Stalinism and the role of social work

Scan page 9

vu cluss perspectve rom ‹ orrigan and leonard Daily harassment of Irish workers exploitation has warped the economic development of Ireland neither of the existing states has the necessary resources to implement such a plan.

An all-Ireland socialist plan for expanded production based on the expropriation of foreign and domestic capital essential.

In spelling out the need for expropriation, we must combat and expose not only the pro-imperialist illusions of the Protestant workers, but the petty bourgeois nationalists and the reformists.

But the campaign for expropriation of capital, and for programmes of public works on cumune youm cnunenge armoured car an all-reland basis musi not be allowed to stand in the way of involvement in and support for more partial actions by Irish workers in defence of jobs or living standards.

While insisting, for instance, that a fully planned and adequate programme is oniy achievable through expropriation of major industry as part of a planned socialist trish economy, we do not exclude the possibility of fighting for iob-creatina public works financed by taxes levied on big business and run under the control of elected workers' committees.

Requirements

Such a demand, though in itself partial and inadequate, nevertheless conflicts with the requirements of Irish and foreign capital in the current economic crisis and colonial dependency of Ireland North or South, and can thus assist in demonstrating forcibly to workers the necessity of proceeding to expropriate the major capitalists.

THE FARMERS Another blow against the limi.

tations of nationalism can be struck by spelling out demands designed to mobilise exploited sections of small farmers both sides of the border in conflict with the banks and monopoly suppliers that profit from their Central to such a programme must be expropriation of major landowners. The rights of tenant farmers must be safeguarded.

Farmers must be mobilised in the struggle for cheap credit, joining with workers in banks and building societies to fight for nationalisation.

Working class

They must be shown that in such a fight the working class is their only ally-the only force capable of challenging the plundering might of the banks and foreign-owned trusts.

While these planks of policy provide an immediate means of exposing the imperialist oppression of Ireland, we must not neglect more day-to-day struggles in which the working class-particularly in its militant trade union struggies in the south-must be strengthened with the fight for a sliding scale of wages.

Agents of imperialism The spotlight, as in Britain, must be focussed on the treacherous role of the trade union leaders, which through their class collaboration act in Ireland not simply as agents of the 'native' capitalist class but as agents also of imperialist oppression.

The working class-in particular in the South of Ireland-has repeatedly shown its willingness to fight for its living standards.

The crucial question is to ensure that in these struggles a principled Trotskyist leadership is constructed capable of mobilising the full strength and asserting the complete political independence of the workers' movement.

CONCLUDED CONT NEXT WEEK NEX EEK Corrigan and Leonard's Social Work Practice Under Capitalism is a poisonous book.

As a 'Marxist' approach to social work it will be seized upon by thousands of students and social workers straining against the dominance of Fabianism in the field of social policy.

The dearth of Marxist texts in the field will give it undue prominence. Its Stalinist politics is tailor-made for petty-bourgeois layers looking for an easy road to socialism.

Illusions

It will confirm the illusions of those who like to nurse hopeless dreams of the possibilities of a 'Marxist practice' in social work.

It epitomises Stalinism. Parasitic upon the revolutionary movement without being committed to it, it uses the terms and phrases of Marxism while offering only treacherously false solutions.

The book centres on a number of 'cases' illustrating the dilemmas of social workers, situations involving claimants, overburdened families with truanting, violent or simply rebellious kids, isolated pensioners, and a community project in a slum neighbourhood.

Each one is followed by a commentary by the authors on what a 'radical' social worker should have done.

The last few chapters deal with more general points such as reproduction, class, the family, the state.

The solution posed to every problem is firstly to help the clients to understand their problems in structural rather than individual terms, and secondly to turn to the organised labour movement and 'other progressive political forces' There are no warnings on the dangers of all-class alliances or insistence on the need for the independent mobilisation of the working class.

There is virtually no mention of the role of social democracy in creating reformist illusions in welfare services, and no mention of the fight within the organisations of the labour movement against the reformist and treacherous leadership.

Workers Blamed The 'problem' for social workers, according to these authors, is that the working class fails to see the class implications of welfare.

This is because the labour movement has not been 'interested' in welfare issues.

The 'leaders' are specifically not to be blamed-because "There is very little evidence that the mass of the working class has at any stage seen itself as leading society to socialism or to anything else."

This travesty of history is a lie which serves to cover up the crimes not just of social democratic but also Stalinist leadership.

Pensions, health and unemployment insurance at the turn of the century, rents and housing in World War 1, poor relief in are 20s, public assistance in the 30s -ave al provoked major e ass Sa:: es So grea: "'3: ment 'interest' in welfare issues that 'homes fit for heroes' in 1918 and 'the welfare state' in 1945 were the main devices for SOCIA wow: 1 OP state, but their proposals for practical action are completely reformist.

Supplementary benefit tribunals are not seen as organs of class rule on which workers should not sit, but bodies where trade unionists should be urged to act more class consciously.

The need is not to fight with a proletarian perspective against the bourgeois state and its legislation, but to 'engage in the policy making process' It is a slander against the bitter daily struggles of workers against social security offices, housing departments land not least social workers) to say they lack class consciousness.

Many workers hate social workers, including the 'radical' type. They certainly don't separate social workers from the repressive apparatus of the police, courts etc.

The way in which these institutions stand directly behind and over social workers, in their making of 'care orders, their court and supervision work, sectioning of the mentally ill etc. is starkly clear o many welfare race pes n •Humane •"== work-nowever 'humane' its practitioners may try to be-is part of a system of welfare designed to discipline the working class as a whole.

The stigmatisation of the poor, of which social workers are inevitably a part, serves to goad others into greater efforts towards self-reliance.

Many theoretical questions are glossed over utterly simplisthe bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

There is no mention of the petty bourgeoisie and consequently not of centrism-a particularly apt term for dealing with such sections as 'radical' social workers.

Similarly left-sounding noises are made on the economic and idealogical function of the family: yet at the same time 'progressive' aspects are mentioned without being specified and there is no revolutionary perspective put for the replacement of the family through social provision.

For Marx and Lenin a correct understanding of the state was crucial and they spent a great deal of time refuting reformist and revisionist positions on it.

The Bolsheviks, CESS 'imitations inesses ward ecs-o-.

Tris book is a tradition.

----- pull-quotes -----

OCIAL WORK

tically. In the section on class, only two classes are mentioned,