A reply to Geoff Whitty.

The article presents the authors' reply to Geoff Whitty's comments on Capital and Class. Whitty claims that we offer ...appears to be an unreconstructed notion of revolutionary socialist struggle every bit as implausible as some of the naive suggestions for reforming capitalism they rightly deride. He also charges us with committing most of the errors they identify in others, with only being prepared to excuse our own past practice, with a crudity of argument which is sloganistic, distanced from real struggles and specific crisis. More specifically, he does not accept the criticism of Rachel Sharp and ourselves of his advocacy of involvement within the Labor Party in Britain. Finally, he notes that practice will require some specification of what links with the community, social movements, working class politics, trade union struggles, broader based strategies of social justice, and so on, might actually mean in practice. Nevertheless, Whitty comes to agreeing with us in his final paragraph where he specifies the links necessary for practice. We have quoted his list above. Our list included trade union politics, party organization, mass mobilization, revolutionary training and political education, international solidarity, women's liberation, national freedom for minorities and struggles against war. Whitty's criticism on this point is plainly inconsistent. We do not wish to suggest that only our past be excused. If this is the impression we have created then we are mistaken and Whitty' criticism is important and well taken.