Censorship and sexism at's wrong with politics

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French unrkers are occupving in pursuit of shorter working week tion towards a social demo- London MIKE PEARS ¡E wants my opinion on he political issues in the split in the Fourth Committee), in more than nine words, and without brackets. So here it is.

The central issue was the question of what attitude Marxists should take towards the French government.

Evidence like its attempts to limit wages, its support for NATO, its acceptance of the veto of the Constitutional Council, and its doomed efforts to solve unemployment by hand-outs to the bosses, define the Mitterrand/ Mauroy government as a pro-capitalist government.

Because the government is heavily dependent on and subject to pressure from working class support, the French ruling class distrusts it. Hence their loud denunciations. But this clamour has a very practical purpose of browbeating the government-and the government has shown itself willing to be browbeaten.

Wave

The government did not come to office on a wave of working class action. Rather, Mitterrand won his majority as a result of the crisis of the right wing, with some bourgeois politicians backing • him on the grounds that he would be better able than Giscard to forestall working class action.

Whether those bourgeois politicians calculated correctly, is another matter. Marxists should try to prove them wrongby fighting for the mobilisation of the working class independent of the government.

While understanding that the first moves of the working class-like the present battles over the 39 hour week — will probably be seen by most workers supplementing the government's efforts, not contradicting them, Marxists need to present a clear explanation of the nature of the government, without shrill denunciation.

They also. I think, need " propose an action proFizze of working class jecesis it the model of DE De Inde te Frase 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 N8.

nch The election of Mitterrand was the concentrated result of the whole class struggle since 1968. The Mitterrand/Mauroy government is therefore a government of class collaboration amidst deep political crisis.

It falls into the category described by. Trotsky as on the one hand-fascism on the other: these are the last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian revolution." Thus the short-term alternatives are working class revolution or the overthrow of Mitterrand by fascism.

The whole analysis proceeds by reasoning from (supposed) first principles rather than from facts.

The practical conclusions? The demands ANN EVANS' article "Can censorship help liberate women?" showed some very muddled thinking in my opinion.

What would her attitude be if women workers at her place of work demanded the removal of sexist pin-ups from notice-boards OI lockers and a campaign against sexual harassment?

Would she complain that this was wrong because Mary Whitehouse might agree? Would she say that the women were trying to PC presented by the PCI are more like a list of advice to the government for measures like price controls than an adequate programme. Its whole politics are presented in terms of the choice between the government going forward to defeat capitalism or being suborned by it.

Working class selfreliance is not stressed. The danger to the working class from the bosses and the permanent state machine is stressed, but any danger from the government is hardly mentioned.

Yet this limited, uncritical policy is presented in the most hectoring tones of blustering self-proclamation.

In so far as Nahuel Moreno and his co-thinkers criticise the opportunist side of the PCI policy, 1 think they are right.

I also think that Mike Pearse's self-righteous condemnation of "the split prepared by Moreno" rests on shaky ground.

Moreno's co-thinkers in the OCI were expelled in a way not at all designed to avoid a split. One group, for example, was faced by a resolution in their local restrict the expression of "open sexuality"?

Surely she would support the women wholeheartedly. What then if the delegates from her place of work to the local Labour Party and Trades Council demanded a campaign on a wider scale within the community? What if it was taken up by the local Labour Council? What if it became part of the Labour Party Manifesto?

Censorship as part of a mass anti-sexist campaign would be a step forward, not OCI area condemning their supposed 'cliquist' activity - and saying that anyone who voted against this resolution las the majority of the meeting did) was automatically considered to have 'left' the organisation!

Basis

Finally: Mike Pearse argues that the FI(IC) had a solid political basis.

But that basis- as the split has confirmed -was not sufficient to allow a constructive debate on orientaa step backwards.

Ann Evans says that sexism is all around us in the newspapers, in advertisements and so on and that we have to challenge this. Well, how do we challenge it if we don't rip them up and close them down?

Pornography makes me very angry as a man-not because I am a puritan. or opposed to open sexuality, but precisely because it distorts my sexuality; it reinforces sexism, it takes away genuine human feeling for 38h SOUTIENIAUX GREVISTES cratic government in France.

And its generalities offer little in the way of practical guidance for Marxists in the class struggle. Hence the inability of the FI(IC) to produce a resolution on Poland calling for anything more than free elections.

Was it to prevent anyone pointing out such weaknesses in its founding Theses that the FI(C)

founding conference was turned from an "open"

conference into a closed event?

MARTIN THOMAS LXYE-MC446A)

BALXEX4 Vxy ExA44pe of the machinery of government. The much ridiculed whitewashing of windows and fallout shelters under the stairs would protect many against heat and fallout, but as the total contribution of the government to our safety, it's a bad joke!

3. Training in civil defence and protection of emergency services.

Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the USSR all train substantial proportions of their populations in defence measures and this could be of considerable Fi edaciag peric and others and independent own right.

I cannot understand why a woman would not feel even more angry and I think frankly that any woman who does not is the equivalent of an Uncle Tom to slavery.

Ann Evans says that we would all agree with Reg Race's assessment of pornography. Unfortunately this is not the case.

There are those cling to the liberal, NON OU SAMEDİ 700 3131 43* for oneselt as people in their who still cathartic view-whereby watching or reading about something is sufficient to prevent person going out and doing it or whereby pornography gets the poison out of a person's system.

This idea seems to me to try to separate sexuality from sexism and everyday human relationships. After all, what does Ann Evans mean by "open sexuality" -open for whom and to what purpose? Surely the modern feminists have reacted against precisely this libertarian concept of the sixties.

Sexual freedom is fine but still the woman seems to end up as an "old slag" and the man as a hero even in the trendiest of circles-and this will continue as long as sexist ideology and its material base persist.

The point is to fight against sexism for women's equality and this means against its more obvious expressions in pornography. The very high divorce rate in the UK testifies to the fact that women are increasingly not prepared to be mere servicers to a family or to put up with male-defined sex-their sexuality will be as open or as closed as they decide as independent people.

Anybody who has paid any attention to these developments will see it as being laughable to suggest, like Ann Evans, that sexuality could be pushed back into the closet. The consciousness of women has been raised too far-there can be no retreat.

It is time for men to change too.

DAVE SPENCER

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