WHAT IS MARXIST THEORY FOR?

blatantly illustrates through his personal relations his stance in the battle between the men who make steel and the men who make the profits from it.

Eisenhower plays golf with top steel boss The President is again on vacation, the guest of a golfing crony, George E. Allen. Eisenhower’s advisors thought it would be too raw to apply for the injunction from Allen’s estate since he is a director of Republic Steel, one of the giant corporations shut down by the strike.

Inasmuch as interrupting Eisenhower’s vacation was out of the question, it was decided to hold off the declaration of a ‘national emergency’ until he was back in Washington.

Though the steelworkers will be forced back into the mills under Taft-Hartley, it may turn out that the quality and quantity of steel they produce under compulsion will reflect their psychological inability to put forth their best efforts.

One thing that the labour-hating big-business newspapers and even the businessmen’s magazines admit is that the steelOne of the things that bewilders workers who have no theory to guide them is the difficulty of finding some order in the variety of forces which seem to operate in’ society. What Marx did was to show how one could only make sense of these if one looked at the way in: which a particular society produces its livelihood at a particular time.

As the mode of production changes, different classes become dominant in the community. So at one time it is the landowning class which governs, at another time the factoryowning class. What survives through all these changes is the basic division between those who own and control the means of production and those who perform the labour of human society. For these last create the wealth which is taken away from them and which provides the basis for the leisure, the

luxury and the culture of the owning classes.

There are, therefore, two senses in which all previous history is the history of class struggle. In the first sense there is the history of the struggle betwen different ruling classes. The rising capitalist class, based on trade and manufacture, gradually build up their power inside the existing social framework and finally take over the institutions of government.

In the second sense the landowners and capitalists struggle in turn against the working class, trying to extract the maximum possible wealth from their labour. Both these reach their historic climax at the point at which the working class can for the first time take the initiative and move to achieve power and to end exploitation. But we may see this and still fall victims to misunderstanding.

Working class must abolish the old form of society For those who look at the rise and fall of the ruling classes of the past and present may be tempted to see the rise of the working class to power as just the rise to power of one more class within the framework of the existing order. But the working class cannot enjoy power within that framework; they can rule only by abolishing the old form of society.

It is not required to take over the institutions of class-divided society; it is required to replace them by institutions which are not designed for purposes of exploitation.

This fact, that the working class have only the alternative of continuing capitalism or of ending class society for good, is one that marks off the struggle of the working class from all previous class struggle.

A second difference concerns the greatness of what is at stake. On the one hand industrial capitalism has revolutionized the means of production and created such vast wealth that an end to exploitation is possible. On the other hand it is capitalism whose social forms maintain exploitation, competition and conflict and their outcome in poverty, unemployment and war.

All human values hang on the victory of the working class over the forces that keep. these forms in being. Survival itself hangs on this.

Working class must be conscious of its task Thirdly, and crucially, the working class can only hope to triumph if they are conscious of their task. Earlier classes came to power through the operation of forces which they could not understand. The working class can only come to power if it has become conscious of its own existence as a class. It is important that the upholders of the existing order spend so much effort in trying to obliterate class consciousness, in trying to make workers think of themselves as anything but members of a class.

Thus one central use of Marxist theory is in helping us to understand the need for theory to create a working class conscious both of its past history and its future possibilities.

ON THE ROAD TO COMPROMISE the presence of the same TV cameraman who had filmed de Gaulle’s Press conference in Paris.

The softs have won Ferhat Abbas, despite the declamatory tone of his statement, came out for peace talks with the French, leaving the way open for compromise on the basis of FLN participation in elections. He thus indicated that in the eighteen-month-long discussion between the ‘softs—those ready for compromise— and the ‘hards’, those most aware of the feeling of the fighting units—the former had won.

Still they do not dare to articulate too precisely how far they are prepared to play ball with de Gaulle, and Ferhat Abbas worded his statement with deliberate ambiguity.

The reason for the new line stems not only from the impending discussions of the Algerian question at the United Nations; it is the result of the fading of the belief in military victory and of the pressures and influences playing upon the Provisional Government. These range from the Sultan of Morocco through to Texan and other oil companies with their eyes on Saharan petrol. They include Nasser. But the really. potent force for compromise is Bourguiba of Tunisia.

Since these influences diverge, they produce divided counsels. But the social composition of the members of the Provisional Government is decisive. Drawn from Algeria’s small, untypical bourgeoisie, it needs but fears the predominantly rural masses from which its strength is derived. . Whatever its programmes may say about land reform, it cannot lead a social revolution—which would dispossess the big European land owners and capitalists.

FLN manoeuvres diplomatically Therefore, there seems no real reason why the Algerian. leaders should not reach an understanding with the French which would give them political rank in a state still associated with France in line with the de Gaulle declaration.

The FLN leaders are thus using the war as a pressure point, - . throwing in blackmail talk such as using ‘volunteers’ from other Arab countries (or even Eastern Europe), getting aid from China or cutting the oil pipe-lines when they come ‘into, operation.

But their main emphasis is now on diplomatic manoeuvre, finding the right form of words. They are now using all the ‘moderation’, the ‘statesmanship’, the willingness for compromise which is the stock-in-trade of every national bourgeoisie which scents the fruits of office—and the joy of, every left-wing political commentator—especially those as. politically impotent as the French.

Peaceful coexistence The last two issues of the ‘new left’ ‘France-Observateur’ have. . been a study. The last had a front-page composite picture of de Gaulle and Ferhat Abbas and the caption: “This meeting ' must take place’. Peaceful co-existence is doing its work. The: ‘left’? is now thinking of pushing de Gaulle gently into com-..