Chris Otiby : a Further Comment

Chris Otley writes that the motives for American aggression cannot be deduced from the “internal politics" of the U.S.A. Ralph Schoenman, in his speech over Hanoi radio to the US army in Vietnam, says however, and we agree with him: “They (the US capitalist class) own 60% of the world's resources. That's the real and only reason we pour out 60 billion dollars on arms, That's why we occupy countries everywhere and keep 3,000 bases on other people's soil." “Internal politics" and worldwide military strategy alike are based on a definable system of property relations. We should have thought that this was, for socialists, a “rather unexceptionable assertion." How else does Chris explain the emergence and strength of the US's “ideological couwmitment to a crusade against coumunism" ? Did it spring out of a vacuum to consume men, women and children, only on behalf of some monstrous aberration ? Is Chris asserting that ideology is so far removed from its economic and social basis that it is merely the product of men's minds 2? If so, we don't accept such & proposition. Rejecting a socialist explanation of the role of imperialist military aggression, Chris next contends that “we have to confront the arguments for these foreign coumitwents in the terms they occur." Raymond Williams has given a very clear account of what happens when we accept the liberalistic and legalistic arguasnts of our opponents. ".... suddenly the Johnson line became the the Wilson line ! We were left looking silly - getting down to saying what kind of negotiations ..... I now see the call for negotiations as a trick, while we didn't put forward the position as a trick, but out of the best instincts .... we wust go back to the argument about revolution and democracy.” Chris's points ... are based on the assumption of a dichotomy between the struggle for reforms, and the achievement of socialism, or “state power". He then wishes this position on us. However, he is a little confused himself. One doesnot have to assuw the neutrality of the state to concede that reforms can be won, but they have to be won. The real issue ... is to recognise that reforms are not a substitute for socialism, but a bridge to socialist con sciousness. The danger of single issue campaigns is that we do not do this unless they are part of an overall strategy. Unless one sees that the fight ... against specific ew ils is a part of the struggle to assume state power, then one either gets lost in a morass of sentimentality or becomes hopelessly confused. But, to accuse people who work in the Labour Party, on workers' control campaigns, on socialist education, in the Week or the Voice papers, etc., of a “barricades mentality", withdrawn from the iumediate issues, is simply inaccurate. ; Chris's final argument runs into a most tortuous cul~de~sac: that there is m socialist movement or programme to join; that one should therefore support non~party single issue pressure groups, even though second best; that the "independent working class" (those quotation marks again !) does not support the objectives of these pressure groups, and that, until it does, one myst continue to work in them - the pressure groups. Is Chris saying that he should devote his energies to a second best until others have produced the broad programme ? .... iiight it not be true that the reason for the gulf between the pressure groups and the working class occurs because the groups raise the issues in “the terms they occur" and thus help to perpetuate a feeling that they are remote. Is there not, hidden behind the defence of Radical Alliance, a tragic feeling of resentment that the working class let down" the CHD after 1961. We have never suggested that CND-type activities are futile. Their educational-agitational role has been vital. The futility tan. 2 thaw naw heecome an alternative to engagement with the mass movement.