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n-Marxist studies also pression and Inus nure re much to teach us oppression of women? THE WEAKNESS of certain sections of the movement is reflected by increasing resort to the arbitration boards and industrial tribunals, as can be seen from Socialist Organiser no.63.

I have no wish to criticise Pete Cresswell without being aware of the detailed circumstances of the Liverpool typists' strike, but 1 hope Pete will agre e that the job of socialists is to fight against resort t • arbitration, whether the suggestion comes from leaders, the bosses, or the workers themselves.

Reinforce Arbitration provides not only a way out for the waverers and the union bureaucrats. It reinforces central ideas of joint interest between bosses and trade unIN REPLY to Les Hearn's appeal on this Letters Page for discussion on 'patriarchy' ', I outlined a criticism of that concept lor at least of one main interpretation of it:.

We could learn something if comrades who disagree with that criticism told us why they think it is wrong. But Les Hearn and Dave Spencer (Letters, Socialist Organiser no.67)

simply raise an outcry against me "laying down the I am supposed to show an "extraordinarily complacent" attitude to the theoretical problems. Dave Spenclist to indicate what theoretical light Marxism has shed on women's His sarcasm is ill-founded. Revolutionary Marxism has been the only theoretMB NOW!

LAST September and October the British Medical Journal carried a series of very useful articles on 'Medicine and the Bomb' , by Jane Smith and Terry Smith. :

The first article described the probable effects of a one megaton bomb (equivalent to one million tons of TNT)

exploding 2000 metres above BMA House.

This is fairly modest by today's standards, but is still 80 times larger than the lonists, and the existence ot 'objective' standards of fairness which can be discovered by 'independent' functionaries - ideas which ultimately bind the workers to the employers' interests, whatever short-term successes are achieved.

Centrally, it hinders the workers from realising that their own independent strength is all that can be relied upon, and channels ical tradition to maintain and integrate the basic ideas of women's liberation continuously since their origins in the 19th century.

No classic Marxist text gives a once-and-for-all answer to the issues currently raised by the new women's movement, and it would be a grossly un-Marxist method of thinking to wish that it could. But over recent years there has been a tremendous flowering of Marxist studies on women's oppression - the booklist Dave asks for would exhaust my 400 word limit before I had named even the most important books and articles!

Questions remain open.

These Marxist studies are varied and incomplete.

Non-Marxist studies also have much to teach us controntation argument.

It is dangerous to believe that workers can tactically use this debilitating process, and I hope that when it was raised in a confused way by the workers, Pete and the local branch officials carried out sustained educational campaign along these lines.

There seems to be a hint in Pete's letter that because workers raise this demand, (though even the radical and revolutionary feminists often base their work on criteria and methods deriving from Marxism).

Perhaps we will eventually find such problems as force us to reject or fundamentally revise the Marxist approach. But Les and Dave are surely too quick off the mark, to say the least.

On pornography, also, 1 think Les and Dave cut too many corners. No question thal women are insulted by vile sexist pornography.

But are bans a solution?

Some (not all) feminists, I know, argue that in sexist society there is no real erotic literature at all, but only sex-hatred literature pornography. But would bans on pornography suppress sex-hatred - or just unleash more sexual repression and thus more oppression of women? socialists in leadership positions should simply accept it.

• If it is what the workers really want, then we will have to accept a democratic decision to go to arbitration. But we must never pass up the opportunity to argue and agitate against it.

DAI 1 Dea We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words.

Send to Socialist Organiser, •c/o 28, Middle Lane, London n London N8.

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er, following Les's earlier argument, asks for a book-