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ORGANISE FOR A GENERAL STRIKE!

b) The NUM militants are right when they argue that miners in relatively prosperous areas do not have the right to veto the action of miners in areas tacing closure;

c) the individual hallot is not the mnet domaratin mathad laun apart from the 55% rule. Votes at mass meetings immediately after miners have heard and discussed all the issues are far more democratic and responsible.

BUILD SUPPORT COMMITTEES We should argue in Labour Parties, Trades Councils, etc., for buildling miners' support committees which organise collections in workplaces; accommodation and transport for flying pickets; solidarity delegations to physically back the miners on the picket lines against the police. South Wales NUPE has given a vital lead in doing this.

We should argue that Labour councils should offer their facilities faccommodation, communications, etc) to the strikers. MARGUE rUK A SULIALISI SULUTION!

Against the rundown of coal, steel and rail jobs, we need a socialist aiternative to the vandal Toryism of Mrs Thatcher and the inadequate policies of Neil Kinnock..

*We need a sliding scale of hours. Divide available work with no loss D* Day.

*We need a workers' plan for the energy industry, transport and steel. Such a plan would have to be a plan for energy, transport and steel throughout Europe. We need to fight for a Socialist United States bf Europe.

*We need training and re-training under workers' control.

*We must open the books of the nationalised industries, expose arofits of the money-lenders and suppliers.

*We must nationalise the banks and financial institutions, and lanolv industries withnut ramnonestinn We need to relaunch and continue the fight to transform the labour movement, to make it capable of creating a Labour government accountable to the movement and committed to such measures - a real workers' government.

KICK OUT THE TORIES! FIGHT FOR A LABOUR GOVERNMENT!

We can make Britain ungovernable. In 1974 when the miners forced him to 'go to the country' - which rejected him - Edward Health also had a big, stable Parliamentary majority. We must bring down this Tory government.

Labour under Kinnock cannot be relied upon to implement the working class policies we need. Nevertheless, the Labour Party is the only conceivable immediate alternative to the Tories. We must fight for a Labour government. At the same time we must fight in the labour movement to commit such a Labour government to anti-capitalist measures. That means continuing the battle in the Labour Party for democracy, accountability and for socialist policies.

Right now the miners' strike is putting the new Labour Party leadership to the test. Neil Kinnock has made sympathetic speeches generally supporting the miners. At the same time he has talked as if the miners are to blame for picket line violence and not the police. The labour movement must demand of Neil Kinnock that he stand on the line four :square with the miners without weaseling and without talking out of both sides of his politician's mouth.

Right now the miners' strike is the measure of every grouping and every individual in the labour movement. Neil Kinnock will not be forgiven if he doesn't unequivocally take sides with the miners.

Victory to t a miners! Organiser Alliance - groups are established in most large towns. We ask £1.50 a month minimum (20p unwaged) contribution from supporters.

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Name Address Send to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL.

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ROSA Luxemburg is probably the Marxist thinker whose ideas have been most distorted, misconstrued and misunderstood.

While Stalinists have tried to portray her as a wild, idealistic worshipper of the spontaneity of the working class as it is under capitalism, many bourgeois commentators focus on her critique of Lenin and of some aspects of the Russian Revolution, of which she was an ardent supporter.

Norman Geras's book 'The Legacy of Rusa Luxemburg" IN capitalist Britain, everyone is against pollution. Hence, the minority Labour government of 1974 got Tory support for Control of Pollution Act (CPA).

However, the fact that antipolluțion measures tend to hit polluters' profits explains why the CPA has never been implemented.

Capitalist industries have always treated the environment as theirs to do with as they would. In particular, they have poured industrial effluent - acid, alkalis, toxic metals, detergents and other organic products - into the rivers..

The result is that more than 2,800 kilometres of Britain's largest rivers are too dirty and devoid of oxygen to keep fish alive. This is despite laws passed in 1951 and 1961. In fact, leading firms such as Coalite (of Eric Varley fame), British American Tobacco and the National Coal Board habitually break the law by exceeding limits set for the discharge of effluent into rivers.

To avoid pollution controls, other firms have shifted operations (and pollution) to the (unprotected) coasts and estuaries of Britain. For the Mersey, this means that it no longer provides a living for fisherfolk and now stinks in summer. One Michael Heseltine described it as an affront to the standards a civilised society should demand of its environment" and as Merseyside's "single most deplorable now available in paperback for the first time, is an attempt to map out an alternative view of Luxemburg's basic politics.

Geras effectively disposes of most of the major myths about Luxemburg. For example, he points out that her political writings were not based on a crude economic determinism - the idea of mass mobilisations and socialist revolution flowing inevitably from conditions of capitalist crisis and decay.

Les The silt contains 69 million of arsenic!

How does industry with it?

When water authorities set limits on discharge of effluent, a company may appeal, and continue as before until the hearing, years later, which it may in any case win.

Prosecutions are rare and result in derisory fines. Thus for endangering public water supplies, tainting fish flesh and filling town air with fumes from suspected carcinogens, B&N Chemicals of Suffolk (a repeated polluter) received a fine of £325!

Even the actual limits of discharge set are secret. The part of the CPA removing secrecy has not been implemented and any Sarah Tisdall of the Water Authorities faces 3 months' jaile Thus, the new limits for the Coalite plant at Bolsover are secret. What is known is that above Bolsover, fish live in the Doe Lea while below it is "grossly polluted and likely to cause nffence"

With these provisions, the CPA will do nothing to improve our rivers. In fact, the successes in cleaning up rivers seems to coincide with factory closures due to the recession, anu any upturn will cause an increase in pollution.

173. April 4 1984 Page 1 On the contrary her ideas were founded on a position which put human agency and working class self-activity at the centre of politics.

Alter all, her classic slogan "socialism or barbarism" was fundamentally a call to action, and not a recipe for quietism, for passively waiting for the inevitable final victory of The aspect of Luxemburg's work that Geras draws out most strongly and usefully is her theorising on the question of the mass strike. His chapter on this topic is, in my opinion, the strongest in the entire book.

Geras presents Luxemburg's theory of the mass strike as a first attempt to work out the basic idea of a transitional programme, i.e. a strategy that could link up and integrate the struggle for immediate goals and short term demands with the goal of socialist revolution.

His basic argument is convincing. However, there are a number of important gaps in Geras's account of Luxemburg.

The main weakness of the book is the way it avoids facing head on Luxemburg's attitude to the Leninist theory of the party.

In a similar vein, Geras avoids a full examination of Luxemburg's views on the national question, views that put her in conflict with Lenin. But he does provide an interesting view on the relationship between Luxemburg's, Lenin's and Trotsky's theories of the Russian Revolution. He argues that Luxemburg's theory of the mass strike provided her with the analytical framework to understand the relationship between democratic demands (democracy, the Republic, etc) and the socialist revolution in Tsarist Russia.

This argument is very interesting but it tends to downplay the importance, originality and clarity of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution.

All in all Geras has provided an interesting and sophisticated appraisal of Luxemburg. It is probably the best that is readily available (at the restrictive price of £4.95). Serious socialists and working class militants should read it.

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