London-Edinburgh Weekend Return Group MANY state work ers who are socialists feel strongly the need to struggle for socialism within our jobs.
Yet the content of these jobs, especially the so-called 'professional jobs such as teaching community work, makes this difficult.
The state we work for is a capitalist state. As teachers, for example, we are licked into an educational system that has more to do with making people docile, SUDmissive, individualistic and competitive with helping them learn and ask questions. 9 to 5 Does this mean that we work for socialism in une and weekends, only to reIntorce capitalist relations between nine and Those who make up the London Edinburgh Weekend Return Groun - four women and four emploved the state or by organisations tunded bv the Salt felt that for us, at least, Liauc unions and political parties naan l provided clear enough thinking on this issue. So started meeting to CISCUSS IL. provides resouces we all need, yet state provision is often niggardly, and the way it is given is oppressive.
Working-class people, and particular women, blacks and gays, all get put down by the Slalc Moreover, the state takes what are really class issues and divides Dy treating them all as treating. them all as separate inalviauais vith a problem that ha been caused by capitalism in one way or you're poor, are treated as it it yore your own individual problem; your fault.
workers, for example, al C expected and management to deal with constrained people individual 'clients' — yet problems such as poverty and bad housing can at best be 'coped at an individual level, not tun• damentally solved. No cuts Since the mid-'70s first Labour and now much more sharply the Tories, the state's provision of resources is being rollec back'. At the local level particularly, services are being while rightee are worried that a simple 'no cuts' line on its own is quite insufficient.
Most people experience the state - ever ocal councils controlled Dy lne lell as their enemy as much as their friend. Socialists should certainly oppose the sale of council houses, for example, yet it is difficult to raise much enthusiasm for a defence of council housing when state pro. vision is experienced as bureaucratic, miserty. hedged in with red tape and petty restrictions.
Challenge We can start defining our problem our own way as women's self-help groups have done. As se workes we cal step outside our brief -workers have done when they have reinforced tenants' barricades rather than seeking tenants in meaningless pripalon exercises We will face opposition when we start doing this management and from those im. bued "professionalism'. But if we lake tnese choices corlectively, and isolated individuals, an reorganise to defend our choices, our 'oppositional space'.
We have learnt that that means challenging the state, even in its most benevolent guise, even in hace-lo-lacc situations. We need to be everyday against the state, as well as in it *In and Against the State. Pluto Press, £2.95 Onward Loud слоги. reverent Amens she extolled virtues