British Sounds

'In a word, the bourgeoisie creates a world in its image.

'Comrades, we must destroy that image.'

'A spectre is haunting Britain, the spectre of communism.

'All the forces of the old and new imperialism

'have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre:

'British Petroleum and pop music,

'the Eurodollar and anti-trade union laws,

'Elizabeth the dunce and Wilson the traitor.'

'The bourgeoisie have destroyed all human relationships,

'except those of naked self-interest

'and the callousness of cash on the line on the never-never.'

'Masses of labourers herded into factories and offices

'are organised like soldiers.

'As privates of the industrial army,

'they are put under the command of a hierarchy of sergeants and officers.

'Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class

'and the bourgeois state,

'they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer

'and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer

'and his representatives.

'The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim,

'the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.'

'But does wage labour create any property for the labourer?

'Of course not. It creates capital.

'That is, that kind of property which exploits wage labour

'and which cannot increase,

'except upon condition of obtaining a new supply of wage labour

'for fresh exploitation.

'In bourgeois society

'human labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour.

'In communist society

'accumulated labour is but one means

'to widen, enrich and promote the existence of the worker.

'In bourgeois society the past dominates the present.

'In communist society the present dominates the past.

'For the worker

'labour and the expression of the power of his labour

'is his own vital energy, his way of making his life meaningful to himself.

'And this, his vital energy, is sold to a stranger

'in order to obtain his necessary means of subsistence.

'Hence, his vital energy is transformed into no more than a means to exist.

'He labours in order to live.

'Work is not part of his life, it is a sacrifice of his life.

'It is merchandise sold to the highest bidder.

'This is why what he produces is not the aim of his labour.

'What he produces for himself is not the car he assembles,

'the oil he extracts from a well, nor the luxury hotel he builds.

'What he produces for himself is the wage,

'whilst the MG, black gold and the Hilton

'dwindle to a precise quantity of essentials,

'whether a bicycle, two gallons of petrol, ten cigarettes

'or a room in a council flat.

'To claim that the worker has an interest in the speedy growth of capital

'only means that the more the worker

'rapidly increases the riches of the capitalist,

'the more substantial the leftover he receives.

'The more workers one engages

'and makes them reproduce,

'the more one multiplies the mass of slaves under the yoke of capitalism.'

'Hence, as the satisfaction of work decreases

'and loathing for work increases,

'competition between workers grows and wages fall.

'Workers try to maintain their relative wage

'either by working longer hours or by increasing the rate of productivity.

'Driven by fear they multiply the disastrous effects

'of the division of labour.

'The result is the more one works, the less one receives,

'for the simple reason that, by competing against his workmates,

'the worker turns them into competitors

'who will sell themselves into conditions equally as onerous as his own.

'For when all is said and done, he, as a member of the working class,

'is only competing against himself.'

'In 1368...'

'In 1368...'

'...peasants led by Tyler...'

'...peasants led by Tyler...'

'...and Ball...' '...and Ball...'

'...rose against feudal oppression.'

'...rose against feudal oppression.'

'In 1648...'

'In 1648...'

'...peasant soldiers...' '...peasant soldiers...'

'...called Levellers...' '...called Levellers...'

'...fought for the new cooperative...'

'...fought for the new cooperative...'

'...cooperative commonwealth.'

'...cooperative commonwealth.'

'Workers must understand that existing society,

'with all the misery it heaps upon them,

'also gives rise to the material conditions and social forms

'necessary to its economic transformation.

'They must replace the conservative slogan,

'"A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,"

'with the revolutionary slogan, "Abolition of the wage system."'

'In 1791...'

'In 1791...'

'...artisans...' '...artisans...'

'...formed a free association...

'...formed a free association...

'...to forward the ideas of the French Revolution.'

'In 1844...'

'In 1844,

'cotton workers seized and held their town...'

'That's correct.'

'The relation of man to man

'is imparted through the relationship between man and woman.'

'There is a science of the image.

'Let's begin to build it.

'Here are some pointers.

- 'Materialism.' - 'Dialectics.'

'Documentary.' 'Fiction.'

'War of national liberation.' 'People's war.'

'...less likely to be unionised.'

'The present setup of the family puts great strains on us.

'Either we're struggling to combine badly paid work

'with bringing up a family

'or unable to do work for which we've been trained.'

'Ideology and beauty.'

'The area of taboo on our sexuality is much more extensive

'and the double standard is still pervasive.

'Some women still never experience orgasm.'

'Hitler and Hollywood.' 'When we complain,

'it's about little things. We want to drive buses. Play football.

'We don't want to be brought with bottles or expensive wines.'

'Exploitation of women.'

'We don't want to be wrapped up in cellophane

'or sent off to make tea or shuffled into the social committee.

'When you complain about the little things,

'you get stuck in the little things.

'It's difficult to get out of them.

- 'It's difficult to get beyond them.' - 'The jungle of sex.'

'They can be dismissed because people say,

'"Well, you're just trying to be as men."

'But it's the little things which happen to you all the time

'every day, wherever you go, all your life,

'which make revolutions.

'Revolutions are about little things.

'It's here that the subordinated relates to the dominated.'

'The problem of women. The problem of the farm labourers.

'Here the experience is felt, is expressed,

'articulated, resisted through the particular.'

'Man. City. Woman. Country.'

'The particular pummels you gently into passivity,

'so that you can't even see beyond the little things, beyond the particular.

'We don't how to find one another or ourselves.'

'Freudian revolution.'

'We are divided like oppressed groups..'

'Marxist sexuality.' 'divided by real situations

'and in our understanding and consciousness of our condition.

'We're in different classes, as we devour and use one another.

'Emancipation is often only the struggle of the privileged

'to improve and consolidate its superiority.

'The women of the working class remain the exploited of the exploited,

'oppressed as workers and oppressed as women.

'We're divided, too.

'Sometimes we're with families and sometimes we're without them.'

'In 1919, Lenin refused four days of rest

'to women workers during their periods.'

'...is suspicious of the women with no ties.

'She sees her as a threat, a potential threat to her territorial security.

'And the single woman feels the married woman is being subtly critical of her

'because she's not fulfilling her role as homemaker,

'her function as child bearer.

'She feels that she's being accused of being unable to be a woman.

'They tell us what we should be.'

'Marxist-Leninist analysis of the most natural position to fuck.'

'...we're under intensive pressure to be acceptable,

'not to put ourselves outside the safety net of marriage.

'We're taught from small girls that failure means not being selected by men.'

'Sexuality and surplus value.'

'The sign of intelligence and subtlety

'is being able to secure the contractual bargain,

'handing over your virginity for a marriage document.

'Orgasm is a matter of merchandise. They don't like us to be too clever.

'Remember, you might go to university, but men want someone who can cook.

'The emphasis in our education tends to be much more on integration.

'The encouragement of active criticism, of intellectual aggression, is very rare.

'It's the cautious virtues which predominate.

'This is difficult when you find yourself in an intellectual confrontation with men

'because there's a double bind...'

'Proletarian eroticism, for a family to love a woman profoundly.

'Bourgeois eroticism, to sleep with as many women as possible.'

'It's very difficult to stray from the definition of what they want

'because there's a danger of being rejected in a double sense.

'You're not only rejected as a rebel,

'but you're rejected for a moral reason too.

'It's much more difficult to cope with the moral thing.

'There's still the whole dirty frightened patronising world

'behind slut, tart, old slag, nymphomaniac,

'dolly, bird, chick, bit of stuff, bit of crumpet,

'old bag, silly cow, bluestocking.

'These words have got no male equivalents

'because there are no male equivalents.'

'In 1841...'

'In 1841...'

'...the first mining unions...' '...the first mining unions...'

'...is founded.' '...is founded.'

'...limited liberated areas.

'You give up struggling on every front

'and you ease into a niche of acceptance.