refuse it without losing almost as much by the rerusal as by the Your latest issue makes the impo: tant emphases. Our task today is 'granting. Chould we not see to POSE THIS QUESTION OF AC- not revolution but the development CESS TO THE MASS MEDIA of ideological awareness and critique ALL THE TIME? The CP, the sane of bourgeois mystification, the radinon-CP left groups, and even the colication of students and workers. INsane ones, for that matter, we political organisation and mobilisamust GET ACROSS TO PEOPLE, tion.
HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE The point about 'revolution" HEARD. (Many people just don't directed against key symbols realise that we are being kept, as far authority and centres of nower as possible off the BBC and out of carried out by a minority (though the press except under adverse, interesting as a revelation of the *in the dock', slanged-at conditions. lengths people will go to preserve private property is not merely that If we can sap away at the mental under modern conditions they will condition among our people which certainly be ineflective and through can "democracy' then the main plank of summarised: WE are the use of violence enable the mass the ruling class mystique is shot - meis to drive a wedoe herween students and radical intellectuals at the dyke is open... what 'they' are pleased to call (and get a response) the very moment when we want to build bridges between them, but that senseless violence only strengthens they are irrelevant and contrary to that mystique. What our, enemies the spirit of Marxism. welcome we don't.
Marxism emphasises that in a Anyway, modern industrial society these all the best mate superstructural institutions, political, financial or whatever have no autonomous life of their own, they are Editor, Breakthru International dependent on the productive forces Poetry Magazine, 38 Penn Crescent, in society and therefore to imagine Haywards Heath, Sussex.
that they are indeed central is to fall precisely into the trap of bourgeois thought. workers can't present a united front now this doesn't mean this can never be done. Moreover, in reality and in the spirit of Marcuse, the prospects for revolutionary change have never been brighter. Nothing more is needed than a change in mental attitude, psychological breakthrough - the self-confidence and determination to challenge capitalism shown by workers in France. Such a liberation totally transforms the situation. Once workers realise that to take part in wage and productivity bargaining with a management which, supported by government and mass media holds most of the cards and all of the information is itself a form of deference and that occupation is not merely a more effective form of industrial action but a less expensive one, then the world changes. But occupation will only wore when the majority of workers are behind it: otherwise the government of the day will be able to divide the labour movement and feel justified in using force. Given the appropriate situation, with widespread worker take-overs. the use of force by the government, whatever you rightly say about our 'non-violent traditions, is not only unthinkable but certain to fail. Still. as socialists we must insist that the Labour Government take steps to democratise and civilianise the Army. so that it is clearly understood that this force is to be used only against an external aggressor, and never, under any circumstances against our own people in defence of capitalism. The responsibility for the use of violence will be there.
Yours etc.
DAVID MORSE University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton,