Waiting for the 'next phase'

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THE countryside, declared Lin Piao, will surround the towns.

Maoist politics based on that perspective of socialist revolution have declined dramatically since the early '70s, but the idea lives on among some would-be Trotskyists.

In the centre-pages of last week's Socialist Action John Ross restates it. And more: he declares that it is a universal rule that every social system is first overthrown at the 'edges' This is not just eccentric historical philosophising. This ridiculous argument is concocted to justify the view of Socialist Action and its international coto defend jobs and services. thinkers that Central America is the centre of the world socialist revolution today, and that therefore the Cuban government's (very limited) support for the Central American struggles defines it as a proletarian revolployed. utionary force.

The Cuban government's support for the ruling party in Mexico (where there is a much more powerful working class), and its support for the Polish state against Solidarnosc, are minor errors by comparison.

Ross's central argument is that the ruling class is weaker in peripheral states. There is of course a grain of truth in that.

Certainly revolutionaries in less developed states need not 'wait' until socialism has triumphed in *Freęze rent andirates.

the advanced countries.

But the reason why the first victorious socialist revolution took place in Russia was not just that the ruling class were workers' defence squads.

LABOUR Committee on Ireland day school. Saturday January 28, 10.30 to 5 at County Hall, London tability, etc. SEI. Send £l for ticket and papers to LCI, Box 42, 136 Kingswood High Road, London E8. Creche should be booked in advance.

ISLINGTON Socialist Organiser day school: 'Rebuilding the movement'. Sunand affirm their stand publicly. day February 5, 10.30 to 5.30, Thornhill Neighbourhood Project, Caledonian Rd/Copenhagen St. Details: Nik, 278 1341.

a matter of urgency.

SCOTLAND Edinburgh. and services should be blacked. Contact: Dave, 229-4591.

SO is sold at Muirhouse (Sat. 10.30-12.30) and at the First-of-May bookshop, Candlemaker Row.

Glasgow. Contact Stan Crooke, 63 Dixon Ave, average for the trade.. G42. Paper sales: Friday lunchtime, Springburn shopping arcade; Saturday morning, Coatbridge shopping arcade; Tuesday morning, Maryhill unemployment benefit office.

Also West End bookshop.

NORTH WEST Hyndburr.

Contact: Accrington Liverpool. the bankers and bosses. Contact: 733 6663. SO is sold at News-fromNowhere, Whitechapel and at Progressive Books, Berry Manchester.

Contact: Tony, 273 5691.

THOU SO is sold at Grass Books, Newton St., Picca- Roots dilly.

Rochdale..

Contact: c/o 28 Middle Lane, London N8.

Stoke.

Contact: Paul. by a Marxist party.

socialist revolution. weaker there. It was that a weak ruling class was combined with a relatively strong and concentrated working class, organised Without that strong organised working class, the weakness of the ruling class may well lead to frequent political upheavals. But not every political upheaval is a In China, Vietnam, etc. weak capitalist classes were overthrown - but replaced Stalinist forces, linked to the degenerated USSR, which expropriated capitalism but constructed police states against the working class. In Central America at present bourgeois revolutions are in progress the greatest advances in recent years, South Africa and Brazil.

In his sweeping panorama of world history, the Stalinist states likewise escape mention - except as successful examples of socialist revolution!

The role of the struggle of Solidarnosc and similar movements in the world prospects for socialism is passed over.

Revolutions, for Ross, happen through the anonymous forces of world history and general crisis beating down the weaker or stronger resistance of ruling classes. If the working class should be able to lend a hand to world history, then that is all to the good. But it is not essential.

The same concept must Middle load.

Middle SO is to 7), urdays, Books, Spanish Armada in 1588, had established itself as the greatest sea power of the day.

His argument about ancient slave economy is no less peculiar. It was overthrown, he says, not by forces at its centre, the Mediterranean, but by Germanic invasions.

The relevance is difficult to see: is he envisaging the overthrow of capitalism by invasions from those areas which still have pre-capitalist modes of production, and a new Dark Ages?

In any case, it is misleading: slavery had substantially disintegrated through its internal contradictions in the western centre of the Roman Empire, before the Germanic interal, eastern Empire, which was possibly richer than the west, but where slave production was never really dominant, survived for centuries. Then the new mode of production, feudalism, arose first in the 'centre' - the west.

Behind the bizarre history is a conception which neatly inverts pre-1917 'orthodox' Marxism. The idea then was that socialist revolution in the underdeveloped countries must follow a whole historical 'stage' behind the advanced areas. Ross's idea now is that the biggest, most organised working classes must wait for the Process of World Revolution to make its way through the periphery.

It will reach the more industrialised states in, to use his own words, "a later phase"

information.

Lambeth Lesbian & Gay Action meets at the late Library, _ Brixton Oval.

'THE CAUSE of Ireland' _ showing at the Rio Cinema, Dalston, Thursday February 2, 7.30pm. Entrance £2 (£1 UB40, students, OAPs). Also showing: "A.

Free Country'.

LONDUN Region Labour Committee on Ireland:

AGM. Saturday February 11, County Hall, London SD1. Upen to all paid-up supporters of the LCI.

Hounslow.

Contact: Chris, 898 6961. Islington.

Contact: Nik, 278 1341.

Orpington.

Contact Siu Ming, 691 11 Putney.

Contact: Tom, 789 7587. Richmond Contact: Nick, 876 6715.

SE London.

Contact Siu Ming, 691 114 Southwark Lambeth.

Contact: Jeff, 635 8468.

Tower Hamlets.

Contact: Susan, 377 1328.

London Educationals:

State and Revolution; The Russian Revolution; The USSR and Stalinism;

Ireland; Why is the Left divided? The above are a series taking place on Fridays, 7pm at the LSE, East Building, first floor, room E196.

Discussions on "imperialism': Thursdays, 7pm, at 214 Sickert Court, London N1.

SO is sold at the following bookshops: Central Books, Colletts, The Other Bookshop, Bookmarks, Bookplace, [Peckham Rd., SE15] Kilburn Books and Reading Matters /Wood Green Shopping Centre].