[page 20]
faith in the Tory Party!
rightward move continued. eral and Irish candidates, putting their When war broke out, the group's A rally was held at which Mrs. Pankhurst announced that the militant activities were to coase, the name of the paper, the Saffragerte, was to be changed to Britannia, and that the group advocated military conscription for men, Industrial conscription for women, and the internment of all people of cnemy race of whatever age. The money for the rally - banners, leaflets, etc. - came
[page 21]
The subjeet of this book is the relation between our everyday existence, culture (in the widest sense) and the making of a socialist socicty. Trotsky didn't leave a stone unturned in uncurthing and camining the problems of hone and family life, work and leisure time, sides. This happened in 1917. But what is the situation for most of the people most of the time?
In "normal' times under capitalism, economic exploitation and ideological oppression prevent participation by the mass of the people in public and political life. Day to day existence is necessarily concerned with personal matters which appear quite seperate from the world of politics especially. As routines, customs and traditions grow up around this everyday existence, they become implanted at an unconscious level. And, as Trotsky points out, unconscious existence is the slowest and most difficult to alter: "Custom finds it harder to discard ceremony than the state. The life of the working family is too monotonous, at the unconscious lovel, The mere failure to nurture and encourage the new revolutionary Ideas on these subjects would have led to lap ses. But the bureaucracy felt obliged to encurage the backward elements, to use them as a weight against the most advanced workers whom it could not trust.
When Trotsky writes therefore that the problems of everyday life come down to those of economic and cultural construction on the one hand and cultural and educational influences on the other, included in this is the uncarthing and conbatting of unthinking routine and tradition on which ignorance, poverty and passivity breed. This is a task of making the unconscious conscious and the conscious realisable. This is what Problems of Everday Life is about.
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PROBLEMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE