Atom Power Luddites

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protestors in France have given recent prominence to struggles against capitalist plans for new reactors.

These struggles have erupted in a wave of massive demonstrations on an international scale.

Biggest so far was on July 14 in Bilbao in Euskadi, Spain, where 200,000 demonstrators rallied against the proposal to transform the Basque coast into a nuclear zone and in particular to halt the building of the Iberduero power station in the outskirts of Bilbao.

Interestingly the march is reported to have featured a contingent of Westinghouse workers - the main company involved in building the new power station.

In West Germany a whole series oi actions against proposed and existing nuclear power stations have taken place, each supported by thousands of marches, as well as Japan.

And in the United States, opponents of nuclear energy this Spring staged a sit-in on the site of 3 new plant under construction at Scabrook, New Hampshire.

PABLOITES

These protests have been greeted uncritical acclaim from the Partoites in the US Socialist i rkers Party, who in a major two=2:7 article in their paper the Witant have announced blanket : Prosition to nuclear power of all = pes:

"The fight against nuclear power is an essential part of the fight for safe working conditions."

The motivation behind this :eactionary argument is clear. The SWP has for years drawn its forces principally from liberal-democratic campaigns based on the radical Petty-bourgeois rather than the fight for programme and leadership aithin the organised and anorganised working class.

They see the forces drawn into aton around the anti-nuclear campaigns as more grist for this mill.

ADAPTING

And since the characteristic of Pabioism is that it seeks to "win" orces by adapting its own programme to this level, the SWP sas gone overboard on a Luddite ringe, hoping to draw a mass movez.ent in tow.

"The antinuclear movement has the potential-like the anti-Vietnam War movement-to win over the majority of the American people ¡notice "people' , not working class'| It can do so if its positions are clear and it tries to involve as many people as possible in its to build a mass movement"

The SWP goes on to insist that "A workers government would immediately shut down every cuclear plant inherited from the protits-first capitalist system.

DEVELOPMENT

Nowhere does the SWP article cal ter the necessary demand a =anned development of nuclear Power under workers control. Instead the whole of atomic science drew attention to the dangers of fast-breeder reactors (FBRs) and the unsolved scientific problems in their use-problems disregarded by capitalists in their dash for profits.

But the answer to the problem is to pay more and not less attention to nuclear energy. While we call for a halt to plans to construct full scale fast breeder reactors as at Windscale in Britain, we call for a massive programme of research to be financed by the government under workers control in order to resolve the new problems caused by FBRs and the unsolved problems caused by existing technology.

Such a fight cannot by entrusted to the fickle hands of the "ecofreaks and petty-bourgeois radicals Liverpool 1.8.77 Dear Comrade Editor, I am writing to take up a couple of points in your report of the T&G Conference (SP No.65).

Firstly in your report of the unemployment debate you quote, with implied support, a resolution calling for the T&G Executive to "give official support to all branches, shop stewards committees and groups of members in the fight for a 35 hour week without loss of pay, and for official overtime bans While fully supporting the bulk of the resolution it is my view that the call for overtime bans to fight unemployment is incorrect. Among the supporters of this call are leading social contract advocate Customary leit and, providing their cover for the bureal cracy,, the SWP.

The logic of the demar + is that a certain amount of work is done as overtime by people in employment. If these people refused to work overtime then the employers would have to take on workers from the dole queues in order to get the work done and thus, at a stroke, thousands of new jobs would be that comprise the bulk of nuclear protest movement.

It is a task most centrally for the workers movement, calling for workers control to be imposed on processes at present monopolised by the capitalist class and its state machine.

Open up the records of these power plants and the books of the private suppliers. Expose the capitalists' scorn for safety. Expose the dangers of existing processes.

But expose also the possibilities of advance beyond this point once science is set free from capitalism, and the need to approach these fields of knowledge objectively and not with the frenzy of the enraged petty bourgeois. fault of greedy workers and nothing at all to do with the anarchy of the capitalist system, and the daily betrayals of the trade union bureaucracy which refuses to lead any fight to defend jobs. The demand is, of course, completely relormist, as is the bulk of the SWP's demands.

Have the SWP given a second's thought as to why workers are working so many hours of overtime? It is obviously in an effort to combat the steady erosion of their living standards that has taken place under the social contract.

Overtime working will only decrease if substantial increases in basic pay are won, that can restore living standards to pre social contract levels. Such increases should have escalator clauses attached to ensure pay rises to keep up with inflation.

As for the question of providing work for the unemployed, a programme of usuful public works at trade union rates of pay and under trade union control must be fought foT.

Secondly, in your repor of the "import controls' debate you quote, again with implied support, a Coy entry delegate who stater I that "cheap foreign labour" was a myth. noise that can be heard above them are the sounds of militants being fed into the power presses and the workers' new chants: "Less pay: longer hours"!

The whirlwind that Robinson and his Stalinist companions reaped was of their own making. Even as they called a strike workers' democracy was treated as a commodity.

But even with this unprincipled and disastrous leadership the true voice of Longbridge came over loud and clear--a two to one vote in favour of the first all-out strike at the factory for years.

This majority was i ignored entirely by the Press, or treated merely as a . counterweight to Robinson's ridiculous claim of a 50-1 majority.

The Sun called it a victory over Communist leadership, the Sunday Telegraph an assertion of common sense by "ordinary workers" and the Express thought it went further still All honour and credit to the angry men led by paint shop worker, Ronnie Hill, who converged on the office of the head due to advanced technology and various government subsidies, is clear proof that "cheap foreign labour" is far from being a myth. The duty of British workers is to support the struggle of workers internationally to improve their wages.

However, some of the more devious fake-left MP's and bureaucrats (not that all of them aren't devious to some extent) pose import controls as a gesture of support for exploited foreign workers ie. as some form of blacking. This bogus argument must be completely rejected. The strength of the working class, lies at the point of production. Unemployed workers have no power to fight low wages, while employed workers have the ability to strike or apply other sanctions. To throw them out of work. which is what import controls would do, wouid be to take this power from them.

EPLY.

DJ is i

jers of Yours fraternally EDITOR'S Comrad oin out the di ca .1ot out altogether.

"We are sick of all the publicity suggesting that car workers are all highly paid and grasping. Ron only brings home about £41 to £42 a week.

The actual confrontation between the workers and Robinson was lovingly detailed in every paper. Details of what workers said and did actually found their way into the headlines.

This is in sharp contrast to events when workers are striking or demanding that their officials take action. Then they are called a "mob" or a "minority of politically motivated wreckers"

Gone too was the fetishisin of majorities. If a minority of workers had demonstrated in favour of a strike-if a minority had actually walked out in defiance of the result of a two to one vote to stay in, what a fiekd day the Press would then have had.

Now, the figures became insignificant • The Press had found the voice of the working class that they wanted to hear. Minority rules. were implying that the Workers Socialist League advocates such a position.

The reaons we are opposed to overtime working is because it diverts from the necessary struggle for an adequate basic wage, and in this way subjects whole sectors of workers to even more intensive exploitation.

We gave a favourable reference to the resolution calling for official overtime bans because, short of the full programme offered the 5/293 Branch resolution (which we quoted), this was the motion that came closest to offering a course of action rather than a form of words on unemployment and the 35-hour week.

The article stressed that while Jones and the TGWU Executive had verbally backed the 35-hour week demand, they opposed this second resolution aimed at winning it.

We would agree with comrade DJ on the need for solidarity with workers internationally, and stress also the other side of this: the need to break from any concept that British workers and British employers have any "common" "'national" interest in fighting

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"Eurocommunist" CP leader Berlinguer-Stalinist bureaucrats are subject to a dual pressure. SERIES ON THE ROOTS OF THE SPLIT IN THE BRITISH COMMUNIST PARTY.

PART TWO OF OUR The inability of the Communist Party to offer workers a lead independent of the TUC bureaucrats in the British 1926 General Strike brought a profound setback to the British CP.

But far more serious was the defeat inflicted on the Chinese Party as a result of the Stalinist policy of dissolving the Chinese Communist Party into the bourgeois nationalist party the Kuo Min Tang, led by Chiang Kai-shek.

For Stalin, Chiang's opportunist "support" for the USSR was worth more than the political independence of the Chinese workers and peasants.

But of course as soon as it suited Chiang he changed course abruptly, and turned against the Communists, slaughtering them in their tens of thousands, and forcing the remainder to retreat into the countryside.

LEFT OPPOSITION

The only opposition to the Stalinist concept of 'socialism in one country' which was the basis of the Chinese policy, was Trotsky and the Left Opposition who anticipated the defeats that occurred.

Within Russia itself, the dangers warned of by the Left Opposition also emerged. The prosperous peasants (Kulaks) whom Stalin had nurtured began to assert themselves and began to challenge the basis of the workers' state, staging grain strikes in 1928 and 1929.

Stalin, who had opposed a planned approach to the problem of the Kulaks was forced to take a sharp turn to dispossess this newlyemerging capitalist class, and torce through massive nationalisation.

In the process millions of Kulaks and others were killed, and crops and livestock destroyed on a devastating scale.

The sharp lurch leftwards in Russia was parallelled by a similar switch in the line of the Communist International. Social Democratic parties in every country were suddenly denounced as "social fascists"-worse than the fascists themselves.

HITLER

Trotsky and the Left Opposition fought this turn, particularly in Germany where the ultra-left Comintern line threatened to split the working class in the face of Hitler's fascist offensive.

Trotsky's answer was to develop the tactic of the 'united front'through which the CP should demand the Social Democratic leaders form a united front against Hitler.

"No common platform with Social Democracy or with the leaders of the German trade unions. No common publications, banners, placards! March separately, but strike together!"

The Comintern line however was arguing that it was better for the open fascists to take powerbecause the CP's would take over after them.

When Hitler did take power in 1933 all the workers' parties were decimated.

It was the complete lack of any opposition or reaction to this catastrophic defeat within the leadership of the Comintern or its parties that led Trotsky and the Left Opposition to declare that StalinisIn had now transformed the Comintern from a revolutionary into a counter-revolutionary force.

Now it was necessary to build independent revolutionary parties of a new international.

This position was vindicated in 1934 and 1935 as the Comintern swung from extreme ultra-leftism to the right wing opportunism of the Popular Front with no change of leadership and no criticism of its previous line.

PEOPLE'S The social democratic parties that were denounced only weeks before as 'social fascist" were suddenly accepted, along with "progressive sections of the howgeoisie" into a "people's tront" alongside the Stalinists.

This policy, just like the social fascict and the nI S1U1A0 the Chinese Kuo - Min Tang, stemmed from the Stalinist perspective of "socialism in one country"

The Popular Front line led directly to the defeat of massive sit-in strikes in France; and of the Spanish revolution.

It was this period which first saw the emergence within the Comintern parties of clearly marked nationalist tendencies in conflict with the requirements of the Kremlin:

"As regards the ex-Comintern, its social basis, properly speaking, is of a two-fold nature. On the one hand it lives on subsidies of the Kremlin, submits to the latter's commands, and, in this respect, every ex-Communist bureaucrat is the younger brother and subordinate of the Soviet bureaucrat. • On the other hand, the various machines of the ex-Comintern feed from the same sources as the Social Democracy, that is, the super profits of imperialism.

The growth of the Communist Parties in recent years, their infiltration into the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie, their installation in the state machinery, the trade unions, parliaments, municipalities, etc., have strengthened in the extreme their dependence on national imperialism at the expense of their fraditional denendence tha Stalin Kremlin leader Brezhnev "Today we can predict with assurance the inception of a new stage. The growth of imperialist antagonisms, the obvious proximity of the war danger, and the equally obvious isolation of the USSR must necessarily strengthen the centrifugal nationalist tendencies within the Comintern.

Each one of its sections will begin to evolve a patriotic policy on its own account. Stalin has reconciled the Communist Parties of imperialist democracies with their national bourgeoisie.

This stage has now been passed. The Bonapartist procurer has played his role. Henceforth the Communo-chauvinists will have to worry about their own hides, whose interests by no means always coincide with "the defence of the (Trotsky, Writings I ,72,73.)

DUAL PULL The effects of this dual pull on the CP bureaucracies in each country were only beginning to develop at that point. The dominant force was still the Kremlin bureaucracy as war-time developments soon showed.

In August 1939 Stalin took the bureaucratic notion of Socialism in one country to the lenoths of Pagi Hitler.

This meant that from 1934-4 the position of all Communa Parties was that the war was = imperialist war. The CPs supporte strikes and opposed their air bourgeois governments.

But when Hitler invaded Russ: in 1941, Stalin promptly allied v: Britain and France. Fier Communist Party immediate: reversed course. In the allied countries every CP now supporte. the war as a 'People's War' and gas support to bourgeois governments opposed strikes, and enforce: speed-up.

WOUND

order to show his su ppor: : : the status quo in th *alhei countries Stalin wound up IE: Comintern in 1943.

This of course gave increase: weight to the pull on the CPs fror: the national bourgeoisie in cact country. The resolution dissolving the Comintern actually descrite: the International acting as "a drag on the further strengthening of it: national working class parties.

But when Stalin, Roosevelt an i Churchill came together to divide up the world into "spheres ai influence" , the Communist Parties had the task of defending the agreed status quo.

In the 'capitalist' sphere the CPs disarmed the working class and where necessary entered coalitior governments with capitalist parties In France this meant providin! ministers in de Gaulle's governmen and voting for arms to back imper ialist wars in Vietnam and Algeria.

In Italy the CP backed monarchist government.

In the Soviet' sphere of influ ence the Red Army disarmed anc broke up revolutionary upsurge: while the Communist Partie entered coalitions with bourgeoi and even monarchist forces.

Only in Yugoslavia (designates 50-50 in the 'spheres of influence deal) and in China were the Com munist Parties forced to go beyonc the bounds proposed by Stalin, ir each case these CPs took care that the working class was kept under strict political control.

In 1946 Churchill made a speect at Fulton that opened the 'Cold War'-stressing the irreconcilability of capitalism with the nationalised property relations of the USSR.

The US launched the Marshall Aid Plan aimed at bolstering capitalism in war-torn Europe. Part of this plan included the removal of CP ministers from government: in Italy and France.

CONTROLLED

With this increasing pressure Stalin gave the go-ahead for the controlled, bureaucratic process o: socialising the means of productior. in the "buffer states' of Eastern Europe.

In the course of this extention of the property relations prevailing in Russia, Stalin needed to establish complete bureaucratic contral ove: the national Stalinist leaderships installed with the backing of the Red Army.

This was why when Tito in Yugoslavia set out to forge links with the CP bureaucrats in other 'buffer' states, and stood out against some of the economic demands being placed on the butte: states by Stalin, he was prompt denounced by the Kremlin as a 'fascist' and even a "Trotskyist' This clash between Tito and Stalin had a marked impact or. workers' struggles in both the new. deformed workers' states, and in advanced capitalist countries.

But at this stage every Communist Party-including the Britist. Communist Party-supported Stalir against Tito, and repeated all the Kremlin slanders against him.

Despite this show of subservience Stalin launched a massive series of purges in the Easter Europe CPs, rooting out an! possible support for "Titoism"- ang element likely to stand out agains: complete subordination to Kremidictates.

But the problems within Russia. in agriculture and in industria development were still building up-not to be fully seen until after Stalin's death in 1953.

The next article will examine effects of Stalin's death and relationship between sphits national Stalinist bureaucracies the Wester CPs. of wrich British CP is only one.

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Pagi