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torwarc Demanding perfection Castro: in his most democratic society the world has ever seen' no-one 28 Middle Lane, London N8. No longer than 400 words please: "Labour - Take the Power!"

Briefing's i new slogan has been vehemently defended in issues 166 and 167 of Socialist Organiser by Chris Knight and Stu Clarke respectively.

But they have failed to answer the central points raised in the original article by Fergus Ennis in SO 163.

ChrIs Knight calls the slogan a transitional demand - a demand which as he says should take people from a non-revolutionary political standpoint to a revolutionary one. He then goes on to say that all transitional demands are ambiguous and have got to be, in the sense that these demands cannot be realised the Labour Party as it is, then it can only bolster illusions in reformism. A Labour Party which under its present leadershp has no perspective outside capitalism, a Labour Party with a left that is ideologically formless and susceptible to gross vacillation; a witch-hunting Labour Party, a Labour Party that has no real answers to the needs of our class: to demand of this Labour Party - a Lavuur Pariy that is not in office. that it takes the power (whether people interpret that as state power or parliamentary power) can only mean, coming from a supposedly class conscious section Gerry Byrne of the Labour Party. massive strengthening of the Kinnock leadership.

It can only mean the bolstering of illusions that the Labour Party in its present form can achieve real longlasting gains for our class. Unity is not the burial of all political differences with those who would betray and lead our class up the blind alley of reformism. We do not wish to give the idea that the Labour Party has a leadership and programme adequate for the needs of our class. Unity at all costs is not a Marxist method.

Another way in which the slogan can bolster illusions in IN HER article on the abortion and reproductive rights campaigns (Socialist Organiser 168), Gerry Byrne comments on reports that trade union and other organisations are being pressed to give support to one campaign at the expense of the other.

Similar moves are referred to in the current Labour Abortion Rights Campaign newsletter, and, whilst we in the National Abortion Campaign know of no concrete instance as yet, we would be equally disturbed and horrified by any such developreformism is because of its most likely interpretation as "Labour - Take Office!" equating that office with 'the power' and thus leading people into the trap that Chris Knight wishes to avoid - "the mistaking of office for power"

Finally, slogans for Marxists are tools. They have a specific use at a specific time.

The slogan "Labour Take The Power" raised in this period is about as useful and educative as the slogan "Take the Toys from the Boys" . Both direct class action in the wrong direction. Both are harmful.

DAVE SCOTT, IAN McCalman's attack on Leninism is especially unfortunate because his claim that Leninism and workers •democracy are mutually incompatible appears when the bourgeois media is depicting Lenin, and by implication all present-day revolutionaries, as power-mad blundthirsty potential dictators. For reasons of space, 1 can unly give a brief outline here of the real views of the Bolsheviks and their political continuators on this issue.

1) The Bolsheviks maintained political pluralism as long as they could, and this in the worst conditions imaginable, created by civil war and intervention by fourteen imperialist countries.

Not only were the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries allowed to function legally until they joined the armed counterrevolution, but the Left Social Revolutionaries were invited into a cialition with the Bolsheviks. The coalition was broken nut by the Bolsheviks, but by the Left SRs, when they took up arms• against Soviet power.

2) Likewise, the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 was led by a coalition of Communists and Social democrats. The excessive influence of the latter in the coalition was no doubt a factor in the rapid downfall of the revolution at the hands of internal and external reaction.

3) But a more accessible example of the real position of Leninism on workers' democracy is provided by present-day Nicaragua; here is a small country under siege by US imperialism, and in these extremely adverse conditions not only have genuine organs of workers' democracy been built above all the Sandinista D.fence Committees and the Assemblies for Economic Reactivation - bur political pluralism operates at all levels, even including in the government.

The ESUN led the workers and peasants in the overthrow of Somoza, so obviously it leads the i volutionary goverrment; but the government also includes other workers' organisations and even some bourgeois forces fit's hardly the fault of the FSLN ment, which could only bring joy to the anti-abortionists.

The National Abortion Campaign supports all the declared aims of the Women's Reproductive Rights Campaign, and hopes that individuals and organisations will: affiliate to both campaigns; NAC has written to the WRRC offering to work jointly in response to the present attack on time limits, and has offered space in the NAC newsletter for a fund-raising appeal for the WRRC.

NAC is absolutely opposed to divisive tactics, and can When Labour took the power: Ma .... Callaghan, Wilson ng per that the bourgeois forces have been buycutting nearly all the sessions of the Council of State since Nuvember 1980).

These examples are not intended to give the impression that political pluralism is asserua colmounenl oi wurker democracy. l'his is a tactica question: which has to be answered according to the circuinstances. On Cuba, the most lemocratic societv the world ha ver seen, the Popular Powe bodies, function on the basis of compulsory mandates and instant recall, and their members are paid no more than ordinary workers (most often they are ordinary workers). It is true there are no opposition parties - the Cuban and emple don't need them, they certainly don't want them!

Finally, a word about McCalman's reference to 'the crucial weaknesses of post-war Trotskyneeds or wants opposition parties give a categorical assurance that we will not employ them.

We hope that the reports at present circulating prove to be without foundation, and would welcome a public assurance of intentions from the WRRC, as we have done, in order to settle the matter.

The approach outlined by Gerry Byrne in her article is fully endorsed by NAC.

Yours in sisterhood, CAROL THOMSON, for the National Abortion Campaign. ism". These are real, and dis. astrous, and Socialist Organiser exemplifies all of them. One of the worst is the incessant demand for perfect revolutions in an imperfect world, and the unloading of the blame for any departure from democratic perfection onto the leaders of the revolution - whether in China, Cuba, Vietnam or Nicaragua -rather than blaming the real culprit, the constant political, ecunomic and military pressure exerted by imperialism.

And this is the basis of the convergence between his analysis and that of such distinguished "students of the subject" and "opponents of Leninism" ¡is the term "bour gevis academies" too vulgar for McCalman's taste?] as Leonard Shapire.

Comradely.

MIKE WEBBER Wendover. Bucks