ACTION

posal through a special agreement with private operators. It also had accumulated enough coal stocks to last five months.

As the appointed day drew near, troops were armed with tear-gas and moved into London and the provincial centres. The army prepared to take over the distribution of food and the navy prepared to work the docks The strike began on May 3. Immediately, the state moved into action.

The Communist Party had planned to bring out a daily edition of its 'Workers' Weekly'. The first edition appeared on May 3 and on May 5 police raided the press and took away vital bits of the printing machines. The church weighed in. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster (Cardinal Bourne) denounced the strike at High Mass.

'There is no moral justification for a General Strike of this character. It is a direct challenge to lawfully constituted authority. It is therefore a sin against the obedience which we owe to God, who is the source of that authority.

'All, are bound to uphold and assist the government, which is the lawfully constituted authority of the country and represents. therefore, in its own appointed sphere the authority of God himThe TUC had , prepared nothing. But even so, the government could have been defeated.

Out of 3,933 London buses, not one moved on the first day, and the most OMS ever got going was 526.

The emergency measures and the scab services were inadequate.

But not so inadequate as the leadership of the TUC. They conducted a ballot vote on the strike. The voting was 3,653,527 votes for a strike and 49,911 against.

They waited cap in hand at Baldwin's door. Baldwin used the action of the 'Daily Mail' workers in refusing to print an editorial against the miners to kick them out. They immediately drafted a repudiation of the printers' action. It was too late-a flunkey told them that Mr Baldwin had gone to bed. The strike was on.

As the 'Daily Mail' said in its eve-of-strike leader: "Two governments cannot exist in the same capital. One must destroy the other, or surrender to the other.

The TUC leaders knew that. They surrendered. 1 'Cartoons from the General Strike'. Michael Hughes. 2 Lady Diana Cooper Light of Common Day'.

'THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL'. By Istvan Mészáros. Isaac Deutscher Memorlal Lecture, 1970. Merlin Press. Cloth 80р. Paper 30р.

The content and style of this lecture represent a special and dangerous kind of pseudo-Marxism which today gains support from limited numbers of intellectuals and students in the tradition of the New Left. Its twin inspirers are Georg Lucaks, whose assistant Mészáros was for six years, and Isaac Deutscher, in whose memory this lecture was delivered.

The ambiguity begins with the title of the lecture. What is meant by "social control'? Mészáros explains: "The function social control had been alienated from the social body and transferred to capital which then acquired the power grouping people in a hierarchical structural-functional pattern, in accordance with the criterion of a greater, or lesser share in the control over production and distribution'.

Everything in this basically idealist formulation leads to confusion. So far as it is comprehensible, it reverses the process of development, making politics the determining factor and completely disregarding the nature of capitalism.

Every page of Marx's writings tells a diametrically opposite stuestion of exploitation, it t as StOry Mészáros evades the he avoids speaking the class struggle. For him what is that it is irrational, its primary objectionable about capitalism is not exploitation is its primary weakness.

Georg Lukacs Compare what and the passage is typical öthers, with what Marx writes in 'Capital' Vol. III:

'The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of the • direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the Top: Isaac Deutscher. Above : Karl Marx direct producers ... which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty • and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state.' (p.772.)

To speak about "social control' —a term which has no place in the Marxist scientific vocabulary -without first analysing the specific form of the state is simply to obscure not only its class nature, but also the need for revolution. No wonder that Mészáros goes on to assert that 'the Power of control invested in capital is being de facto retransferred to the social body as a whole [sic], even if in a necessarily irrational way, thanks to the inherent irrationality of capital itself.' All criticisms which Mészáros has to make of capitalism flow from this 'irrationality'. He never considers it as a system of exploitation which depends upon the extraction of unpaid labour from the working class which then goes to support the ruling class and its state.

No doubt his audience appreciated his virtuoso handling of sociological jargon and his criticism of objectionable-'irrational' —aspects of capitalism and the shallow theories of its latter-day apologists. They could then go home with a warm glow from the feeling that their own prejudices had been confirmed, while remaining absolved from having to do anything in the way of practice.

Somehow 'socialist alternatives' are emerging, but, as Mészáros says, 'we are talking about a major trend of social development, and not about some mechanical determinism that announces the immediate collapse of world capitalism'.

This rejection of 'mechanical determinism' is completely spurious; his thinking governed by determinism in the same way as that of other Kautsky-style Marxists. As for 'the immediate collapse of capitalism', what he rejects here is the evidence for the crisis of capitalism and the need to prepare for its revolutionary overthrow.

As another example, we may give Mészáros' assertion that capitalism can no longer find a way out of its contradictions in war and that it is this which aggravates the internal crisis of the capitalist countries. The world crisis of capitalism, and with it the actual dangers of war, are thus ignored. The drive to war is part of capitalism's inescapable contradictions.

Despite his reformist position, Mészáros maintains that he is a Marxist. In his final peroration he insists on the only programme which is really practicable 'the Marxist programme of radically restructuring, "from top bottom", the totality of social institutions, the industrial, political and ideological conditions of present-day existence, "the whole manner of being" of men repressed by the alienated and reified conditions of commodity society'. (The quotes are from It sounds very fine. But it carefully avoids using the term "revolution'; it says nothing about the working class as the only force capable of overthrowing capitalism; the question of revolutionary leadership is never raised at any time in his lecture.

Mészáros, who lived under Stalinism in Hungary for over a decade, can say nothing about its counter-revolutionary role or what his perspective is for 'the Marxist programme' in E Europe and the Soviet Union. Apart from a few witticisms at their expense, he evades equally the role of the reformists in misleading and betraying the working class.

Needless to say, Mészáros says nothing about Trotsky or Trotskyism. He runs away from every political issue and opposes the building of a revolutionary party and the Fourth International in the true tradition of his acknowledged intellectual mentors. SERVE Two members of the Parachute Regiment have just been jailed for five years for armed robbery in Co. Down, Ulster.

They are Private Michael Wainhouse and Private Costas Georgiou. They raided a post office while carrying pistols and stole £93.

What I want to know is whether they will serve their time in Crumlin Rd Jail!

Or what about Long Kesh? COMFORTING Services to consumers in the Soviet Union have long been notoriously poor. But at least one is now being raised to the highest standards of efficiency -a modern crematorium has been brought into service at Nikolo - Arkhange, half an hour's hearse ride from Moscow.

In design and equipment the new crematorium is far ahead of anything formerly seen in the Soviet Union. After enquiries in many countries, undertakers turned to Britain as the world leaders in the field. It was installed under the supervision of British technicians and with furnaces, lifts and other morbid accessories imported from this country.

No expense has been spared in providing the Soviet citizen with a decent funeral. Similar installations are to be ser up in other cities. The Russians want to encourage cremations because of their convenience and because burials are often difficult because the ground is so often frozen.

So, the Soviet citizen who has to put up with a low level of service when he goes shopping or wants a domestic appliance repaired will have the comfort of knowing that his end will be attended to with the very latest technology -even though of capitalist origin.

FAMILY At Marley Company Limited, the building materia! s manufacturers, the Aisher boys are given a very generous crack of the whip.

This is seen to by the company chairman Owen Aisher.

'Pop' Aisher has the reputation of being one of the highest-paid executives in British industry-so highly paid, we hear, that he finds the label a potential embarrassBOOKS aday In 1971 he earned a cool £62,000-and that wa: i after deciding not to take a further £102,000 to which he is entitled under a profits salary scheme.

But chairman Aisher is not a selfish man. His fellow directors do not have to miss out on life's little luxuries.

The pay of all the directors taken together has more than doubled-from £101,000 to £222,000. And among ten new directors there are three of the Aisher boys! (About 30 per cent of the company's shares are owned by the family).

Commenting on the Aisher boys' success, 'Pop' is reported to have said:

'That's what a family's isn't it?' STANDARDS Mrs Margaret Thatcher, Minister of Education, was invited to dinner recently by Mr Tom Howarth of St Paul's School, Professor G. H. Bantock of Leicester University and Mr R. R. Pedley of St Dunstan's school.

Margaret Thatcher These gentlemen are the leading lights of the newly formed National Council for the Preservation of Educational Standards. Growing out of the 'Black Paper' group, the Council's aims include:

• Preservation of the public schools.

Preservation of the mar school system.

Re-introduction of selective examinations.

Retention of corporal punishment in schools.

Restricted entry to universities and colleges.

Opposition to 'discovery' methods of learning.

Reduction of welfare services in schools.

The venue of the dinner?

The Reform Club.

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