revolutionaries need to organise to give leadership, to fight for a perspective of taking power. direct action outside the Faslane nuclear submarine base, and being regularly arrested! They never counterpose parliamentary to extra-parliamentary action.
Socialists have no illusions in capitalist parliaments. The example of the military coup in Chile in 1973 showed - one of many examples - that if an elected left wing government goes 'too far", the capitalists will attempt to remove it by force.
What counts is not a left wing parliamentary majority, but the workers taking power through their own organisations. But if that happens, what happens next? The State
We want to abolish the state, but it can't happen on the day after the revolution. The port systems, their communities, and of course their workplaces.
This will require workplaces and community councils, modern forms of soviets. But the slogan 'think local, act local' is not enough for workers power.
• In addition, the local institutions of democracy need to co-ordinate themselves at a regional and national level, to take the big decisions about how to build socialism nationally and internationally.
The anarchists can't answer one crucial question. On day one of the revolution, the workers in power will face many enemies, at home and abroad
Frederick Engels, who together with Karl Marx founded modern socialism, called the state fundamentally 'a body of armed men (police, the army etc)
Revolution in Britain would require our own bodies of armed people - workers' mili• • tias, nationally co-ordinated, to fight off imperialism and defeat attempts at armed counter-revolution.
If radicals say they are anarchists we should ask them this - 'are you revolutionary or reformist? If they say they are revolutionary', we should ask them this - 'are you serious?
If the answer to both is 'yes', there is a log. ical conclusion. You need an organisation. national and if possible international, democratically organised, uniting workers, carers, students, home makers, unemployed, retired people, black people and white people, gay and straight, young and old around a common goal, able to work together on a consistent long-term basis for an alternative society - for revolution: a Marxist, revolutionary, working class party
page 14 of the scan
socialist NO