Abortion Rights a Class Issue

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The attack on the democratic right to abortion for women is not an isolated attack on women as one sector of the working class alone. It is part of a widespread offensive being waged against the working class as a whole by the present Labour government as part of its anti-working class politics in order to "solve' the crisis of capitalism.

Over the past period we have seen many other attacks waged on the working class by the same Labour government. Attacks on the right to picket, the jalling ol the Shrewsbury building workers, the use of the troops in Glasgow during the dustcart drivers strike as well as the introduction of the so-called 'Prevention of Terrorism Act' It is in this overall general situation that we have to understand the fight for the right for women to have abortion freely available on the NHS' ABSTRACT This is why we say that although the right to free abortionon demand is an essential one, the abstract slogan "a woman's right to choose" obscures the way to win it.

Could we claim that this demand in itself would give women a real choice, free them from their oppression in the family?

Clearly we cannot say that either free abortion or equal pay in themselves can resolve the questions of woman's oppression so long as the capitalist system prevails. They are only a part of the problem.

But even democratic reforms will not be properly realised without altering class relationships. This is why the struggle for them, if carried out with a conscious working class leadership can begin to draw workers into the larger fight against their oppression, against the bourgeois family and the exploitation of women as a reserve army of labour to be discarded at the employer's convenience.

WRONG SLOGANS

This is what has been wrong with the slogans of the National Amited my en. In tears al Marxist Group, in attempting correctly to mobilise large numbers of men' and women workers on the abortion issue rs have wrongly +hat inonan 'greater unity'.

They presume that the consciousness of women is so low that they can only respond to single issues and not to a comprehensive programme which leads them ultimately to the fight alongside the organised working class for the overthrow of capitalism.

Over the past year we have seen the emergence of resolutions from the women's TUC conference, the TUC conference and the Labour Party conference, all piously calling for free abartion on demand, treely available on the NHS. But nothing else.

BASIS The NAC conference which was held last October could have been a good basis for launching such resolutions into the mass organisations of the working class, if the members of the NAC and its leaders were at all serious about its professed orientation to the labour movement.

The NAC conference had 69 NAC groups, 7 national political organisations, (IMG, IS, RCG, WE, etc, along with the Communist Party), 6 Trades Councils and 17 trade union branches.

Leaving aside the political groups, the extent to which the labour movement bodies were mobilised for this event remains very small. There were three times as many delegates from the NAC groups as from trade union bodies.

Barbara Castle meets the BMA This demonstrates the inability i the NAC so far to take up the uestion of abortion in the organad lahnur maramant whila at tha convenient division of labour on this and other questions between the trade union bureaucrats and the left groups.

The trade union bureaucrats pass formal paper resolutions for free abortion, while the left groups leave them in peace and spend their time on building the NAC with its endless "ad hoc" local groups, which generally represent in reality only tiny forces from left groups along with a few individuals.

The mere building of these "ad hoc" groups in the localities by the revolutionary left lets the bureaucrats off the hook.

The IMG and other groups who operate in this way are then left with a choice. Either they must concentrate their forces in the unions at the base, attempting local initiatives, or simply attempt a short cut, assembling individuals in an umbrella organisation they grandly term a "united front". . This latter course is the one preferred by the IMG.

CONFERENCE

The fight for the October NAC conference was therefore not seen as a move to extend and change the relationship of forces involved in the fight but an effort to consolidate a left propaganda bloc from the forces on last June's demonstration based upon social layers largely outside the working class.

In short, for all the protesting of IMG, the conference was a model of the so-called *new mass vanguard" and in orientating towards it the IMG exhibited a

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ГНЕ RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Part 10: THE KORNILOV Ilge in the period of reac cion which followed the repress ions of the July Days in 1917 the Bolsheviks were forced reassess their tactics and demands.

As a party they were being witch-hunted throughout the country. Leading Bolsheviks were in jail, accused of acting as German agents.

heir papers were suppressed ind Slanders accusing them o1 receiving German money were peddled by the most reactionary sources.

But foremost at propagating these allegations amongst workers and soldiers were the class collaborating leaders of the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries.

COMPROMISERS

These compromisers both sat with bourgeois ministers in the coalition Provisional government and used their majority support in the Soviets to uphold their reactionary policies of support for the war and opposition to nationalisation.

For Lenin and the Bolsheviks this new situation called for a fresh examination of the demand they alone had popularised in the period before the July Days - "All Power to the Soviets!"

Lenin wrote on July 10th:

"The leaders of the Soviets and of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik Parties, headed by Tseretelli and Chernov, have completely betrayed the cause of the revolution by putting it in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries and by turning themselves, their parties and the Soviets into mere fig-leaves of the counterrevolution. All hopes for a peaceful development of the Russian revolution have vanished for good. This is the objective situation: either complete victory for the military dictatorship, or victory for the workers armed uprising; the latter victory is only possible when the insurrection coincides with a deep, mass upheaval against tie government and the bourgeoisie caused by economic disruption and the prolongation of the war"

The conclusion which Lenin drew from this analysis was:

"The slogan All Power to the Soviets! was a slogan for peacefu development the revolution which was possible in April, May, June and up to July 5th-9th, ie, up to the time when actual power passed into the hands of the military dictatorship. This slogan is no longer correct, for it does not take into account that power has changed hands and that the revolution has in fact been completely betrayed by the SRs and the Mensheviks........

Let us gather forces, reorganise them, and resolutely prepare for the armed uprising, if the course of the crisis permits it on a really mass, country-wide scale...The aim of the insurrection can only be to transfer power to the proletariat, supported by the poor peasants, with a view to putting our Party programme into effect" (Collected Works Vol 25 pp 177-8)

This reassessment, which meant recognising even more clearly the crucial central role of the Bolshevik Party itself as the only party consistently opposing the war and directing the working class towards the struggle for power, did not come without resistance from conservative layers of Bolsheviks.

Lenin was forced to explain the hange in detail in a longer article "On Slogans", ', pointing out that the nf clnsan hoth tr redirect the masses and to educate them as to the role of their leaders.

"All agitational work among the people must be reorganised to ensure that it takes account of the specific experience of the present revolution, and particularly of the July days, ie, that it clearly points to the real enemy of the people, the military clique, the Cadets and the Black Hundreds, and that it definitely unmasks the petty bourgeois parties, which played and are playing the part of butcher's aides...

That would be a very long and arduous process under the 'normal" conditions of capitalist development, but both the war and economic disruption will tremendously accelerate it. These 'accelerators that may make a month or even a week equal to a year"

(CW Vol 25 p 188)

At the same time as changing the demand 'All Power to the Soviets!" therefore, the Bolsheviks looked also to other methods of highlighting the betrayals of the SR and Menshevik leaders, and exposing their increasing separation from the demands and mood of the masses who followed them.

In this way, Lenin took up the issue of the Provisional Government's repeated promises convene a Constituent Assembly, and used this as a further means to stress the refusal of the compromisers to break with the bourgeoisie, their peddling of constitutional illusions:

"Meanwhile the Bolsheviks said: only the growing . strength and authority of the Soviets can guarantee the convocation and success of the Constituent Assembly. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries laid emphasis on the act of law, the proclamation, the promise, the declaration to call a Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks laid emphasis on the class struggle.....' (CW vol 25 p196-7)

It was because of their turn away from reliance on the class struggle the compromisers could onlv i hernme more and more 'y John Liste exposed in the eyes of the masses on this and every other question as the war and the crisis continued.

UNCHALLENGED

Meanwhile, unchallenged by any of his coalition partners, Kerensky moved further and further to an open alliance with the extreme right - the Black Hundreds and the military. Lenin and Trotsky, using a comparison with the French Revolution, characterised Kerensky's moves as the first steps towards "We see the chief historical symptom of Bonapartism: the manoeuvring of state power, which leans on the military clique (on the worst elements of the army) for support, between two hostile classes and forces which more or less balance each other out".

(CW Vol 25 p220)

But Bonapartism is an unstable form of rule - one which must eventually resolve itself through the outright victory and consolidation in state power of one class or the other - with the crushing of all opposition. It was to deteat this threat from the right that the Bolsheviks were put on the alert from July onwards.

In a bid to consolidate his uneasy, divided base of support Kerensky called for a special State Conference to be held in August 1917. The Moscow Journal of Social Revolutionaries (Kerensky's own party) attacked the composition of this bogus 'conference':

"As against 150 representatives of labour, there are 120 representatives of trade and industry; against 100 peasant deputies, 100 representatives of the landlords have been invited; against 100 representatives of the Soviet, there will be 300 members of the State Duma....

(Quoted by Trotsky HRR CONFERENCE This conference, to be he Id the supposed security of Mo (COT was like a whole series of counterrevolutionary conferences at the beginning of August, to rally in particular the propertied classes behind Kerensky.

It served instead to highlight the strength of the masses and the continuing and growing power of the witch-hunted and slandered Bolsheviks.

Despite the opposition of the Menshevik-SR dominated Moscow Soviet, the local trade unions, a majority of which were now under Bolshevik control, took the initiative in calling for strike action on the day of the State Conference.

And despite the efforts of the compromisers to prevent it, the strike won overwhelming support. 400,000 workers paralysed the city on the day of Kerensky's attempted show of strength.

"There were no lights, no tramcars: the factories and shops were closed and the raitroad yards and stations; even the waiters in the restaurants had gone on strike." (Trotsky HRR Vol. 2 p. 151)

The slanders and witchhunting were failing in their task of isolating the Bolsheviks. The leaders of the compromising parties the SRs and the Mensheviks were instead themselves forced more and more into the open as opposing the defence of the working class and as all-out defenders of Kerensky and the war.

The "left" side of his Bonapartist balancing act was becoming increasingly unstable.

At the same time the opposing side, the camp of the big bourgeoisie was becoming likewise impatient and seeking the road to establish its own dictatorship.

Even during the State Conference itself preparations were taking place by the extreme right wing of the miliatry, led by General Kornilov, to bring a force of the most backward and reactionary troops into Petrograd to, break up the soviet, arrest all working class leaders including (above all) the Bolsheviks, and instal a "firm"

INCAPABLE

Korniloy was not an ide al leader for an ultra-right wing er up. He was incapable of making assessments of situations. General Alexeiev described him as a "man with a lion's heart and the brain of a sheep"

But the bourgeoisie, seeing the need for a decisive attack on the working class felt its back against the wall and found no reai choice but Kornilov.

The original basis of the military intervention was jointly planned 'RESS, Wednesday May 19th, 1976 between him and Kerensky as a continuation of the anti-Bolshevik witch-hunt and a "restoration of order" in Petrograd.

A cavalry corps was to be brought into the city, martial law declared, and then steps taken to attempt to provoke a Bolshevik insurrection which could provide the pretext for smashing the workers movement.

The object as Kerensky saw this wonspiratoral plan, was to establish him in overal dictatorial power. The object in Korniloy's view was to dispose of Kerensky as well and have done with the soviets and the workers' parties once and for all.

Under the pretext of taking detachments to protect the town of Riga - on the front line of the fighting against the Germans, Kornilov had begun from early August to prepare the forces to march on Petrograd. Four cavalry divisions considered most useful against Bolsheviks and a division of Caucasian mountaineers were to work with a division of Cossacks and all were moved into ready positions.

An essential part of the plan was the surrender of Riga to the Germans. Kornilov had stated this openly at the State Conference when he announced to the world that:

The enemy is already knocking at the gates of Riga and if the instability of our army does not make it possible to restrain him on the shores of the Gulf of Riga, then the road to Petrograd is open." (Trotsky HRR Vol. 2 p. 166)

object was to prepare a massively instensified witch-hunt against. "soldiers who will not fight" and "workers who will not work" as part of the plans to discredit Kerensky and the Provisional Government and to attack Petrograd. On August 19th the lines were broken by the Germans and on August 21st Riga was occupied.

DEFEAT

The soldiers had beer confronted with a defeat they could do nothing about, because as Trotsky wrote:

"Everything was lacking: men, arms, military supplies, gas masks. The communications were unspeakably bad. Attacks were delayed because Japanese cartridges been supplied for Russian rifles." (Trotsky: HRR Vol. 2 p. 185)

Riga, a potential stronghold of the Bolsheviks had been sacrificed as part of Kornilov's overall plan. And the Bolsheviks were able to show this clearly to wide layers of soldiers who saw there had been no real defence of the city. Even the compromisers were forced to call for the truth to be revealed and to point out that "a political game" was being played to attack the Provisional Government.

As Korniov proceeded, however, the thought began to occur gradually and horribly to Kerensky that maybe his general, his "muscle" against the Bolsheviks, was going to press too far ahead, and could even threaten Kerensky himself.

Kornilov made this celar when he called for all the powers of the Provisional Government to be given to him as supreme commanderKornilov, like fought with the October

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Wednesd in-chief.

"At the same time that Kerensky and Savinkov were intending to clean up the Bolsheviks, and in part the soviets, Korniloy was intending also to clean up the Provisional Government. It was just this that Kerensky did not want." (Trotsky, op.cit.

Kerensky was forced to counter these preparations by his ally. On August 27th, the day allotted for the coup d'etat, he sent a command to Kornilov that he should turn over duties to his chief of staff and come to Petrograd.

Kornilov, however, by now committed to action, refused, issuing his own manifesto. Proudly, he proclaimed:

"I, General Kornilov, declare that the Provisional Government, under pressure from the Bolshevik majority of the soviets, is acting in full accord with the plans of the German general staff, and simultaneousiy with the impending descent of hostil forces upon the Riga coastline is murdering the army and unsettling the country from within."

On the evening of August 26th, the other members of the Provisional Government - both bourgeois and petty-bourgeois representatives - had resigned. _Kerensky alone retaining office wavered, uncertain which way to turn, as on August 28th the split •between government and supreme commander in chief became openly known.

Kolchak (above)

White forces after • But while Kerensky and his hangers-on wavered and dithered, the working class had moved to prepare armed defence against the counter-revolution.

BODY A new ad-hoć body first named the Committee for Striggle against Counter-Revolution but later to be better known as the Military Revolutionary Committee, had been set up.

"Early in the morning instructions were sent by telegram to the railroad workers and postal and telegraph clerks and soldiers. "All movements of troops ... are to be carried out at the direction of the Provisional Government when countersigned by the Committee of People's Defence" ... At the same time steps were taken for the destruction of Kornilovist nests in Petrograd, itself. Searches and arrests were carried out in the military schools and officers" organisations ...

During the hóurs of greatest vacillation in the government the district soviets were drawing closer together and passing resolutions: to declare the interdistrict conferences continuous; ... to for a workers' militia: to establish control of the district over the goTer meat thirt ipades ARE ITE cise tom MASSIVE Ibe moblisation z0es 22 counter resolution nad all embracing. Ever: stra of workers found then ap 70ae tast. Especially imporarI =z5 the training in arzs of bre unbers of Red Guards:

"Experienced soldiers mat bonghi in as teachers. Br the It Goards had been formed in dos all the diaricts. The Red Guard announced its readiness tó put in the field a force of 40,000 rifles. The unarmed workers formed companies for trenchdigging, sheet-metal fortification, barbed wire fencing." (Trotsky, op.cit.p.224)

These developments were doubly significant. Not only had preparations been accomplished at unbelievably short notice, but the whole process was completely in the hands and control of the workers and soldiers themselves.

SWIFT

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The ves ie deT TI TiA Ian de Facies. entiy ou desacracats petrots along the tracts. the tast of the Committer of Defent $75 Dot s0 mach to Jeep watch aTer aad semnon the morters e BES! Io register zod diet Tema- =-.b EiE ÷023÷2 = Ses Ees Ei ie Konsed: -S 3e scles 22 sion. -t:Is g::o gip zah te ==2-770120O5. begaz TO III = 1 20 7cogniszble tei Kondens 3==ES EE 052s 558 ==530. 003 ET052 While the forces of revolution strengthened hour by hour in organisation and independence, the Kornilov camp was disintegrating by the minute.

As the careful sabotage by the railroad workers halted the advance, the fraternisation, the propaganda and the sowing of seeds of friendship by the workers and soldiers who flocked out to surround Kornilov's forces were whittling down his available strength to nothing.

His dreaded "Savage Division" of Caucasian mountaineers arrested its staff commander. Cossack forces held meetings and discussions among themselves and with workers and soldiers from Pertai 5t 272t IC 50 5 205 STIE =IIAE NIOSSELE LISTINEDE impossible =00rizi= the Komzor troops.

"The railroad sorkers in those days did their duty. In a My Sena echelons Fould find themsetres soring on the TOTE roats Recinent monk arrive in the wrong chvision, urtillery would be sent up a blind alley, staffs would get out of communication with their units... The telegraphers also held up the orders of Kornilov...' " (Trotsky, pp.232-3)

By 3lst August, the entire military support of Korilov had crumpled, crumbled away to nothing. The imposition of "firm" government had not been SO simple a process after all.

"ARMEST"

Kornilov finally came to grips with the real situation, and submitted to the formal process of "arrest" , through which Kerensky evaded the universal sorters and soldiers' demand It Kornior and his conspirators it stor.

LET 5-TE ESTE -The šul?

If and Joes 1Er ma to Spit a Far is mom bors to be a mar of conquest. is intricably doomed to Des catastroptes.

Only the working cass, when it has gained power. will be able to pursee a perce polic! .. 1C% Above: Fraternisation with Kornilov's 'Savage Division" led to them arresting their officers. Left: A soldiers' committee meets.

Trotsky anised the masses, brought the Bolsheviks to the fore in the real defence against counter-revolution and struck a mortal blow at the credibility of the Compromisers.

In the united action against Kornilov the Bolsheviks had not acted to support Kerensky, but, in the words of Trotsky, showed the masses how to "Use Kerensky as a gun-rest to shoot Kornilov. Afterward we will settle with Kerensky."

The stage was now set for the opening of the October