Victory in Ceylon Mercantile strike

dence swiftly revealed that the employers were not prepared to concede anything.

November 1 they declared that all concessions to and agreements with the Union arrived at in discussions prior to the strike were withdrawn.

Almost immediately an altercation arose between the Ministry and the CEF. By November 10, after a number of informal discussions with the parties concerned, the Minister set out terms for a settlement. These now included the bonus issue, which the CMU had sought to include in the proposed agreement.

NEW ELEMENT This new element now became the main focus of attention and bone of contention.

Further points were: Union check-off (a deduction of subscriptions from the wage packets by the employers); retirement gratuities; conversion to new scales; conversion of salaries of unmarried employees and a date for the proposed implementation of the future agreement.

The CEF now fell on the bonus issue and evaded committing itself on any of the other: proposals. The CMU, for its part, accepted the Minister's proposals as a basis of discussion and a return to work by November 14, if all parties were agreed.

In the meantime tea, rubber and other commodities were piling up in the warehouses. Treasury reserves were affected.

The point was that the employers could afford to sit it out, contident that any immediate loss of revenue could be recovered after the dispute once they had disposed FROM THE beginning of Trotsky's struggle against Stalinism, the growth of this malignant disease in the working class was analysed as a surrender before imperialism of the spirit and basic propositions of Marxism.

Trotsky further proved that this revision of Marxism, the renouncing of the overthrow of world capitalism behind the slogan of 'socialism in one country, was the political expression of the conservative and privileged social group that emerged after the revolution in Russia-the Soviet Party and state bureaucracy.

From 1926 onwards, Trotsky fought against this bureaucracy and its corrupting influence on the sections of the Communist International as the principal barrier within the working class to the socialist revolution.

Its role in the British General Strike of 1926, the Chinese Revolution of 1927, the rise and victory of fascism in Germany, and its sidetracking of revolutionary movements 'popular front' in both Spain and France prior Second World War, provided indispensable support for world capitalism as it staggered through a series crises following partial stabilisation after the end of the First World War.

Stalinism repeated this rescue operation after the Second World We banduttacy an dehe heads on the two leading capitalists states, Britain and the United States, derailed for the second time mass movements that struggled to overthrow capitalism in Western Europe. giving capitalism these extra decades of life, it thereby prolonged the dominance of the hureaucracy within the Soviet Union itself.

Post-war Stalinism in Britain has lived, therefore shadow of this deal between the Soviet bureaucracy and the vicnegotiations and advanced the operational date of any future agreement to the first of the month in which the major issues were settled.

This drove the Minister to issue a statement to the press on November 16 upbraiding the CEF and calling upon it to review its decision.

The union chose this opportunity to indicate to the Minister that the employers had been acting in bad faith from the outset and that the Union, for its own part, was quite settled in its determination to fight out the issues to the end.

It went further to demand that as an example of its goodwill, the CEF, should make available a schedule of the minimum bonus its memberfirms were going to pay, guarantees to ensure that the total bonus rate should be in accordance with past patterns and further that there would be no victimisation at the end of the dispute.

If these undertakings were not given and the public was further inconvenienced by the strike continuing, the Union would call on the Minister to explain publicly the true state of affairs.

IMPASSE

It was clear that matters had reached an impasse and that the employers were determined to have it their own Warne Union's case as far as publicity was concerned was manifestly popular. However, there was at this point considerable danger to the Union from another direction.

The ruling class, through its press, was gradually arriving at an unanimity on the need for state intervention in the A new stage reached in British Stalinism torious imperialist powers, and despite the tactical twists in Soviet diplomacy, has loyally served as a public relations department for the bureaucracy in it dealings with the British ruling class and the government of the day.

But because the bureaucracy remains a degenerated and corrupted remnant of a once revolutionary party (the Russian Bolshevik Party) and because its international agencies reflect a similar, though not identical, process of political decay Within the capitalist states, the prospects of co-operation with social-democratic governments offer scope for the communist parties countries such as Britain, where points of contact with the social - democratic bureaucracy can be established from the shop floor and the union branch right into parliament and the cabinet itself.

Closer ties

The two years of Labour government that the working class has experienced bring out these points most clearly. The deepening crisis of British capitalism throws the Stalinists into a far closer relationship with the right-wing labour and trade union bureaucracy than at any time since its period of class collaboration during the Second World War.

But even during the period of the Second World War, wher British capitalism leaned heavily on the reformists and the Stalinists, the attacks upon the workcrisis itself did not develop so sharply as they do today.

Part of the preparation for this crisis that the Socialist Labour League makes is, therefore, an analysis of the new stage that Stalinism has reached in response to the demands put upon it by the Soviet bureaucracy and its allies within the Labour bureaucracy in this country.

Part of this analysis must be a study of the Stalinist press, as it is here that the future strategy of the leadership of the British Communist Party will be hinted at, if only in a veiled form.

'Marxism Today' , the theoretical journal of the Communist Party, began a discussion in its October issue on the question of the nature of the state.

This is certainly the most important question that now faces the working class in Britain and form of compulsory arbitration of the issues. It was clear that, given the popularity of the case of the Union and the committal of the government to certain proposals for settlement, the state could not at this point take any drastic action under the Emergency powers. Arbitration was its only way out.

On November 17 the bombshell burst. The Union's Port (Cargo) branches struck with lightning speed, placing an embargo on handling cargo of any of the strike-bound companies. This action was justified by the Union because the CEF had rejected the proposals of the Ministry of Labour for a resumption of talks and because of the diversion of cargo to Colombo from the port of Trincomalee where a lock-out exists.

The embargo was 100 per cent. There was not a single case of breach of decision, all blacklegs having been elimi. nated in a previous port strike.

The fourth week of the strike was opened by another press statement from the Minister which clearly and internationally, at a time when the state intervenes more and more in the affairs of the trade unions, working conditions and wages, and plays an increasingly more important role in attempts to regulate capitalist production.

The question becomes doubly important when the issue is one of a state headed by a Labour government, for now it is bound up essentially with the role of opportunism: the attitude Marxists should adopt first of all to the government of Wilson itself, secondly, to those who *orozressive, this government as somehow 'better' than the last Tory governWe agree that clarification on the role of the state in politics is essential if the working class is to carry out a successful fight against the incomes policy and unemployment, and see this struggle through to the eventual overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

But the discussion in 'Marxism Today' has taken another turn entirely. This journal, edited by none other than James Klugman, author apparent of the long-awaited history of the •British Communist Party, has serving on its editorial board leading Stalinists such as Party secretary John Gollan, Maurice Dobb, Arnold Kettle and Maurice Cornforth.

It cannot be said therefore that these men are unaware of the direction the discussion the state has taken, and the ful implications that this has for Marxist theory and the work of the party in the trade unions.

In fact, this discussion is seeking to revise the party programme, drafted by Pollitt and Stalin in 1951, and to replace it by one more in keeping with the latest developments in the British and international political scene.

"The British Road to Socialism', as many party members have found out, involved a break with all previous Leninist teachings on the role of parliament. In its own words, it asserts that a General Election fought on the issue of a socialist solution to Britain's problems could bring decisive results. •.. In this way, using our traditional institutions and rights, we can transform parliament into the effective instrument of the people's will, through which major legislative measures of the change to socialism will be carried.' (British Road to Socialism', page 10.)

This statement (inserted on the instructions of Stalin, as we have Bala Tampoe, a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) and leader of the victorious strike.

It was an action which showed the revolutionary potential of the Union, which forged a unity between all languages and cultures, and attracted more workers to it. now been told by Khrushchev) attacks Leninism on two counts.

Firstly, it assumes that parliament can be a neutral instrument between classes, and can respond to whichever class has a majority of its representatives elected to it.

The capture of such a majority is portrayed as the break-up of capitalist political power.

Secondly (from which the first proposition is derived) it implies that parliament is the central organ of state power, to which all other departments of the state are subordinate.

Yet all the experience of the class struggle under capitalism has surely established that capitalist power radiates out from the banks and industry through its army, police and law courts, and that parliament serves mainly as a screen to conceal this real structure of class power.

Surely the two years of Labour government have established for all time that it is the bankers who rule?

But now, amazing though it may seem, the British Road' is up for revision-to the right!

James Harvey, in the December issue of 'Marxism Today', considers this programme to be sectarian and dogmatic on several important questions.

'Urgent need'

Challenging the initiator of the discussion (lan Brownlie), who argued that the Marxist theory of the state was adequate for current political questions, Harvey insists 'that this theory is in urgent need of development in a number of directions'.

First he takes a swipe at Lenin's attack on the justification of bureaucracy made by Kautsky. Against the Marxist and Leninist theory of the withering away of the state apparatus under workers' rule, Harvey develops a new theory of bureaucracy.

But to discuss bureaucracy, and particularly its virulent growth in the Soviet Union, is to discuss not only Lenin's attitude to it, but the political bloc that he made with Trotsky to fight it, and the development of this fight in the period of the rise to power of the Stalinist faction in the Soviet Communist Party.

Harvey, of course, does not intend to open up this question for discussion:

'I do not wish to pursue the developments which took place in the Soviet Union after Lenin's publicly apportioned the blame for the continuance of the strike on the CEF.

By now, the strains within the employer's camp were beginning to tell and their solidarity to crack. Memberfirms were threatening to pull out and settle unilaterally.

CONCLUSION

On November 23, a letter from the Ministry intimated that the employers had caved in, withdrawing their declaration of November 1. The revised terms for a conclusion of the dispute were as follows:

BONUS will continue to be paid at a rate not less than the quantum of bonus payments paid in accordance with prevailing practice prior to the collective agreement. Bonuses will remain ex-gratia and discretionary on the part of the employer. All existing bonus schemes to continue.

This gain constitutes an important advance on the part of the Union in that, for the first time in Ceylon trade union history the matter of death. It is sufficient to note that even in Lenin's day, bureaucracy had grown up in the state apparatus and the Party!

The rise of such a bureaucracy within what Stalinists (including Harvey) claim to be a socialist state, demands sooner or later that someone has the courage to revise openly Lenin's belief that socialism and bureaucracy were mutually exclusive.

Harvey takes on this job:

It does not follow, of course, that because the theory of the withering away of the state set out in "State and Revolution" requires to be modified in relation to the Soviet Union, needs to be modified in relation to the transition to socialism in Britain. Nevertheless, there are good grounds for thinking that it does.

The theory therefore has not only to be adjusted to the vested interests of an entrenched bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, but also to the social and political privileges of the bureaucracy within the labour and trade union movement in Britain.

Here lies the significance of Harvey's argument, that it draws together and recognises the community of interest between these two bureaucracies, and attempts • to present a 'Marxist' justification for their counterrevolutionary • record and role within the working class.

Bureaucracy plays such a vital role in the preservation of capitalist rule that the ruling class naturally looks with favour on any political tendency that attempts to conceal the existence of this corrupted layer within the labour movement, or as essential tes, resent it as an feature of any social system where large-scale industrial production takes place.

In fact, Harvey would like to see term bureaucracy abolished altogether, as he explains in a footnote:

"The term "bureaucracy" has come to mean something bad and unnecessary. This creates a problem terminology, because compulsion between officials and the people under socialism cainnot be eliminated immediately and indeed has a positive role to play in strengthening socialist relations of production. For this reason I have preferred to use the rather clumsy term "administrative compulsion" in place of "bureaucracy":

Bureaucracy is thus emptied its class and political content. becomes simply a question bonus payment is now a matter for contractual agreement.

Thus the danger of the employers taking back what gave in the way of wage increases in the form of a cut in bonus is mitigated.

CONVERSION to new scales have also been to the Union's advantage, the unmarried employee getting parity with the married.

RETIREMENT GRATUITIES are to be discussed on previous basis.

UNION CHECK-OFF: This is to be implemented if the member so desires. Since the CMU now has a virtual closed shop in most of the great establishments this means practically complete check off.

DATE OF IMPLEMENTATION of Agreement: Here the Union has lost two months from that proposed by the Minister.

NO VICTIMISATION agreed with Minister's guarantee.

There has of course been the usual chorus of cavilling criticism from, strangely enough, the CEF and the technical administration, 'connected with the elements of compulsion that pervades the functioning of . am administrative apparatus, both in a capitalist and socialist society'.

Stalinism here draws closer both to its new-found allies in the 'state capitalist' group (which holds that the Soviet Bloc states and China are capitalist) and to the latest political and sociological theorists, who argue at great length that capitalist society has now been superceded by a new social formation, industrial society, a term which embraces both the Soviet Union and the advanced capitalist states.

Alliances

This step towards the schools of bourgeois sociology and the anti-communist tendency of state capitalism reflects on the theoretical level the alliances that the Communist Party builds with various opportunist groups within the labour movement, and the general turn that it has made over the last two years towards the middle class.

Harvey attempts to develop a new theory of the state in opposition to that of Marx and Lenin. He finds 'State and Revolution' by Lenin 'mainly concerned with the co-ercive aspect (of state power). Throughout the book there is a pre-occupation with violence'.

Of Lenin's proposition that the state is the organisation for the supression of some class', Harvey claims that 'the situation is different in Britain today'. (Emphasis added.)

He then goes on to argue that because of conflicts within the capitalist class, we cannot speak of the state representing that class as a whole, and that the inside the state apparatus and its mode of operation'. This contrastate apparatus an independence from both the contending classes in capitalist society.

Harvey is now able to arrive at his main goal—the role of the state under modern monopoly capitalism. 'Marxist writers have in the past tended to stress its negative characteristics, seeing it only as the instrument of the monopoly capitalists. The positive aspects have been neglected! (Emphasis added.)

'State intervention in the economy is to be welcomed as it contradicts the idea that profit is essential for economic success. Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Reformist) to the effect that bonus remains an ex-gratia and discretionary payment on the part of the employer (as if bonus is anything else!) and that the date of implementation of the new agreement amounts to a loss to the of themy Sour grapes to both Now, suddenly, there is a bustle in the camp of the LSSP (Reformist). They feel that the CMU has stolen a march on their unions and even poached their membership. So they are working themselves into a proper lather to pull a strike, come What may.

They seem to have learned nothing from their previous debacle of January 8, when, as a result of a racially inspired stunt, they had 8,000 workers victimised for nothing at all.

The working class is less likely to follow these squeezed lemons than they have ever done in the past, particularly when they have the option in the form of the CMU.

At the height of the dispute, for instance, the entire work force at the state cement factory in Jaffna voluntarily dissolved their union and applied for membership in the CMU.

POSTSCRIPT On the evening of December I the Union hired Colombo's open-air amphitheatre at Vihara Maha Devi Park for a victory celebration-a 32-item variety show. capacity, 11,000 turned upy to The place was packed organising committee had the invidious task of vetting a list of 23,000 applicants! A special show is to be put on for those who had to be disappointed.

What a show it was! Youth was to the fore as was to be expected, and what a variety of talent and professional competence!

for tour hours, they held that audience capitivated, ex cept for the last item which was a baila, a traditional Portuguese dance, which is also part of Ceylonese tradition. The audience broke up to participate in this dance as a gentle drizzle began to fall.

The show was multi-lingual, multi-cultural, that is, in Singhalese, Tamil, Moslem, Hindi and English, a true expression of the great unifying Innuence this Union is beginning to play in the island's labour movement and national minorities problem.

OUT NOW Fourich International Reich CONKENTS Editorial An Evaluati mot Sha Mayaard Keynes by G. Pilling NIGERIA TODAY by Kiscenesekmon Rose&uKemburg LyNC: Slamsh MONOPONY CAPITAL Beasure otan COMMOS the stormatie a nipariational Murnism bymoritingito:

IbanClaphamHigh Street, London, S.W.4.

EWSLE TTER 1966