* It is possible to describe Britain as a blony of the EEC, rather than perhaps ird partner in ten, trom one pout oi ew onlv - that of British nationalism. » which British separateness is a supreme Dal.

* The thoroughgoing reorganisation of ur society under workers' democratic ower and workers' direct control, with a emocratically operated collectivised conomy replacing capitalism with its rofit mainspring - that is the mínimum ondition for even the beginning of a generation of the British economy. In le foreseeable future anything less would e tinkering with it.

We need a workers' government. Such government would of course not let the EC, IMF, etc. stand in its way.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 1 October 1981 Pare 10 -Battle of ideas SOCIALISM - OR NATIONAL

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