international viewpointthe crisis in working class representation - greg tucker 22 no renewal for...

IV378 - May 2006

INTERNATIONALVIEWPOINT

News and analysis from the Fourth International

USA - An Eruption in the Streets

ESF - An Unquestionable Success

Britain - Respect breakthrough

Iraq

Why America wants endless war - Phil Hearse 3

Bolivia

Nationalization of Gas! Bolivia's Historic May Day, 2006 - Jeffery R Webber 4

May Day

International Manifesto Of The Undocumented 7Which side are you on? - Sharon Smith 8

USA

"The power to stop the system" - Nativo Lopez 9USA - An Eruption in the Streets - Against the Current 10

Nepal

This is no rah-rah revolt - Tariq Ali 12

European Social Forum

An Unquestionable Success - Ingrid Hayes 13News from the European Social Forum, Athens - ESF Press Release 14

Italy

A dangerous situation for Rifondazione - Flavia d’Angeli 15"The Project of Prodi's Centre-Left Union has failed" - Franco Turigliatto 16

France

Marie-George, Arlette, José - what if we were to talk? - Olivier Besancenot 19The mass movement has defeated the government - what now? - Murray Smith 20

Britain

The crisis in working class representation - Greg Tucker 22No renewal for New Labour - Piers Mostyn 23Respect breakthrough in English local elections - Alan Thornett 24Latin America: a continent in revolt - Socialist Resistance Dayschool 25

Cuba

Fidel and Trotsky - Celia Hart 26

Mexico

Zapatistas call Red Alert over state attacks 27Marcos speech at rally in Plaza of the Three Cultures 28Mexican miners and steelworkers on strike - Dan La Botz 29

Denmark

Huge demonstration against government welfare cuts - Aage Skovrind 31

Fourth International Summer Camp July 2006

A new generation to build a new Europe! 32

International Viewpoint - IV378 - May 2006

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USA May Day - ESF - Britain

IV378 - May 2006

The changes proposed to the US militaryplans involve more Special Forces and anability to simultaneously undertakenumerous flexible ‘irregular warfare’missions. The message couldn’t be clearer;the US will plough on with the use ofunbridled militarism as its key mechanismfor sustaining its world position.

After three years since the start of the Iraq,where is the US in this project? To answerthat we have to look at why the war waslaunched and what the neocon elite inWashington wants. Their aim is very simple,and very hard to achieve - control of theworld order.

That doesn’t mean the impossible Utopia ofdirect control of the internal affairs of everycountry. What it means is that everysignificant country, and certainly every majorpower, has to make relations with the UnitedStates determine everything else about theirinternational economic-political relations.Then the US will continue to hold all the keylevers of power which give the United Statesunique access everywhere and enable it,uniquely, to live well beyond its means bysucking in vast loans and tribute from EastAsia and elsewhere.

For this the strike in Iraq was vital. The ideathat the war was about oil is simplistic, but ofcourse it contains an important element oftruth.

Occupying Iraq and thus controlling theworld’s largest proven reserves of oil, butalso vitally having strategic dominance of thevital oil routes out of the Middle East givesthe United States an unparalleled power andmassively reinforces US clout with East Asia(especially Japan) and Europe.

But more than that, the strategic axis of USmilitary-political policy is the domination ofthe Eurasian landmass.

This means pushing into central Asia, whichin turn is part of the long-term objective ofdisrupting Chinese regional dominance or there-emergence of Russia as a significantpower. With the collapse of the Soviet Uniona vast strategic void opened up in centralAsia.

This is where US, Russian and Chineseinterests intersect and this where the US isextremely keen to stabilise a significantmilitary presence - in countries likeUzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - in allof which the US has backed extremelyrepressive regimes.

In addition the massive US intervention intothe so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraineis part of the process of bringing US-friendlyregimes to all key parts of the Eurasianlandmass, and denying Russia influence.

Connected with the drive against Chineseinfluence is the return of US soldiers to thePhilippines, another part of the jigsaw ofmilitary encirclement.

Taking hits worldwide

Focus on the Middle East has meant the UStaking hits worldwide in terms of influenceand ability to call the shots. Most stark is thecase of Latin America, where the ‘war onterror’ has virtually no traction or popularappeal, and where the election of EvoMorales of the Movement Towards Socialism(MAS) as president in Bolivia and above allthe deepening of the Bolivarian revolutionaryprocess in Venezuela are serious blow toAmerican plans.

Ideologically these developments are vitallyimportant. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela andthe vast popular movement which led to theelection of Evo Morales are giving for thefirst time in a generation an arithmeticcontent to the algebraic formula of’anotherworld is possible’ - the only possible one,socialism!

It’s true that Bolivia especially, but alsoVenezuela, don’t threaten US economicinterests much. But the political impact ofpeople calling themselves socialists being ingovernment is immense. It gives a greaterpolitical space for opposition movements, butalso for moderate pro-capitalist governmentslike Lula’s in Brazil, to manoeuvre and defyUS policies.

And in the long term the regrowth of socialistmovements in the region is really bad newsfor the US.

At the same time, overall the ‘war on terror’has little popular support in East Asia, exceptperhaps in Indonesia. South Korea, alynchpin for decades in the US order ofbattle, has become a basket case for USinfluence.

Anti-communist fear of the North has lost itshold and indeed support for reunification ofNorth and South on a nationalist, anti-American basis, is massive.

So much so that the line expressed bysections of the South Korean military topbrass is “a reunited Korea with its ownnuclear bomb”! Korean trade links withChina are now pervasive; China is Korea’sone indispensable economic partner.

As in Latin America, the US is paying thepolitical price for neoliberal globalisation inits crudest form - “privatization byexpropriation”. When the South Koreaneconomy crashed in 1997 World Bankpresident James Wolfenson declared “Nowthere will be many opportunities forglobalisation!” - which meant, bluntly, now isthe time for US finance capital to buy upbankrupt Korean companies. This brutalapproach has not been forgotten.

Opinion is East Asia is also polarized by themagnetic attraction exercised by China. TheChinese government is engaged inexceptionally aggressive economicdiplomacy with countries like Thailand andVietnam, granting hugely favourable aid andtrade deals which bring China little or noeconomic reward in the short term, in anattempt to tilt structural economicdependence towards China long-term.

This is not designed to force any kind ofpolitical confrontation between these statesand the US or to break their many politicalties with the US system of alliances. Ratherthe effort is longterm subversion of the USposition.

To bolster its Asian position the US has beenvigorously courting India, appearing at onepoint to promise the Indian government thestatus of accepted and legitimate nuclearpower, in return ironically for Indian supportover Iran’s nuclear weapons and the ‘war onterror’ in general.


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Iraq

Why America wants endless warPhil Hearse

In promoting his recently published Quadrennial Defence Review, US DefenceSecretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of a “generation-long war”, projecting thirty yearsof unceasing combat against radical Islam.


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However the US position turned out to be sohedged round with demands for economicand political concessions from India that thisrapprochement has faltered.

Regime of accumulation

The basic thrust of Donald Rumsfeld’smilitary Quadrennial Review is easy tounderstand. Step up the ‘war against terror’,whip the US’s allies into line and demandthey provide more resources for it, andprepare for stepped up US military activismin the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

Despite all the political hits the Bushadministration is taking at home, includingGeorge Bush’s falling popularity ratings andthe deepening unpopularity of the war, thetruth is that no major strategic alternative tothe Rumsfeld-Cheney endless war isemerging in mainstream politics. Democratsand Republicans both have eyes fixed on theNovember 7 Senate and governor elections,and the Democrats and Republican criticslike John McCain are running scared of beingaccused of being ‘soft on the war on terror’.

This of course is the main strength of theneocon coalition - the near unanimoussupport they get for the basic thrust frommainstream politicians and the dire massmedia in the US itself.

This is enabling them to rather easily ride theendless revelations about the brutality of theirtorture chambers and the deepening brutalityof the war itself.

Despite the large and vibrant US antiwarmovement, all this has long-term negativeconsequences. The war on terror is becomingan organising principle of US politics long-term, like the anti-communist Cold Warbefore it, a political regime, a “regime ofaccumulation”.

Such regimes limit the discourse of officialpolitics, create new reactionary norms onsurveillance and civil liberties, swivel theeconomy to higher allocations to the military,baptise torture and murder as the defence offreedom, heighten racism and xenophobiaand bathe the whole of public life in areactionary atmosphere.

What the anti-war and other progressivemovements in the United States need now isthat their struggle is boosted and magnified100 times on an international basis.

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v Phil Hearse, a veteran revolutionary socialist inBritain, writes for Socialist Resistance.

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Speaking from the balcony of the presidentialpalace in La Paz, vice-president ÁlvaroGarcía Linera addressed tens of thousands ofsupporters of the governing Movimiento alSocialismo (Movement Toward Socialism,MAS) in the early afternoon. He declared themeasure, “the first nationalization of the 21stcentury....

After today the hydrocarbons will belong toall Bolivians. Never again will they be in thehands of transnational corporations. Todaythe country - la patria - stands up.... This is apatriotic and heroic decision that takes backour soul and dignity. But it will be a measureattacked by dinosaurs, conservatives, andtraitors of the country.”

Later that evening, addressing the samecrowd, president Morales told thoseassembled how he couldn’t think of a bettergift to give the workers on May Day than thesurprise announcement of the nationalizationof the hydrocarbons sector.

In fact, it was never his gift to give. Theworkers, the informal indigenous proletariatof the massive slum of El Alto, the Aymarapeasantry of the altiplano (high plateau), theminers, among so many others, demandedand won the nationalization of gas in theirmonumental street battles of October 2003and May-June 2005.

As Edgar Patana, executive secretary of theRegional Workers’ Central of El Alto (COR-El Alto) pointed out, “We are moved becausethe nationalization of hydrocarbons has beenone of the fundamental demands of themobilizations of October 2003 and May andJune 2005. For us, it’s homage to the fallen ofOctober. [While numbers cited by differentsources ranges quite dramatically, manyagree that between 60 and 80 protesters werekilled in the October 2003 “Gas War”]. It’s anhistoric act that, hopefully, in the following

months, will bring the country more revenue,to relieve unemployment, and make morejobs available....”

Bolivia’s May Day

May Day promised to be fairly uneventful.MAS was elected on December 18, 2005with an historic 54% of the popular vote.After starting to govern on January 22, 2006the first three months of the administrationshowed minimal ideological coherence orpolitical direction. The rhetoric of leadingfigures in the government changed with thedirection of the wind, depending on theaudience.

Many observers proclaimed therevolutionary potential of the administration,but this spoke more to their hopes andaspirations than to a sober, grounded analysisin the increasingly reformist history of theparty since Morales’s near-electoral victoryin the 2002 elections.

The MAS was largely a bystander in thehistoric mobilizations that ousted twoneoliberal presidents in under two years:Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003and Carlos Mesa Gisbert in June 2005.Worse, MAS tactically supported the Mesaregime for several months in 2004 and early2005, before being tossed from that informalcoalition.

The Morales administration proudly remindsBolivians that in March this year it moved toschedule a Constituent Assembly to rebuildthe foundations of the Bolivian state in thename of the poor indigenous majority. Apartfrom the nationalization of gas this had beena key demand of the popular socialmovements in recent years. They demandedthe unmediated, direct participation ofunions, social movement sectors, and

Bolivia

Nationalization of Gas! Bolivia’s Historic May Day,2006Jeffery R Webber

Monday, May 1, 2006, amidst celebrations and marches commemorating the day ofthe working class internationally, the Bolivian government nationalized the country’shydrocarbons sector (natural gas and oil). With presidential supreme decree 28701 -named Heroes of Chaco in memory of the overwhelmingly indigenous Boliviansoldiers who died in defense of oil reserves in Bolivia’s Chaco War with Paraguay inthe 1930s - Evo Morales reversed the privatization of hydrocarbons instituted in 1996by then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.


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crowd chanted for an “Iron Fist / Mano Dura!Death to Evo! Death to Abel! (in reference toa key leader of popular movements in ElAlto, and now Minister of Water in the MASadministration).

On this May Day afternoon it graduallybecame apparent that Morales wouldn’t bedelivering his address to the Plaza Murilloany time soon.

Nationalization and MilitaryTheatrics

In fact, Morales was in the Southeasterndepartment of Tarija, home to the largest ofBolivia’s gas deposits. More specifically,Morales was in the gas field of San Alberto,in Caraparí, Tarija, a field operated by theBrazilian state-owned gas giant, Petrobras.There, at 12:30pm, flanked by various keyministers and the heads of the police and thearmed forces, an uncharacteristically nervouspresident, reading from the shaking noteswhich contained the text to Decree 28701,declared the nationalization of thehydrocarbons sector.

The theatrical flare to the day’s events wasnowhere more evident than in theparticipation of the armed forces. 56 gasinstallations throughout the country wereoccupied by the military simultaneously, asthe president gave his speech from SanAlberto. Troops accompanied governmentrepresentatives to the offices of Petrobras inCochabamba to announce the nationalizationdecree. A bewildered looking office manager,totally taken aback by the video cameras, themilitary, and the government officials, saidhe’d let his bosses know the news.

Large banners were immediately strung upoutside gasfields, refineries, and variouspetroleum related offices and sites:“Nacionalizado: Propiedad de los Bolivianos/ Nationalized: Property of Bolivians.”

On the one hand, the deployment of thearmed forces was perfectly practical innature. Offices of transnational gascompanies were occupied by the army andmilitary police with instructions tocircumvent the destruction or removal ofdocuments that will be necessary inforthcoming audits and preparation for newlynegotiated contracts in adherence to thenationalization decree. At the sites of naturalgas deposits, the army’s presence ensuredthat sabotage by any groups on the Right,opposed to nationalization, was avertedbefore it started. At the same time, themilitarized presence was meant to reassureBolivians that gas and oil supplies would beaccessible and the industry functioning asusual in the interim, even while fundamentalchange to its structure would beginimmediately.

indigenous nations in the ConstitutentAssembly process.

However, the Constituent Assemblyenvisioned by the MAS looks far more likean institutionalization and taming ofrevolutionary hopes through the formation of“social pacts” with elite forces, channeledthrough political parties and citizen groups.

Vice-president Álvaro García Linera, takingthe old stagist line of the BolivianCommunist Party (PCB), believes thatsocialism is impossible for at least 50 to 100years, and that the country first has totraverse through a stage of “Andean-Amazonian capitalism.” The governmentrepressed mobilizations by striking airlineworkers and their supporters in the city ofCochabamba in their fist months in office,and reneged on a promise to increase theminimum wage by between 50 and 100%.

The administration furthermore quicklyadopted the line that any part of the socialmovements that demanded autonomy fromthe MAS, refused cooptation, or criticized thegovernment from the Left was “ultra-Leftist”by definition. The teachers, the healthcareworkers, important indigenous radical FelipeQuispe, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB),and the airline workers and their supporters,such as the leading Cochabamba organizerOscar Olivera, have all been hung with thislabel at various junctures.

Leading up to May Day the governmentannounced that at the MAS-sponsored,celebratory festival in the Plaza Murillo in LaPaz, Morales would deliver a speech whichwould include a raise in the minimum salary- if not one of 50 or100%, perhaps at least of15% - as well as the end to a certain piece ofhated “labour flexibilization” legislationdating back to 1985, the start of the neoliberalperiod.

In opposition to the first three months of thenew government, the COB announced aseparate assembly in a different part of townfor May Day, to be followed by a dissidentMarch against the MAS-sponsoredfestivities. In past years the COB marcheshave been legendary, huge demonstrativeoutpourings of workers’ strength in unity andnumbers. This May Day, as foreshadowed bya failed strike action by the COB in La Paztwo weeks ago, the alternative assembly wasabysmally small and subsequent COB marchquickly fizzled to an early death, just afternoon.

Nonetheless, outside of the COB, and yet notobviously at one with the MAS-sponsoredevents, tens-of-thousands of proud workers,peasants, and indigenous marchers paradedthrough the streets of the capital. I walkedpast the coca-cola workers with their redunion jackets, Che emblazoned on the left

breasts. Factory workers, retirees, indigenouspeasant groups from the altiplano, teachers,informal workers of a thousand varieties, andthousands upon thousands of disciplinedmarching women from various sectors, somein indigenous dress, others in jeans and unionjackets. Restaurants and shops had theirshutters closed. The only people workingwere the street vendors providing sustenanceto the marching masses and journalistsrecording the events.

Signs of marchers read, “Death to YankeeImperialism!,” “Out with the LootingTransnational Corporations!” “TheNationalization of Hydrocarbons Now!”“Glory to the Martyrs of Chicago WhoOffered Their Lives for the 8 Hour Day!,”among many, many others. Chants included“Death to the Cruceño Oligarchy” (inreference to the most reactionary sectors ofthe Bolivian capitalist class, rooted in thedepartment of Santa Cruz), “Long Live May1,” and “Long Live Tupaj Katari” (inreference to the anti-colonial indigenousleader of the 1781 uprising against theSpaniards).

Just before noon, the Plaza Murillo, wherethe presidential palace is situated, wasalready full with tens of thousands of MASsupporters. Marchers had descended from ElAlto, a three-hour march to the La Paz’s city-center. Bands were on stage playing Andeanmusic, and entire families were dancing inthe streets. The blue-and-white colours of theMAS adorned the buildings of the Plaza andthe banners of many in the crowd. Massive,multicoloured wiphala flags were waving assymbols of indigenous resistance, andBolivian flags as hopeful nationalism. A life-size Che placard stood out in the center of thePlaza. Finally, symbolizing the recentlysinged Peoples’ Trade Agreement (TCP)between Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela,thousands of smaller flags with one sideBolivian and the other Cuban or Venezuelanwere being waved over the heads of thedancing crowds.

Whatever one’s analysis of the MAS as aparty, the aspirations and sentiments of thiscrowd were of anti-imperialist hope,indigenous pride, and popular sovereignty.The physical, political occupation of thisurban space - the Plaza Murillo - byindigenous movements and the popularclasses was in itself a measure of politicalvictory, however limited and potentiallycompromised in its adherence to the MAS.

I reflected on this as I remembered a verydifferent rally I attended in March 2005. Inthe months leading up to Mesa’s forcedresignation I went to a midnight, spontaneouspro-Mesa assembly of primarily middle-classprotesters. As then-president Mesa stood onthe balcony waving and blowing kisses, the


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Beyond these practicalities, the role of thearmed forces served two important symbolic,political functions. First, it took thehistorically-savvy Bolivian populace back tothe two earlier episodes of nationalizingpetroleum in the country’s history, both undermilitary regimes. In 1936, the Americanmultinational Standard Oil was expropriated- later compensated - and the Bolivian stateoil company, Yacimientos PetrolíferosFiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) created, allunder General David Toro’s watch. Morerecently, during the government of AlfredoOvando Candia in 1969, pushed forwardspecifically by the socialist Minister ofPetroleum and Mines, Marcelo QuirogaSanta Cruz, Gulf Oil was nationalized.Morales paid tribute to Quiroga Santa Cruz -who was assassinated in 1980 - during hisevening speech to the masses in the PlazaMurillo.

The second symbolic role of the armed forcesin May Day’s nationalization was to indicateto the far right forces, primarily in thedepartment of Santa Cruz, that a right-wingmilitary coup against the Moralesgovernment is impossible. This was surely inMorales’ mind as he stood next to the leaderof the Armed Forces during his publicdeclaration in Tarija, and when he praised theArmed Forces and the police for theirpatriotism in protecting the natural resourcesof Bolivia in his evening speech in La Paz.

What Does Nationalization Mean?

All the fine details of the process are not yetapparent, and probably won’t be until monthshave passed. Still, we can safely say thatnationalization means less than theexpropriation without compensation oftransnational gas companies demanded bythe most radical of the social movements, andmore than the weakest of the MAS proposalsover the last two years (during the May-June2005 protests the MAS famously called onlyfor an increase in taxes for transnationals to50%, while most other sectors in the streetscalled for 100% nationalization.)

Article 1 of the Heroes of Chaco decreeasserts that, “The state reclaims the property,the possession and the total and absolutecontrol of these resources.” Article 2 statesthat, as of May 1, 2006, all petroleum

companies that are currently active in theproduction of gas or petroleum within thenational territory are obliged to hand over tothe property of YPFB - the representative ofthe Bolivian state - the entire production ofhydrocarbons. During the period oftransition, according to Article 4, the largestgas deposits - those with average natural gasproduction in 2005 over 100 million cubicfeet daily - will be subjected to the followingtax regime: 82% of the value of what isproduced will go to the state, and 18% to thegas company to recuperate costs and make aprofit.

This measure will hit the two largestgasfields, San Alberto and San Antonio,currently owned and operated by Petrobras(Brazil), Repsol YPF (Spain), and, to a lesserdegree, Total (France). The state willgenerate an additional $320 million annuallythrough this arrangement. The smaller campswill continue with the current tax regime of50% to the company, 50% to the state.

The gas refineries of Gualberto Villarroel inCochabamba, and Guillermo Elder Bell inSanta Cruz, owned and operated by Petrobrassince 1999, will be brought under statecontrol. The state will buy 51% of shares.

In a period of 60 days the debilitated YPFB isscheduled to be restructured such that it canassume the task of totally controlling theexploration, production, commercialization,transport, storage, and industrialization ofhydrocarbons. In a period of 180 days,private companies operating in the sector inBolivia will be obliged to sign new contractswith the state along the guidelines set out inthe presidential decree. If they do not, theywill no longer be permitted to operate in thecountry.

The Reaction

Petrobras (Brazil), Repsol (Spain), Total(France), and BG and BP of the UK are themajor players in the natural gas sector inBolivia. Petrobras and Repsol are by far theleading actors, controlling almost 70 percentof the gas reserves in Bolivia.

On the one hand the stakes are high for thesecompanies. According to Jorge Alvarado,president of YPFB, even when they start toreceive only 18% of the value of the gasbeing produced, these companies will enjoy20-25% profit rates. But the days of super-profits are finished. On the other, thecompanies are so massive that their assets inBolivia make up only a small portion of theiroverall asset base. This, in combination withthe fact that the companies had alreadydowngraded the value of Bolivian barrelsgiven the Bolivian government’slongstanding - if vague - calls fornationalization, meant that there was minimal

reaction in their shares as the news of MayDay’s decree became public.

Nonetheless, the pundits and relevant playershave hardly kept their silence. One WallStreet energy analyst told the Financial Timesthat “This sends a very negative signal to theoil and gas market. It is a signal of risingnationalisation that could spread fromBolivia and Venezuela to Mexico and as faras Kuwait.”

For Petrobras President Jose Sergio Gabrielli,“These conditions make gas operationspractically impossible in Bolivia.”Meanwhile, today (Tuesday) Brazil’spresident Inácio Lula Da Silva convened anemergency cabinet meeting to discuss themeasure taken by Bolivia’s president. Thepresident of Spain has demanded authenticnegotiation where the interests of both sides -the capitalists and the masses - are taken intoconsideration. The Spanish government hasexpressed that the measures taken by theBolivian government are worrying.Chairman of Repsol, Antoni Brufau, told anArgentine radio station that “The news is ofgreat concern to us... it’s a matter which hasbeen taken right out of the logical businessframework which should guide relationsbetween the state and companies.”

The Future

The depth and importance of May Day’snationalization will only reveal itself fullywith the passage of time. State capitalistcontrol of industry has hardly been a meansof human liberation and egalitarianism in thepast, in Bolivia or elsewhere. Nonetheless,this is a popular victory borne from the daysof mass action in October 2003 and May-June 2005. It’s the beginnings of a break withthe “logical business framework.” The degreeto which this can be broken down more fullywill not depend on gifts from the MASadministration, but rather the self-organizedstruggle of the popular classes andindigenous nations.

It will also depend on the extent to which thedeepening of radicalism regionally in LatinAmerica, and we hope internationally, cancontinue. Recognition of these possibilitiesand obstacles also places a heavy burden ofresponsibility on those in the internationalLeft rooted in the advanced capitalistcountries, to strengthen anti-imperialism andforge new spaces for the Left at home.

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v Jeffery R. Webber is an editor of New Socialist anda PhD candidate in Political Science at the Universityof Toronto. He is currently in La Paz.

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May 1st is Labour Day in mostcountries around the world,celebrated in honour of thosewho lost their lives to gain the 8hour work day. On this day,demonstrations around theworld will come together tosupport the rights of theworking class and of theoppressed. It is a day ofstruggle, commemoration, andpride. It is our day, no matterwhere we come from, even ifwe’re born here or on the otherpart of the planet, we face thesame injustices and struggles.

In the United States, it is thosewithout papers that have takenthe date of May 1st to bring tolight the cause that they havebeen struggling for the past 6years. Today, over a millionimmigrant workers have takenthe streets to rally against theterms in HR4437, which passedin the House of Representativesof the US Congress. On May1st, immigrants call for “a daywithout immigrants” and for aone-day consumer boycott todemand the legal status of 12million undocumented workersin the United States. May 1st isnot a holiday in the UnitedStates, the abstinence from theimmigrants will show just howvital immigrants are to theeconomy of the United States.

In Europe, the undocumentedare rallying for the same causes.In Belgium, 10,000 people tookto the streets to demand legalstatus for immigrants and to sayNO to the prisons for childrenborn “in the wrong place.”Today, the undocumented haveheld hunger strikes in sixchurches to demand legal status.

In Spain, a limitedregularization process from ayear ago has left hundreds ofthousands of workers withoutpapers and many other withserious difficulties inreapplying. A few months ago,thousands undocumentedworkers took to the streets ofMadrid with the chant: "Nativao extranjera, la misma claseobrera” (“Native or foreign,we’re the same working class").

In other parts of Europe, themasses rose to rally against thedozens of undocumentedworkers who burned in cageslike rats in Schiphol this pastOctober... In France, theundocumented struggled for thelast 10 years for theregularization for all, thousandsof young people from thepopular suburbs took to thestreets to protest discrimination,and today the undocumented,the students and French workersjoined in the struggle againstthe CPE. Their unity anddetermination won the first stepin that battle.

Unconditional legalizationfor all

It is a system based on theunlimited search for profit andon the savage exploitation ofthe earth and its people that hasled to the displacement ofmillions of workers from thepoorest to the richest countriessearching for work and a way tosustain their families. Facingthe phenomena of migration,the receptor countries arbitratecruel laws that criminalize andcontrol immigrants. Different“regularization” or “adjustment”

workers and impedes our unity.This allows for the passing oflaws as the New Labour Reformin Europe, which attacks andreduces labour rights for all.The first to be affected by thesereforms are the immigrants.

For this reason we call on allworkers, with or without papers,to participate in the nextmobilizations to defendeveryone’s rights. “Native orforeign, we’re all workers”signifies the end of the divisionbetween workers, the unityagainst a system that favoursslavery, and racism ...

On May 1st we will take to thestreets demanding RIGHTS,DIGNITY, and RESPECT.Native or Foreign, we’re thesame working class. We callupon everyone, documented orundocumented, to join us insubscribing to this internationaldeclarations of the movementsof the undocumented.

Signed on May 1, 2006

United States: CoaliciónNacional por Dignidad yResidencia PermanenteSpain: Asociacion deTrabajadores InmigrantesEn España ATRAIEFrance: La CoordinationNationale des Sans PapiersCNSP/FranceBélgium: Unión De SansPapiers UDEPItaly: Le ComitatoImmigrati in Italia

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May Day

International Manifesto Of The Undocumented May 1st: International Mobilization For Regularization

On May 1st the undocumented have taken to the streets demanding RIGHTS, DIGNITY, andRESPECT. We publish here a Manifesto drawn up by migrant/undocumented organisationsfrom across the world.

laws for immigrants all over theworld also regulate the workingconditions, the quality of lifeand residency of the immigrantssubmitting them to a doublestandard, creating a secondclass of workers, anddeveloping situations of newslavery. These are then,xenophobic laws (hate to theforeigner). The same way thatEurope wants to “export” itsborders South, to Libya,Morocco, etc., the United Statewants to export its border to theSouth of Mexico to stop theflow of immigrants in the southof the country. The situation issimilar the struggle expandsthrough all the rich countries:France, the United States,Belgium, England, Switzerland...that’s why the struggle ofimmigrants in one countryreflect on the rest and shouldbegin to be coordinated witheach other.

All immigrant workerscontributing in receptorcountries have the right to legaldocumentation that would allowthem to work with dignity, andto fully enjoy full rights andhuman dignity. The use of the“immigrant status” allowsgovernments to keep a massiveclass of workers that cannot askfor just working conditions,which in turn lowers theworking conditions and salariesof all the workers.

Native or foreign, we’rethe same working class

The division between native andforeign workers, between thedocumented and theundocumented, affects all


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The decision to organize anational day of protest forimmigrant rights on May 1 thisyear is a conscious nod towardthe traditions embodied by thisworking-class holiday, in whichimmigrants have played such avital role historically.

May 1, 2006, holds the potentialto begin to revive that tradition,from America’s grassroots. Themovement’s most powerfulslogan, “a day withoutimmigrants,” is based upon astrategy of social struggle tiedexplicitly to the power ofworkers to withhold their labor-which successfully built theU.S. union movement in thefirst few decades of the 20thcentury.

For the labor movement, thelessons of this new struggle,with traditions rooted in its ownhistory, could finally begin toreverse decades of retreat andsetback.

To be sure, there is a debateover strategy underway insidethe immigrant rights movement.Last week, Time magazinefeatured an article, “TheImmigrants’ Dilemma: ToBoycott or Not to Boycott? Asplit is growing over howmilitant the upcoming ‘DayWithout Immigrants’ shouldbe.”

Since hundreds of thousandsturned out to protest in morethan 100 cities on April 10,spurring several days of studentwalkouts from Dallas to LosAngeles, congressionalDemocrats and their movement

minions have done their best torein in workplace and schoolwalkouts on May 1.

Democrats have warnedsupporters that walkouts couldcreate a “backlash,” whiledangling the promise of“comprehensive immigrationreform”-a misleading termdenoting “legalization” ratherthan “amnesty.”

Thus far, Democratic-sponsoredproposals for legalizationexclude the vast majority ofimmigrants from the path tocitizenship, instead promotingguest-worker programs thatoffer immigrant workers noright to workplacerepresentation, to the delight ofthe U.S. Chamber ofCommerce.

Moreover, Democrats arecarefully playing to both sidesin the national immigrationdebate, as Sen. Hillary Clintondemonstrated in a recent NewYork Daily News interview, inwhich reporters described her“embracing both conservativeand liberal goals.”

In the interview, Clinton arguedthat U.S. borders should besecured with a wall or “smartfence” before legalizationbegins.

In contrast to the moribundantiwar movement, however,Democrats have notsuccessfully derailed themilitant wing of the immigrantrights movement-and plans for aMay 1 boycott continue inmajor U.S. cities. The

difference has been the strengthof the immigrant rightsmovement inside the workingclass and the growth of acommitted left wing willing tochallenge the dominance ofstrategies that rely oncongressional Democrats.

While the catalyst for thismovement has been theSensenbrenner Bill, HR 4437,criminalizing undocumentedimmigrants and anyone whoassists them, the sentimentamong millions of immigrantsis for full rights and amnesty.And Democrats’ attempts atsabotage have begun toembolden a self-conscious leftwing within the movement.

New York City activists booedClinton’s proposals at an April22 planning meeting for ahuman chain protest. LosAngeles-based Nativo Lopez,president of the MexicanAmerican Political Association,argued, “So what’s the ruckusabout a boycott? We need to putthe focus of power with theworker and immigrants, not inthe hierarchies, to resolve theimmigration reform debate.”

The fates of both native- andforeign-born workers areinextricably tied, despitewidespread claims to thecontrary. As Julio Huato arguedrecently in Monthly Review,“The working and livingconditions of U.S. workersdon’t have to be subject to azero-sum game played bynatives versus immigrants (andthis includes our thin and frayedsocial safety net). But they willbe for as long as we treat theinterest of capital as immutableand sacred.”

May Day

Which side are you on?Renewing the traditions of May Day

Sharon Smith

FOR THE first time in six decades, International Workers Daywill be celebrated on U.S. soil with mass working-classdemonstrations on May 1. May Day, celebrated the worldover, commemorates the seismic upheaval inside the U.S. thatlaunched the struggle for the eight-hour workday in 1886, atime when native-born workers had few rights and immigrantshad still fewer, yet both united in a class-wide battle.

There is nothing new about themodern immigration debateexcept the legal terminology.Immigrants have not beenwelcomed in the “land ofopportunity” since the firstwave of Irish immigrants landedon U.S. shores in the late 1820s.No distinction existed betweendocumented and undocumentedimmigrants before broadimmigration controls wereimposed in the 1920s. Allimmigrant labor was used tocompete with white, native-bornworkers-as were disfranchisedAfrican Americans.

Corporations have traditionallyused racism to encouragecompetition between workers,in order to drive down wagesfor the entire working class andweaken the labor movement.Yet all too often, union leadershave betrayed workers’ interestsby opposing the rights ofimmigrants while failing tochampion the rights of AfricanAmericans.

In 1867, when 10,000 Chineseworkers staged one of the mostimportant strikes of the 19thcentury, they stood alone. Theydemanded higher pay, shorterworking hours (including aneight hour-day for tunnelingworkers), a ban on whippingand the right of workers to quittheir jobs. Yet no unions cameto their defense, and within aweek the strike was crushed-asetback for the entire labormovement, which would notwin the right to unionize untilthe 1930s.

Immigrant workers haveperformed another service forthe U.S. working class, longunacknowledged and broadly


9

unappreciated. Since 1886,when German immigrantsincorporated the politics ofanarchism and Marxism into thestruggle for the eight-hour day,immigrant workers havebrought radical politics withthem when they migrate,pressuring the U.S. labormovement from within tochallenge the conservativeideology U.S. rulers seek toimpose.

In 1886, anarchists from theInternational Working People’sAssociation (IWPA) led thestruggle for the eight-hour day,and its ground troops wereoverwhelmingly Germanimmigrants. Forty thousandworkers struck for the eight-hour day in Chicago, includingan altercation with police onMay 3 alongside strikers atMcCormick Harvester Worksthat killed four workers andinjured many more.

A rally the next day atHaymarket Square to protest thepolice brutality attracted just1,200, dwindling to 300 whenrain began to fall. Just as thespeeches were concluding,police entered the square andordered the rally to disperse. Asthe speakers were leaving, abomb was thrown into thecrowd, killing eight and injuring67 police. In response to thebomb, police opened fire on thecrowd, killing and woundingcivilians and police alike.

Without evidence, eightChicago anarchists were triedand convicted-not of actualmurder, but of “conspiracy tocommit murder” and for“inciting,” rather thancommitting, violence inHaymarket Square. The struggleculminated in the trial andexecution of four of themovement’s leaders, includinganarchists August Spies andAlbert Parsons.

In 1893, Illinois governor JohnPeter Altgeld finally issued apardon, acknowledging that noevidence incriminated any ofthose convicted in the bombing.Nonetheless, the Haymarketincident unleashed a wave ofantiradical and anti-immigranthysteria. Newspaper headlinesscreamed for revenge against“Dynamarchists” and “RedRuffians.”

Because German immigrantsprovided the largest base foranarchism, the Chicago Timesdescribed America’s “enemyforces” as “rag-tag and bob-tailcutthroats from the Rhine, theDanube, the Vuistukla and theElbe.”

Today, Mexicans, ElSalvadorans and other Latinoshave brought with themtraditions of class struggleabsent since McCarthyismexcised radicals from the U.S.labor movement in the 1950s.These traditions hold thepotential to revitalize the U.S.labor movement, if it welcomesthem.

Only in 2000 did the AFL-CIOfinally reverse its longstandingopposition to the rights ofundocumented immigrants,making possible a historicopportunity for uniting workersacross racial and ethnic barriers.But labor leaders must alsoreverse their long-standingaversion to class struggle for themovement to succeed.

Far from creating a backlash,the return of struggle is the keyto U.S. labor’s survival.

(This article was first published by theUS Socialist Worker - journal of the ISO)

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v Sharon Smith is a leading memberof the US International SocialistOrganisation (ISO).

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WE HAVEN’T seen anything asodious and hateful as theSensenbrenner legislation sincethe Fugitive Slave Act of 1857.People should look it up—another law that asked citizens toparticipate in the persecution ofothers and the returning ofescaped slaves to their formermasters.

HR 4437 is the culmination ofstate and local legislation that wehave been faced with—persecution in different placesfor the past 10 years.

It’s also the product of 10 yearsof hate speech on right-wingradio. The level of hate speechand hate-mongering comingfrom the Clear Channel andothers is unprecedented.

This is also globalizationcoming home to roost. There is adynamic with the economicpowerhouses of Europe andNorth America in relation todeveloping countries. Thepowerhouses are extracting asmuch wealth as they can fromthose countries. Legal andundocumented immigration isgoing to continue in a structuraland profound way as long as thisis the case.

Our greatest fear is that theDemocratic Party is going to cuta deal behind closed doors andcontain the movement that hasbeen born.

Capital is creating for us amovement that we didn’t have20 years ago. Capital has sentimmigrants to every corner andevery town of the country, sothat mass demonstrations arepossible everywhere.

Therefore, I’m going to go to thecapital and invite George Bushto join us in “One Day Without

Immigrants” on May 1 andparticipate in the movement thathe is helping to create.

There are some people who arecriticizing the call to boycott, butnevertheless, the call has beenmade, the word is out there, andpeople are ready to pursue it.

I happened to be at a conferencelast Friday at the CatholicCathedral of Los Angeles, rightafter Cardinal Mahoney madethe announcement not toboycott. I talked to the workerswho work at the Cathedral. Theycame up to me and told meexcitedly, “Nativo, we’re notgoing to work on May 1!”

This movement is based on theGhandian principals of non-cooperation. It’s also based onthe idea that the only power wepossess is our labor power. Theonly power we have is the powerthat creates value in this society.When workers refuse tocooperate, they realize the powerthey have to tinker with and stopthe system.

The immigrant “problem,” assome call it, can only beresolved when workersthemselves refuse to cooperatewith the system until it fairlyremunerates them. And in thiscase, fair remuneration is fullunconditional legalization for allworkers past and present.

(This article was first published by the USSocialist Worker - journal of the ISO)

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v Nativo Lopez is president of theMexican American PoliticalAssociation and a leading organizer ofthe 1 million-strong March 25 2006demonstration in Los Angeles, calledto protest vicious anti-immigrantlegislation

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USA

“The power to stop the system”Nativo Lopez

At an April 22 meeting of organizers in Chicago, Nativo Lopez,president of the Mexican American Political Association, spokeabout the importance of the next step in the struggle againstvicious anti-immigrant legislation - the Great AmericanBoycott on May 1.


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The Realities ofImmigration

There are persistent myths about“illegal immigration”:

v The debate focuses mainly onMexican immigrants, but in factonly about half of allundocumented workers areMexican. Another 10-15% areother Latinos. It is estimated thatthere are 500,000 undocumentedChinese living in the UnitedStates, who tend to be moresilent because of the fear andconsequences of deportation.The Gran Marcha wasoverwhelmingly Latino, butthere were many othercontingents. One in five Koreansis undocumented and they had acontingent; Filipinos marched aswell as Irish.

v We’re told that organizedlabor won’t support theundocumented who, theRepublicans keep telling us,undercut middle-class Americanliving standards and access tojobs. Historically there’s sometruth in this. But one of thestrongest institutional supportsto the march in Los Angeles wasnone other than the ServiceEmployees (SEIU), whosespectacular growth in the lastdecade was due to organizinglow-wage service workers,mostly undocumented, andUNITE-HERE who haveorganized hotel and restaurantworkers.

v Undocumented immigrantssupposedly use public servicesbut contribute little to theeconomy and tax base. The mostpernicious myth is that womencross the border to have babies

California archdiocese of fivemillion are Latino).

Student Walkout andTragedy

On March 28 came the students’turn. Forty thousand LosAngeles high school studentswalked out of their classrooms,continuing the wave of protestagainst measures to turn theirfamilies into felons. If Spanish-language media contributed tothe gigantic turnout on March25, text-messaging andMySpace helped create acollective walkout thatsurpassed the Chicano walkoutof 1968 as well as the walkoutsof 1994 - and faced policeviolence and suspension.

The LA Unified School Districtimposed a lockdown thatafternoon, but the walkoutscontinued all week. MayorAntonio Villaraigosa - whosupported the Gran Marcha -disappointed students by urgingthem to go back to theirclassrooms. KPFK broadcastlive a four-hour town hallStudent Speakout on March 31stthat featured passionate andarticulate students explainingtheir actions.

In a horrifying tragedy, 14-year-old Anthony Soltero committedsuicide after an assistantprincipal at De Anza middleschool kicked him out of school,banned him from eighth gradegraduation activities and toldhim he’d be sent to prison fororganizing a walkout on March28.

On the day of the Gran Marchathe white liberal left seemed tohave missed the mobilizationand didn’t know to meetdowntown at Olympic andBroadway at 10am. Why? AsDaniel Hernandez reported inthe LA Weekly (reprintedelsewhere in this issue), if youdidn’t listen to mostly Spanish-language media (but Korean too)and didn’t read La Opinion, ordidn’t tune into Pacifica radioKPFK all week, well, youprobably missed the news.

The non-English media and theCatholic Church played a majorrole in mobilizing people forthese marches. Spanish-language media promoted themarch continuously for ten days.Cardinal Mahony, who heads thelargest Catholic archdiocese inthe nation (Los Angeles), cameout against the SensenbrennerBill [1] as a violation ofChristian principles, affirmingthat the mission of the churchwas to aid the poor.

In the 1980s and 1990s Mahonyopposed Padre Luis Olivares’work in providing refuge andsanctuary to the poor andundocumented. Olivares’sermons regularly quoted fromLeviticus 19:33-34, “And if astranger sojourn with thee inyour land, ye shall not vex him.But the stranger that dwellethwith you shall be unto you asone born among you, and thoushalt love him as thyself; for yewere strangers in the land ofEgypt.” It took 15 years forCardinal Mahony to realize thatLatinos are the present andfuture of the Catholic Church inCalifornia (75% of the Southern

USA

An Eruption in the StreetsGran Marcha and Beyond

Against the Current MARCH, 2006 MARKED an eruption that hit the streets, showed its strength, and took everyoneincluding its participants by surprise. Millions marched all over the country: 300,000 in Chicago,50,000 in Denver, 10,000 in Detroit and Milwaukee, 10,000-20,000 in New York, 20,000 inPhoenix - and somewhere between 500,000 and a million in the Gran Marcha in Los Angeles onMarch 25. As the U.S. Congress and Senate hold their wretched deliberations on “immigrationreform,” the communities affected have shown they will not be passive objects, but activesubjects, in this debate. As this issue goes to press, mass marches have continued and Congresshas recessed in deadlock on the issue.

Marching in LA

born in America, while otherscome to collect welfare. Notonly is this false, but peopleknow it: In fact most Americanssee undocumented workers asvery hard working (80%according to a Pew HispanicResearch Center report) andonly 4% of the population thinks“illegal” immigration is apressing problem. The samestudy reveals that the populationis seriously divided over what todo - give the immigrants greencards (40%) or deport them(53%). In a CNN poll releasedon April 3, 70% said they feelsympathetic toward theundocumented.

Amnesty, Legalization andOpen Borders

The Sensenbrenner bill (HR4437) is about as pointless as itis vicious - except as anorganizing tool for the far right.This backlash bill would furtherdrive undocumented workersunderground and to the marginsof society. It’s not onlyCalifornians who depend on thework and skills of these essentialworkers. The Senate’s attempt tocome up with a more “moderate”bill (McCain-Kennedy) thatcreates a guest worker program,favored by Bush, could be thecarrot to Sensenbrenner’s stick.

The debate is a potential politicaldisaster for the Republicans,four of whom - Senators SamBrownback, Mike DeWine,Lindsay Graham and JudiciaryChairman Arlen Specter - sidedwith Democrats on the issue.Senator Frist forced the debatebecause he is currying favor withthe far right in the party for hisown presidential bid.

President Bush sits in the middlebecause he knows that passingthe infamous anti-immigrantProposition 187 [2] made theRepublican Party radioactive inCalifornia and destroyed


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The enforcement measuresbeing proposed in both bills -either more border police or awall - will only make the journeydeadlier, not stop it. In the era ofglobalization, capital movesfreely and instantaneouslyacross borders. Yet labor facesborder patrols, police, super-exploitation in the workplaceand fear of deportation. Thedrive for ever higher profits hasled to a higher level ofexploitation of the Americanworker, the increased use ofunprotected immigrant labor -and super-exploited workersglobally.

The realities of exploitation inthe United States createopenings for organizing. Unionsshould follow the lead of SEIUand UNITE-HERE, organize theundocumented and the low-paid,and press for reforms that arebeneficial to all workerswhatever their immigrationstatus.

This article is an editorial from the USradical socialist magazine Againt theCurrent (#122 May/June 2006). It wasdrafted by editorial board member SusanWeissman.

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vAgainst the Current is the magazineof Solidarity, a radical socialistregroupment in the United Staes.

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NOTES

[1] Border Protection, Antiterrorism, andIllegal Immigration Control Act of 2005proposed by House Judiciary CommitteeChairman James Sensenbrenner, whichwould considerably tighten controls onimmigrants and make it more difficult tobecome a US citizen.

[2] A 1994 ballot initiative designed todeny illegal immigrants social services,health care, and public education. It wassupported by the republican governor ofCalifornia Pete Wilson. After a series oflegal challenges it was dropped by thenewly elected governor in 1998.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187_(1994)

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“moderate” McCain-Kennedybill is no answer - itinstitutionalizes permanentexclusion of part of the laborforce, and places huge financialand bureaucratic burdens onbecoming legal.

But supporters of immigrantrights are all over the lot aboutwhat kind of legislation tosupport. The only decent bill,introduced by African-AmericanCongresswoman Sheila JacksonLee (TX-D), grants legal statusto anyone living in the UnitedStates five years from the date ofthe bill’s passage. It builds in afamily reunification policy,enforces protection of immigrantworkers and requires that thefees paid for those applying forlegal status be used for jobtraining in communitiessuffering high unemployment.

Too Many Silences

Initially civil rights leaders andthe Black Congressional Caucus(as Earl Ofari Hutchinsoncommented in New AmericanMedia, March 27, 2006) wereMIA. A dirty secret of Prop 187in California in 1994 was thatwhile polls showed Blacksopposing the measure, 55%voted for it. Hutchinson notesthat civil rights leaders “are loathto equate the immigrant rightsmovement with the civil rightsbattles of the 1960s.” They werea growing presence, however, inthe second round of massmarches on April 10.

There’s a danger of pitting low-waged African-American versusundocumented workers. It’sparticularly important for allsupporters of human and civilrights to wage a united fight forbetter wages, benefits and decentjobs. Today immigrants aretargeted for “stealing Americanjobs,” while the Black poor areoften demonized as “lazy andunproductive” in contrast with“hard-working immigrants.”These racist labels don’t createjobs: rather they let corporationsand the government off thehook.

One concrete example isUNITE-HERE Local 2’sbargaining proposal with hotelsto include contract language thatboth protects immigrant rights

Governor Pete Wilson’s politicalcareer. For Bush, who hasimmigrants in his family, comesfrom a border state and wantsLatinos in the Republican Party,a “guest worker” program isperfect because it answers theneed of employers for acontingent, low-wage laborforce that will be rotated outbefore it can organize.

In fact, this is no solution at all.What’s needed is immediatelegal status for immigrantworkers, and a clear,uncomplicated and inexpensivepath to U.S. citizenship for thosewho desire it.

The racist anti-immigrantcampaign has been building.One year ago the MinutemenVigilantes began their watch onthe borders in California andArizona. As Marc Cooper hasreported in the LA Weekly andThe Nation, the Minutemenvigilantes on the borders wereminiscule, outnumbered by themedia reporters, vans andcameras hyping them to thepublic. Four hundred newsstories followed the “borderblockade’”by 30-200Minutemen.

California’s number oneimmigrant, Governator ArnoldSchwarzenegger joined thedebate with an op-ed in the LATimes on March 28, positioninghimself to the right of Bush butstill in the center on this debate.He wrote, “Criminalizingimmigrants for coming here is aslogan, not a solution,” yet“granting citizenship to peoplewho are here illegally is not justamnesty... it’s anarchy.”Republican leaders like NationalCommittee Chairman KenMehlman, Congressman DanaRohrabacher and others havesuddenly discovered thedisappearing middle-class, low-wage jobs and loss of benefits -and blamed the undocumentedfor taking “their” jobs. For therecord, Rohrabacher thinksprisoners should be put to workin the fields.

The Democrats have been littlebetter, worrying that if they utterthe word “amnesty” they willlose all future elections. Theguest worker program in the

UNITE-HERE hotel workers campaign

and increase the diversity of thework force, particularly byhiring African-Americanworkers. The union pointed tostatistics that Black employmentin hotels has dropped below 6%.

Globalizing Poverty

Neoliberal economic policieshave increased poverty anddesperation throughout LatinAmerica. NAFTA did not benefitimpoverished Mexican workers.It depressed their wages - inparticular, destroying Mexicanfarming as low-cost food fromsubsidized U.S. agribusinessflooded the market - andaccelerated the immigrationwave. The wage differentialbetween the US and Mexico is11-1, and 20-1 in the agriculturalsector (see Marc Cooper, “TheGreat Immigration Debate:Getting Beyond Denial,”Truthdig.com, March 14, 2006.)

Stanford historian DavidKennedy notes that the incomegap between the United Statesand Mexico is the largestbetween any two contiguouscountries in the world. That gapproduces massive demand forlabor in the United States,matched by a massive supplyfrom Mexico and CentralAmerica. Quoted in theWashington Post, Kennedynoted that any attempt bygovernments to come betweenthese two forces by increasingenforcement does not work - justas it hasn’t with drug trafficking.

Socialists are clear on this issue.We are in favor of amnesty,legalization and open borderswith an efficient and transparentpath to citizenship. Right nowthe borders are essentially open(to illegal traffic) but dangerous.The trek to the North hasincreased since the passage ofNAFTA in 1994. Mexicans arejoined by Central Americanworkers and peasants who face aharrowing and dangerous tripthrough Mexico and anotherperilous journey through the hotArizona or California desert.The U.S. Border Patrol reportsthat 1,954 people died between1998-2004 attempting to crossthe southern border - more thanever died crossing the BerlinWall.


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staggering. The sheer ferocity of his assaulttook the tiny middle class by surprise andisolated the politicians.

Will the triumvirate - the US, the EU and theUN security council - try to keep the king inpower? If it does, it will have to addKathmandu to a growing list of disasters.Recent newspaper editorials indicate that thewest fears the disease may spread toneighbouring India. A top-level summitbetween the Naxalites and civil servants afterthe defeat of the BJP government revealed aremarkably pragmatic Maoist leadership: allit wanted was for the government toimplement the constitution and pledgescontained in successive Congress manifestos.

What the uprising in Nepal reveals is thatwhile democracy is being hollowed out in thewest, it means more than regular elections tomany people in the other continents. TheNepalese want a republic and an end to thesystemic poverty that breeds violence and toachieve these moderate demands they aremaking a revolution.

reprinted from The Guardian, Tuesday April 25, 2006

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v Tariq Ali is a socialist writer and broadcaster whohas been particularly active in anti-imperialistcampaigns, from Vietnam to Iraq. Born and broughtup in Pakistan, he now lives in London.

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culmination of decades of social, cultural andeconomic oppression. This is an old story.Nepal’s upper-caste Hindu rulers haveinstitutionalised ancient customs to preservetheir own privileges. Only last year was thecustom of locking up menstruating women incowsheds declared illegal.

The Nepalese monarchy, established morethan two centuries ago, has held the countryin an iron grip, usually by entering intoalliances with dominant powers - Britain, theUS and, lately, India - and keeping themsupplied with cheap mercenaries. It is a two-way trade and ever since the declaration ofthe "war on terror", the corrupt and brutalroyal apparatus has been supplied withweaponry by its friends: 20,000 M-16 riflesfrom Washington, 20,000 rifles from Delhiand 100 helicopters from London.Meanwhile, half the country’s 28 millionpeople have no access to electricity orrunning water, let alone healthcare andeducation, according to the UN.

In 2005, King Gyanendra suspended all civilliberties and outlawed politics. To deal with aproblem that was essentially structural, butwhich in the global context of neoliberalismcould not be solved through stateintervention, he decided on mass repression:physical attacks on the poor, concertedattempts to stamp out dissident politicalorganisations and blanket social repression.The chronicle of shootings, beatings,imprisonments, purges and provocations is

There is something refreshingly old-fashioned taking place in the Himalayankingdom of Nepal: a genuine revolution. Inrecognition of this, the US has told citizensexcept for "essential diplomats" to leave thecountry, usually a good sign. Since April 6,Nepal has been paralysed by a general strikecalled by the political parties and backed byMaoist guerrillas. Hundreds of thousands areout on the streets - several have been shotdead and more than 200 wounded. A curfewis in force and the army has been given shoot-to-kill orders.

But the people have lost their fear and it isthis that makes them invincible. If a singleplatoon refuses to obey orders, the Bastillewill fall and the palace will be stormed.Another crowned head will fall very soon. Acaretaker government will organise freeelections to a constituent assembly, and thiswill determine the future shape of thecountry.

The lawyers, journalists, students and thepoor demonstrating in Kathmandu also knowthat if they are massacred, the armedguerrillas who control 80% of thecountryside will take the country. This is notone of those carefully orchestrated "orange"affairs with its mass-produced placards, rah-rah gals and giant PR firms to aid mediacoverage, so loved by the "internationalcommunity". Nor does the turbulence haveanything to do with religion. What is takingplace in Nepal is different: it is the

Nepal

This is no rah-rah revolt Tariq Ali

We reproduce here an article from Tariq Ali published in TheGuardian on April 25.

Since this article was written events in Nepal have accelerated.Following King Gyanendra’s recall of Parliament, a new governmenthas been formed, comprising most of the seven legal oppositionparties. The government has promised that a Constituent Assemblywill be convoked which would have the power to abolish the monarchyand make Nepal a republic.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) has declared athree-month ceasefire and has held open mass rallies in Kathmanduand other cities, addressed by party leaders newly emerged fromclandestinity. The country’s second-biggest legal party, the CommunistParty of Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) has echoed theMaoists’ call for a republic.

The government has now offered to hold talks with the Maoists, whoapart from controlling most of the Nepalese countryside, clearlyplayed a major role in the mass urban movement that forced KingGyanendra to give in. IV editors


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With all due respect to Liberation or LeMonde (French daily newspapers), who arealways prompt to proclaim the death of thesocial forums and the global justicemovement, it has to be said that the realityand the experience of the militants who cameto participate in the European Social Forum(ESF) in Athens flatly contradicted them.Before the forum we were insisting on theneed to “find a second wind” and admittingsome difficulties and fears. This Greekedition of the ESF dissipated many of them.

In announcing that more than 35,000 hadregistered (as against 25,000 in London in2004) the Greek organizers themselvesadmitted that they were astonished by thenumbers. Equally, the massive demonstrationon Saturday afternoon showed that there wasa contact between the global justice activistsand the population of Athens. On Saturdayevening the media were announcing 80,000demonstrators, a record since the anti-warmobilisation on February 15, 2003.

The debates were directly related to thestruggles that are taking place in variousEuropean countries. The victories won inFrance against the European ConstitutionalTreaty and against the CPE were at centrestage. This time, unlike in London, theEuropean and social questions were at theheart of the discussions. Of course theinternational dimension was not absent,whether it was the risk of imperialist war inIran or the political situation in LatinAmerica. In addition, many debates dealtwith the strategy of the global justicemovement on the European and world scale.

Finally, and this is perhaps one of theessential aspects of its success, the AthensESF enabled different networks to makesignificant progress from the point of viewboth of working out policies and of buildingsolidarity and joint campaigns. This was thecase in particular for public services, for thesolidarity that needs to be built between trade

unionists in Eastern and Western Europe andfor the fight against job insecurity.

Feminists were also able to renew the links ofEuropean cooperation that were initiated atBobigny in 2003 during the Paris Saint DenisESF. On all these questions work absolutelyhas to continue, without waiting for the nextcentral meeting of the whole of themovement, in order to be able to resist stepby step the liberal offensives. All that shouldconvince us that the risk of running out ofsteam can be excluded for the moment andthat the usefulness of the process of forumshas once again been demonstrated.

Among the questions that were posed in theforum was the participation of politicalparties in social forums. In London theparties, in particular the British ones, didn’tintervene as such in the debates, but occupiedan unreasonably large space, provokinggeneral irritation. This time the politicalparties were able to intervene as such in themain debates, alongside trade unions andassociations.

Up until now the barrier to this cameessentially from the French side. It is difficultnot to think that this turn, if it is confirmed, islinked to the unitary campaigns conductedover recent months, in particular against theEuropean Constitutional Treaty. All the same,that doesn’t mean that the problem has beenresolved. We have to think in particular aboutthe ways in which parties can intervene andof the limits that have to be set, in particularto avoid some of them using the forums as aplatform, or considering them as just an arenaof confrontation with rival parties.

But difficulties remain. On the political levelthe Italian situation weighs heavily. The tradeunion front seems today to be a bit paralysed.The self-justifying interventions by themajority of the Party of CommunistRefoundation - which supports the Union(centre-left coalition) presided over by theex-President of the European Commission,

ESF

An Unquestionable SuccessIngrid Hayes

In spite of widespread apprehension beforehand in the globaljustice movement, the Athens forum did not show that theprocess of the European Social Forum (ESF) was running outof steam. The ESF, which took place from the 3rd to the 7th ofMay, was a success both for the Greek organizers and for theEuropean global justice movement.

Romano Prodi, who is today heading thegovernment - introduced a “recentred”political tone that we must learn to combat.Furthermore, there remains uncertainty aboutthe place and the date of the next ESF. Butafter the success of Athens edition, it iscertain that the next European assembly inSeptember will give a positive answer tothese questions.

The LCR and the Fourth International werevery much present in Athens, in particularthrough the debates in which theirrepresentatives took part, along with otherpolitical currents, but also with trade unionsand associations. These debates dealt withEurope, ecology, the future of the anti-capitalist left, international question and themobilisation against the CPE. Our visibilitywas also ensured by a free newspaper thatwas massively distributed and by asignificant presence in the demonstration onSaturday.

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v Ingrid Hayes is a member of the NationalLeadership of the LCR (French section of the FourthInternational), with particular responsibility for work inthe global justice movement.

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Movements of opposition toneoliberalism are growing andare clashing against the powerof trans-national corporations,the G8 and organizations suchas the WTO, the IMF and theWorld Bank, as well the neo-liberal policies of the states andthe European Union.

Important political changeshave materialized in LatinAmerica that have shaken theneo-liberal offensive, and insome of them popularmobilizations managed toreverse the privatizationprocess.

The current situation is full ofopportunities but also dramaticdangers. Opposition andresistance to the war andoccupation of Iraq have exposedthe British and US strategy as afailure. The world is facing thenightmare of a new war in Iran.The arbitrary decision of the EUto cut funds to the NationalPalestinian Authority isunacceptable and exacerbatesthe whole situation. Theoppression of Kurdish peoplehas still not come to an end.

Conservative forces in the northand the south are encouraging a³clash of civilization² aimed atdividing oppressed people,which is in turn producingunacceptable violence,barbarism and additional attackson the rights and dignity ofmigrants and minorities.

Although the EU is one of therichest areas of the world, tensof millions of people are livingin poverty, either because ofmass unemployment or thecasualization of labour. The

Beside the mass participationwe should also mention somequalitative characteristics of the4th ESF:

1. The participation of activistsfrom Eastern Europe andTurkey was larger than ever(more than 2.000 people),showing that the Forumembraces the whole continentand not just Western Europe.

2. There has been massattendance in the seminars andworkshops. People came tolisten and discuss, not just tobrowse around.

3. For the first time in aEuropean Social Forum, tradeunions had a significant role asmembers of the organizingcommittee.

4. Art and culture had a centralplace in the Forum, with morethan 120 cultural events andwith a participation of hundredsof artists.

The greek social forumaddresses its warmest greetings:

v To the thousands of citizensfrom all over Greece and abroadwho filled the streets of Athensand marched with determinationdespite the throw of tear-gasfrom the police

v To the hundreds ofvolunteers of the Greek SocialForum, who did their best forthe organization of the 4th ESF.To them we owe the success ofthe event.

v To the Greek Social Forum¹steams of safeguard thatcontributed in the successfulfinishing of the rally as it was

originally planned by theorganizing committee.

The groups that used thedemonstrators as a protectionshield between them and thepolice, showed with theiractions that they consider theForum and its people asenemies. Their behavior duringSaturday¹s rally is a sample ofan extreme authoritarianpolitical behavior.

With the closing of the 4th ESF,we have every reason to beoptimistic for the potential ofthe alterglobal movement aswell as for the forthcomingstruggles in Greece. All those ofus who were present in theevents taking place in the 4thESF, sensed the breath of aforthcoming Spring.

Declaration of theAssembly of the Social

Movements

Declaration of the Assembly of theMovements of the 4th European SocialForum - Athens 7th May 2006

We, women and men fromsocial movements acrossEurope, came to Athens afteryears of common experiences,fighting against war,neoliberalism, all forms ofimperialism, colonialism,racism, discrimination andexploitation, against all the risksof an ecological catastrophy.

This year has been significant inthat a number of socialstruggles and campaigns havebeen successful in stoppingneoliberal projects suck as theproposed European ConstitutionTreaty, the EU Ports Directive,and the CPE in France.

ESF

News from the European Social Forum, AthensESF Press Release

The success of the 4th European Social Forum (Athens 4-7th May) exceeded even the mostoptimistic expectations. With 100, 000 people participating in the rally and with more than35,000 participants attending the seminars and workshops, the Forum proved both the potentialof the Greek movements and the strength of the alterglobal movement. For four days, Athenswas the European capital of resistance, for four days, tens of thousands of people have beensending the message: Another world is possible!

policies of the EU based on theunending extension ofcompetition within and outsideEurope constitute an attack onemployment, workers andwelfare rights, public services,education, the health systemand so on. The EU is planningthe reduction of workers¹ wagesand employment benefits aswell as the generalization ofcasualisation.

We reject this neo-liberalEurope and any efforts to re-launch the rejectedConstitutional Treaty; we arefighting for another Europe, afeminist, ecological, openEurope, a Europe of peace,social justice, sustainable life,food sovereignty and solidarity,respecting minorities¹ right andthe self-determination ofpeoples.

We condemn the witch-huntsand criminalization ofalterglobal and otherprogressive movements inEastern and Western Europe.

We emerge from the ESF inAthens having made a steptowards a better coordinationbetween Eastern and Westernmovements, with a commondetermination to fight for peace,jobs, and secure existence. Wewill promote our agenda ofEuropean campaigns andmobilization on the main issuesof our common platformdeveloped in the ESF networks.

We need to coordinate ourwork, to define an effectivestrategy for the next period, andto strengthen and enlarge ourmovements.

We call on all the Europeanmovements to open a largedebate in order to decide alltogether new common stepsduring the next months withinthe framework of the ESFprocess.


15

The alternative Left, which waspart of this centre-left coalition,is now faced with a challenge:how to block the road to social-liberalism, without, however, inany way helping Berlusconi toget back into power.

The elections of 9-10 Aprilillustrate a very complicatedpanorama of the Italian politicalsituation; The Union, RomanoProdi’s centre-left coalition, onlyjust won a majority in theChamber of Deputies, and gotonly two senators more than theCentre-Right. Although theUnion won more votes thanSilvio Berlusconi’s House ofLiberties [2] and gained supportamong young people, it failed inits objective of winning overright-wing electors. As a result,the victory had a bitter taste.

Prodi, by conducting a moderateelectoral campaign, withoutdenouncing the evils of neo-liberal policies, lost a wholesector of his own electorate. Thegood result of the Party ofCommunist Refoundation (PRC)in the Senate (7.5 per cent), eventhough it was partly offset by aless brilliant score in theChamber (5.8 per cent),demonstrates that there was abroad space for a radical critiqueof the neo-liberal model. Thisspace was not occupied by thelarger and more moderate forcesof the alliance (the LeftDemocrats and Margarita): theirdisappointing results weakenedthe alliance.

In this context, the situation islooking very difficult for thePRC. The building of analternative and anti-capitalistLeft in Italy is now at a decisivestage. Locking itself into thegovernment, as a majority of the

party proposes, could turn out tobe a very dangerous perspective.The PRC’s appeal to a sense ofresponsibility and respect for thediscipline of the coalition willexercise a formidable pressureon the party to submit to thedecisions of the Union, sinceBerlusconi’s return to power willweigh heavily in the balance.The election of PRC SecretaryFausto Bertinotti to thepresidency of the nationalassembly is likely to increasethis pressure.

As the Critical Left current, weput forward an alternativehypothesis to the majority’s atthe last central committeemeeting on 22-23 April. Theother opposition currentsseemed to be avoiding the needfor a battle in the party. So westressed that the conditions forthe PRC to participate in thegovernment didn’t exist. But wedid not conceal the fact that ourvotes were necessary for theProdi government to come intoexistence, and especially toensure the departure ofBerlusconi from the PalazzoChigi (the centre ofgovernment), a departure whichis demanded by a big majority ofthe electorate.

This support “from the outside”would set Prodi on the only roadthat could give him a broadsocial base of support: the roadof a clean break from the neo-liberal and warlike policies ofpreceding governments. Whatwould be the signs of such abreak? The immediatewithdrawal of Italian troopsfrom Iraq and Afghanistan; therepeal of Law 30, which reformsworking conditions, and also therepeal of the education reformand of the Bossi-Fini law on

Some very important events arealready on the agenda:

vWe will mobilize for acomplete withdrawal of troopsfrom Iraq and Afganistan,against the threat of a new warin Iran, against the occupationof Palestine, for nucleardisarmament, to eliminatemilitary bases in Europe and wecall for a week of action from23 to 30 September 2006.

vWe appeal for aninternational day of action andmobilization the 7th of October2006 in Europe and Africa, for aEuropean unconditionallegalization and equal rights toall migrants; for the closure ofall detention centers in Europe,for the stop to externalization,for the stop to deportations;against the precariousness andfor the uncoupling of the linkbetween resident permit and thelabor contract, for a residencecitizenship.

vWe will mobilize against thecasualization and thedismanting of public servicesand for the social rightscoordinating our struggles in thewhole Europe in the nextmonths.

In January 2007, the WSF willmeet in Nairobi. The growth ofthe African social movements iscrucial for the world. Buildingfor the WSF will be anopportunity to fight againstEuropean exploitation and neo-colonialism.

In June 2007, there will be ameeting of the European UnionCouncil and a meeting of theG8 at Rostock in Germany afterthe one in St Petersburg in Julythis year. We will seize theopportunity of these occasionsfor a general convergence ofour struggles.

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Italy

A dangerous situation forRifondazioneFlavia d’Angeli

The Unione (Union) of Romano Prodi won the elections on 9-10 April by a short head [1].

Prodi declares victory

immigration; addressingseriously the question of wages;the refusal of any newprivatizations; a real policy ofdisarmament.

The possibility of defeating theright-wing parties on a sociallevel, and no longer simply onthe political and institutionallevels, lies in the building of asocial alternative that goesbeyond the schema ofgovernments changing withoutanything really changing. Prodi,on the other hand, wants tosituate his government in thedirect line of the old neo-liberalpolicies which characterized hispresidency of the EuropeanUnion. The participation of thePRC in this government willonly delay the perspective of astrong anti-capitalist Left inItaly.

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v Flavia D’Angeli is a leader of theBandiera Rossa current, whichorganises comrades identifying withthe Fourth International within theCritical Left current of the Party ofCommunist Refoundation (PRC).

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NOTES

[1] The Unione encompasses among otherforces the Left Democrats (DS) (ex-Communists who have now beenconverted to social liberalism and aremembers of the Socialist International),Margarita (a centrist grouping), and theParty of Communist Refoundation (PRC),a party of the anti-liberal Left. Within thePRC there is the Critical Left current, inwhich the members of the FourthInternational participate

[2] The principal forces in the House ofLiberties are Berlusconi’s party, ForzaItalia, the post-fascist National Allianceand the populist Northern League

----------------


16

How do you explain the very close result ofthe election of 9-10 April?

In spite of a deep economic and social crisiswhich could have provoked strong oppositionto the government, there is no sign in thiselectoral result of a victory of the Centre-left.Fundamentally, we can cite three mainreasons for this.

One is the capacity of the Right to reactivateall its potential electors, thanks to a campaignthat was very wide ranging and veryaggressive, linked to domination of themedia. It articulated the use of fears (fear ofincreasing taxes, fear of the “Bolsheviks”,fear of “oppressive bureaucracy”) - in asociety that is traumatized - and of promises,for example, concerning taxes and taxevasion, which had an impact on a significantsector of the so-called middle classes.

The second reason is the following: in spiteof the mobilisations, in spite of the struggles,the social recomposition of the workers’movement remains very limited. As a resultwhat can be described as the workers’movement cannot project its hegemony overthe whole of society. And that explains thedifficulty of not only winning the votes ofthose who are favourable to the Centre-leftand the Left, but also of making abreakthrough in sectors of society which canbe the object of manipulation by populistpropaganda.

And on this terrain Berlusconi demonstratedall that he was capable of. During his term ofoffice he had to face some difficult moments,moments of open crisis. He found himselfunder the pressure of some mass movements.However, the trade union organizations andthe parties of the Centre-left avoided buildinga solid and consistent anti-governmentmobilization.

It is not just a question of the mobilizationagainst the war in 2003. I am also referringhere to the electoral routs he suffered on theoccasion of the local and European electionsin June 2004 and especially the regional

elections of April 2005, where Berlusconi’sparty only held on to tow regions out of thethirteen that were up for re-election. Therhythm of the electoral calendar wasrespected by the Union and no mobilizationdemanding the resignation of the Berlusconigovernment was organized by the trade unionand political forces of the so-calledopposition.

The third reason relates to the very greatweakness of the Centre-left’s electoralcampaign. The Centre-left waited for the ripefruit to fall into its hands. Whereas on theright the campaign was conducted in a radicalfashion and with a strong ideological content,the forces of the Centre-left didn’t know howto - or didn’t want to - incorporate and set inmovement broad popular sectors aroundsimple proposals and demands whichrespond to their needs.

For example, the Centre-left was completelydefensive on the question of taxes, whereas itcould have very concretely shown thelegitimacy of an offensive tax policy bydemonstrating the plunder that was carriedout by the Berlusconi government. It couldhave responded in this way, even just in thelimited framework of redistributed justice.That was not done. In reality on all theimportant social and economic questions, theCentre-left was on the defensive.

It was forced to act in that way because at theheart of the Centre-left there was a convictionthat the Confindustria (the Italian employer’organization) was going to facilitate or evenguarantee victory. So even from a purelypropagandistic point of view, the Union didnot want to sharpen its demands,; because itdidn’t want to endanger its relations with theConfindustria and with all the big pressorgans. Furthermore, the press providedproof that in the present politico-mediaticcontext it cannot guarantee electoral success.

How would you define the Union from asocio-political point of view?

In the Union there is a whole sector of the oldChristian Democracy which expresses itselfthrough La Margherita. There is a sectorwhich directly represents capital, likeLamberto Dini (who was Director General ofthe Bank of Italy, President of the Council ofMinisters from January 1995 to May 1996and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to2001, establishing excellent relation with theUnited States: he went from Forza Italia to LaMargherita in 2002, transiting via his ownmovement, Rinnovamento Italiano).

Furthermore there is a whole sector of theLeft Democrats (DS) which managescapitalism and has completely gone over toits side. DS has a relationship with theorganized workers’ movement, let’s say withthe CGIL, of the same kind that the AmericanDemocratic Party has with the AFL-CIO.

Furthermore, the relationship that has beenestablished with the big daily newspapers isonly the cover for a more organic relationshipwith factions of the big bourgeoisie. Thelinks with the banks are also very strong.

We can cite for example the position taken bythe boss of Uni-Credit, Alessandro Profumo,who was clearly to be seen - and he wasn’tthe only one - taking part in the primaryelections within the Union which wereorganized in October 2005. So he openlychose Prodi. That was a political act of someweight. The links with the BancaIntesa andGiovanni Bazzoli are just as explicit. So wecan make a rather ironic remark.

This front which goes from the Confindustriato the PRC via the main bourgeoisnewspapers only won 50% of the vote! Theother 50% was also won by another part ofthe bourgeoisie, with the support of a wholespectrum of bosses of small and mediumenterprises, of fractions of what we coulddescribe as the lumpen bourgeoisie, andobviously of popular sectors.

And if the Union is making a compromisewith the Confindustria, which it is in theprocess of doing, it is a sort of politico-arithmetic compromise within 50% of theelectorate. Which ought to provoke somemore serious thinking, to say the least, withinthe “radical Left”.

Italy

"The Project of Prodi’s Centre-Left Union hasfailed"Franco Turigliatto

The recent election defeat of Berlusconi was not any kind of lasting defeat for theItalian right, which waged an agressive and mobilising campaign. By contrast thecentre-left "Union" waged a very defensive campaign and has resulted in a weak anddivided government. It is far from being a tremendous victory for the left or theworkers movement, according to Franco Turigliatto, interviewed below.


17

The leaders of the Union thought that theplebeian and vulgar tone used by Berlusconiin his campaign was the sign either of loss ofself-control or of obvious excess. In realitythis type of propaganda was very wellstudied. And when he used the term“imbecile” he was not only employing a wayof speaking that is very widespread, butplacing himself within a dominantideological framework. In reality, on the Lefttoo, themes such as individualism, thedomination of the market, the centrality ofthe enterprise are dominant. Which meansthat calling those who are opposed to thesethemes “imbeciles” appears as quiet natural.

Besides, Berlusconi succeeded in mobilizingagainst the Confindustria a large section ofsmall and medium employers for whom, inorder to survive, the only solution is toexploit their workers to the maximum. Theyare far from the kind of collaboration with theunions advocated by the Confindustria. Sothat is the overall socio-political framework;it is very negative.

So, how do you see the framework withinwhich the Union should act?

The project of the Union has failed. Manypeople thought that the Union was going tobreak up the Berlusconian front. We candiscuss to what extent that happened. What iscertain is that Berlusconi succeeded inmobilizing all his bases of support to go outand vote. Now we can discuss whether thiscohesion of the Berlusconian front can bemaintained now that he is no longer in power.

But we are in a situation where the social andparliamentary relationships of forces are as Ihave outlined them above. Berlusconi and thesection of the bourgeoisie that he representscan exert permanent pressure, exertblackmail over the new Prodi government.This Berlusconian Right is still solid enoughto have an effect on the action of thegovernment’s. To which should be added themore than serious influence of theConfindustria and also the pressures exertedby the Church.

The Confindustria has already said what itwants. It wants none of the measures whichhave created job insecurity to be touched. Itwants that to be accompanied by a reform ofthe Cassa Integrazione (a mechanism whichallows a layer of workers who have lost theirjobs to maintain a substitute salary as if theywere in a sense just technically unemployed;it is something that was won in the 1970s). In

addition the Confindustria wants a reductionof the taxes paid by companies.

All this with the aim of “facing up to theinternational competition”, according to acredo that is repeated in all countries. Theprogram of the Union suits the employers’organization. It would even be willing toallow some social elements to be introducedin order to better push through thefundamental counter-reforms.

As far as the Church is concerned, it certainlyplayed an important role through its ultra-reactionary campaign around all the themesconcerning “the question of Life”.

This time the PRC is entering thegovernmental coalition, with all theconstraints that flow from that ...

In fact, in this context, once it is ingovernment, the PRC in its turn will besubjected to strong pressures demandinggreater moderation from it. These pressureswill be all the stronger in that, faced with theBerlusconian front, the feeling that we haveto maintain a “united bloc” is verywidespread among a broad layer of workers.

I am already hearing workers saying to me,when they know that I have just been electedto the Senate, where the Union only has amajority of two seats: “Careful, you willalways have to be present. Of course wewon’t be able to demand a whole series ofthings. But we will have to be satisfied withwhat we can win in this period”.

Many people say to me: “You’ll have to bepresent, faced with Berlusconi, andimmediately propose a law on conflict ofinterest”. In other words a law dealing withthe mixing up of the private interests of thebig businessman Berlusconi with those of thepolitician Berlusconi. Now this theme is notat the centre of the coming socialconfrontations. But for many people, dealingwith the conflict of interest appears as anurgent task, if only because of past debates.

If the Union’s project has failed, the PRC’sproject has met the same fate. In reality, forthe leadership of the PRC the perspective thatwas at least suggested should have been amassive victory of the union, accompaniedby mass movements, therefore with thepossibility of establishing a relationship offorces that would allow the implementationof the so-called positive points of the Union’sprogramme and also provide the slight

possibility of being able to take someindependent positions in relation to thegovernment.

This last aspect could only be concretizedinsofar as different kinds of mobilisationsdeveloped, with a certain continuity. Thiswas supposed to have an influence, in a firststage, on the content of the programme, andthen in the second stage on itsimplementation by the government.

Given the election results and theinstitutional situation, this orientation wasway off the mark. Obviously this failure hasnot been admitted by the leadership, eventhough in the ranks of the party a certainnumber of doubts are being expressed on thesubject.

The official version is as follows: it’s a finevictory; we escaped a real danger (a victoryof Berlusconi); the government must goforward; it must implement its programmebecause the danger is the establishment of a“grand coalition” (by analogy with the CDU-SPD Grand Coalition in Germany).

Face with this “grand coalition danger”, theleadership of the PRC affirms that we have tosupport the change of government at anyprice. You have to understand that by changeof government is meant a centre-rightgovernment followed by a centre-leftgovernment; which has nothing to do with areal alternative. The leadership of the PRChas always denied that taking part in analliance in the framework of the Union onlyimplied this kind of change of government. Italways said either that it meant a realalternative or to be more precise, a transitiontowards a real alternative.

Throughout the whole recent period theleadership has nonetheless been clearer onthe subject. It announced: in the presentcircumstances we absolutely have to supporta change of government, against the dangerof a “grand coalition”. To put the cherry onthe cake it added: because it is the only wayto keep open the road to a real alternative.Which is nothing more than a statement andobviously not a political orientation. Theleadership made maximum use of awidespread feeling - which many people tookit upon themselves to spread widely - thefeeling of “anything but Berlusconi”, echoingthe “anything but Bush” during the lastAmerican election.


18

In reality the degree of job insecurity thatthere is today in Italy is not a product of Law30 which, besides, has not yet manifested allits negative effects. We have to start from the“Treu Package” - so called from the name ofthe minister, Tiziano Treu, who is at present amember of the Margherita.

In 1995, Treu was Minister of Labour andSocial Provision in the government presidedover by an authentic representative of thebourgeoisie, Lamberto Dini. Subsequently, in1996, Prodi kept him in this job. He was alsoa minister in 1998 in the government ofMassimo D’Alema. From this first Treureform there followed a whole series ofmeasures which increased job insecurity.Onto these measures was grafted Law 30 (theBiagi Law, enforced by Berlusconi).

This law opens the door to a multitude offixed term contracts: in this case the veryname of contract loses its meaning. In theUnion’s programmatic documents theproposition is basically to modify Law 30and go back to its first version, which impliedusing fixed term contracts and temporarywork for fewer categories of workers. Evensymbolically such a going back does notcorrespond to the expectations of those whoare today suffering from job insecurity.

The following confrontations seem to me tobe on the agenda. First of all on deregulation,in other words on Law 30, because on itsessential points the Confindustria doesn’twant to give it up. The outcome of this“confrontation” is another question.

Next, the question of the fiscal corner will bedebated. This is an invention of Prodi’s. Thefiscal corner is the difference between thedirect salary, the indirect salary, thecontributions for retirement pension, and thenet salary of the worker, in other words whathe really receives at the end of the month.Prodi has proposed to reduce this fiscalcorner by 5 points. If the problem was toreduce the taxes paid by workers, the amountof contributions paid by workers, that couldbe discussed and it could be positive. But ifthe reduction of this gap is operated byreducing the employer’s contributions -which are in fact a part of the salary thatbelongs to the worker - that quite simplyamounts to a big swindle. Not only is theredistribution taking place in favour of theemployers, but the future pensions ofworkers are being put into question.

The Italian political situation, as in othercountries, is related to the state and thedynamics of the workers’ movement: how doyou see this question?

The fundamental problem that I see could bedescribed as follows. The struggles of recentyears, which have certainly been important,have not resulted in a cumulative effect

What is the essence of your immediateresponse in the present situation?

The orientation that we are adopting can bedescribed as follows. First of all, to reject anykind of triumphalism and to underline thedifficulties, for example the difficulties thatflow from the inability of the Union’sorientation to break up the Berlusconianfront.

Next, we must insist on the fact that thegovernment will not be able to carry out itstask, at least the task that is hoped for by avery large part of those who voted for it,because the pressure on it will be very strong.Starting from there, to resist it is necessary toorganize a mobilization of workers todemand the implementation of measuresfavourable to them.

Only such a dialectic between mobilizationsand concrete gains can make it possible alsoto win back a certain political influence oversectors of the working class and popularsectors who voted for Berlusconi. That is theway that we are countering the “commonsense”, as I explained it before which istending to become an element oflegitimisation of the present policies of thePRC leadership. The refusal to support Prodi,as was the case in 1998, is not likely to berepeated, at least there is no sign that it will.

We can’t separate the dynamic of the Unionfrom its relations with the trade unions: whatcan you tell us about that?

To understand the situation you have toremember that the last congress of the CGIL(General Confederation of Italian Workers,the main union confederation) which washeld from 1st-4th March 2006 was verynegative. The leadership completely adapteditself to the Union and to Prodi. Furthermore,the left around the FIOM (Federation ofMetalworkers) was defeated. It was putcompletely on the defensive.

The centre of gravity of the congress was oneof complete support for Prodi. Thedeclarations of Guglielmo Epifani,immediately after the election, on the need torepeal Law 30 (the Biagi Law onderegulation of the labour market) werecircumstantial. He simply had to take accountmomentarily of the pressures exerted byGiorgio Cremaschi, national secretary of theFIOM.

But Epifani will find a way out, that’s quitecertain. We have to be clear - there is nowillingness to fight on the part of the CGIL.In fact if the leadership of the CGIL hadwanted to build a movement against Law 30,it would have had the time to do it long ago.But it wasn’t the case.

which would make it possible to consolidate,step by step, forms of organization, ofstruggles, of consciousness, which wouldhave a more dynamic potential. Whichwould, in other words, make it possible todraw in new sectors of workers and to build“a classist hegemony”. I don’t want to saythat elements of that don’t exist. But the realprocess of rebuilding the workers’ movement- to use a formula that to some people maysound old-fashioned - remains in a certainsense hanging in the air, “in waiting”.

There have been important movements, butthey were episodic, which reduces theircumulative dynamics. The last mobilisationof metalworkers (in the broadest sense of theterm) did not have the same repercussions onother sectors as in the past. Even thoughquantitatively this sector of workers remainsmore or less the same, although the strugglesthat have been led and the forms that theyhave taken recall historical moments of acutesocial confrontation, even though themetalworkers succeeded in winning oncertain points that are symbolicallyimportant, that didn’t have the same effect onsociety as in the past. And what was won, inits material dimension, remains more thanlimited.

In addition, for someone who follows thesituation in the workplaces, thesemobilisations didn’t lead to a change in theconcrete relationships of forces in theworkplace itself. Starting from there, insteadof discussing, as many people in the PRC aredoing, whether the social bloc behindBerlusconi is going to maintain itself or fallapart, it seems to me much more important tobe discussing the limits - and why there arethese limits - to the rebuilding of an anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist social bloc. Withoutthat, society will find itself without realdefences in the face of operations of plunder,in the face of demagogical populistoperations, or in the face of counter-reformswhich advance in a concealed fashion.

For me the main responsibility of the PRCleadership is to have canalised the varioussocial mobilizations into the framework ofthe Union. And in this way it has created anobstacle to this recomposition of an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist social bloc.

This interview with him was published in La Brèche,newspaper of the Movement for Socialism (MPS) inSwitzerland.

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v Franco Turigliatto was elected as a Senator forPiedmont on the PRC list in last month’s elections.He is a member of the Critical Left current within thePRC, and of the Italian section of the FourthInternational.

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19

Our names appear in the opinion polls aboutthe next presidential election - four nameswhich came out, together or separately, for ananti-liberal and internationalist rejection ofthe European Constitution and Treaty.

In less than a year, on the terrain of thereferendum on May 29, 2005 and on theterrain of struggle in this April, liberalismsuffered two setbacks, with the rejection ofthe Constitution and the withdrawal of theFirst Employment Contract (CPE). Thesevictories have given rise to great hopesamong those who suffer every day the effectsof capitalist exploitation.

Our four names do not on their own sum upall the diversity that was expressed on thecampaign for a “No” from the left. However,we have joint responsibilities. Many peoplewant to know if a united candidacy ispossible and necessary. Necessary, itcertainly is, if only to respond to the unitaryaspiration which has been expressed sinceMay 29, particularly in the collectives of thesame name.

But possible? The conditions for goingfurther still don’t seem to have been met.However, the obstacles to be surmounted tobring us together are known by everyone:defeat the right and its policies; reject socialliberalism; do not reproduce the strategy ofthe plural Left [1].

To defeat the right in a lasting way is a finething to promise, but it is better to fight itright away. Today, we have to build a broadmovement, with the widest possible unityand without sectarianism, againstunemployment and job insecurity, becausethe law “on equal opportunity” and the CPE,sbig brother, the new employment contract(CNE) are still in force [2]. So it’s true that tofight resolutely against the Right withoutputting off till tomorrow direct confrontationwith it, means undertaking to undo in thefuture what it has done since it came topower.

And to get rid of once and for all the evilswhich have rained down on us, we have toput an end to all the liberal policies, eventhose which were implemented by the Leftwhen it was in power. In short, to defeat theRight and not let it come back in five years’time means implementing a plan of socialand democratic emergency measures which

would enable millions of people to keep theirheads above water.

In order to really contest the hegemony ofsocial liberalism on the left, we have to makeanother left emerge, a left that refuses thedictates of finance and of liberal Europe. Wehave no other choice if we want to keep ourrights, or to win new ones, than to challengethe privileges of the strongest. Countering thestranglehold of the multinationals over theeconomy and over our lives means opposingthe growing appropriation of the fruits ofeveryone’s labour by a few big firms.

It is unimaginable to legislate effectively toban sackings as long as the authorities do nottake back from the “sackers” the subsidiesthat were so generously accorded them.Again, it is unimaginable to increase incomeor give an autonomy allowance to all youngpeople who are in education without takingmoney from profits. And finally it isunimaginable to win a measure which ishowever free, like the moratorium on GMcrops, without facing up to the agriculturalmultinationals. A left which does not proposeto redistribute the wealth by giving thepopulation the means of controlling it is a leftthat is full of fine promises, but which once inpower will not implement left policies.

Finally to be convinced that the Left doesn’thave the right to get it wrong in a newexperience of the plural Left is not in itself aguarantee. The “plural Left” is not a formulabut a political strategy which is still thestrategy of the Socialist Party: to satelliseother left parties around electoral agreementsin order to get them to take responsibility forthe main lines of its policies.

So hope lies in opposing the Right andresisting social liberalism, by refusing forexample governmental and parliamentaryalliances with the Socialist Party. That wouldnot marginalise us. The idea that we couldconvert the leadership of the Socialist Partyto anti-liberalism or exert significantinfluence on the summit meeting of the Left,thinking that it could give birth to a realalternative, is an illusion. There is nosynthesis possible between anti-liberalismand social liberalism. All the more so as theinstitution of the Fifth Republic, whichprevent universal suffrage having aninfluence over the economic decisions that

France

Marie-George, Arlette, José - what if we were to talk?Olivier Besancenot

affect our daily lives, are constructed in sucha way that on the left it is in reality FrançoisHollande who sets the tone and not Marie-George Buffet, Segolène Royal rather thanArlette Laguiller, Dominique Strauss-Kahnrather Olivier Besancenot and Pascal Lamyrather than José Bové.

So yes to a unitary candidacy if it is anti-capitalist. We are more concerned with thescenario and the content than with thecasting. Two scenarios can be envisaged. Onestarts with the European referendumcampaign, continues with support for socialstruggles, unveils a plan of emergencymeasure for the popular classes and youthand leads to the coming together of anti-liberal and anti-capitalist, internationalist,feminist, and ecologist forces. The other endsup giving a left cover to a new change ofgovernment under the wing of the SocialistParty. We won’t be in the second scenario.

With a good scenario the casting will be easyto sort out. Between the eight left candidacieson April 21st 2002 and a single one in 2007,there must be a happy medium. A plural Leftnumber 2, scarcely spruced up, seems to bebeing reconstituted. That’s its problem. Thestruggles of today and tomorrow deservebetter than that. So, I think we need to meetand have a little chat. We will soon bemeeting up in various struggles, that’s forsure...but why not over dinner for four? It’son me!

This article appeared in the April 28 edition of the Parisdaily Le Monde

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v Olivier Besancenot was candidate for the LigueCommuniste Revolutionnaire (LCR - French sectionof the Fourth International) at the French presidentialelections in 2002.

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NOTES

[1] The plural Left was the name given to thegovernmental alliance, dominated by the Socialist Partyand including the Communist Party and the Greens, underthe premiership of Lionel Jospin between 1997 and 2002

[2] The CNE (New Employment Contract) allowsemployers in companies with less than 20 employees tosack workers without reason during the first two years oftheir employment - exactly as the CPE did for youngpeople under 26

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The anti-liberal left has demonstrated its strength over the last year. It must be presentand united at the presidential election.

Jose (left), Marie-Georges (second left), Olivier(second right)


20

In the first place, the CPE was aimed at avery specific part of the population, youngpeople. And those young people who wouldhave been directly affected, university andhigh school students, mobilized massivelyagainst it. There is a tradition of powerfulstudent mobilizations in France, and this isnot the first time one has been successful.

In 1986 the government was forced towithdraw an education reform and in 1994 ameasure similar to the CPE was defeated.Last year there was a four-month longmovement of high school students, notalways massive but very militant. The factthat there are regularly movements amongstudents, sometimes national, sometimes justlocal, means that there is a frequentlyrenewed layer of activists.

Secondly, there was broad unity against theCPE. The trade unions - all of them -supported the movement from start to finish.One reason for the defeat in 2003 was thatone of the main unions, the CFDT, defectedearly on and accepted the governmentmeasure in exchange for insignificantconcessions. It lost many members as aresult. This time everyone stayed on boardthroughout the movement. Only a fewmonths ago a measure similar to the CPE, theCNE, went through with little opposition.

The CNE (New Employment Contract)allows employers in companies with les than20 employees to sack workers in the first twoyears of their employment without giving areason. A day of strikes and massdemonstrations against the CNE last October4 was not followed up and the measure wentthrough. The workers most directly affected,those working in small companies, are poorlyorganised and in an unfavourable relationshipof forces with their employers. Only anational campaign by the unions thatmobilised stronger sectors could have

compensated for that, and it wasn’tforthcoming.

What was different this time was that theinitiative was not with the union leadershipsbut with the students. And the studentmobilization, which started off slowly,steadily expanded. By the end of themovement three-quarters of universities wereoccupied or blockaded and over a quarter ofhigh schools.

And it really was a movement that involvedthe mass of students. General assemblies ofseveral hundred were daily occurrences, andmass meetings of several thousand studentstook place in the most militant universities.In the latter stages of the movement, studentsengaged in forms of direct action - blockingtrain stations and motorways, occupyingoffices of employers’ organisations and thegovernment party. It is worth noting thatmany of the most militant contingents of thehigh school movement came from schools inthe suburbs which were at the centre of therevolt of mainly immigrant youth lastNovember.

The support of the unions was a key factor inthe victory - there was throughout themovement a united front, the Intersyndicale,of eight trade union organisations and fourstudent unions. But it was the youth whowere the locomotive, the driving force of themovement.

Unions representing both university and highschool students were actively involved in themovement, but its leadership was the StudentCoordination, comprising representativeselected by mass meetings, which met everyweekend in a different university and whichwas dominated by left-wing militants. Themovement was supported by the entireFrench Left, from the reformist SocialistParty to revolutionary organizations like the

Revolutionary Communist League (LCR)and Lutte Ouvrière.

Thirdly, the demand for the withdrawal of theCPE had mass support. As people understoodwhat was at stake, opposition to it rose toaround 70 per cent of the population - 80 percent among young people. And more andmore of them were ready to take to thestreets. The first day of action on February 7mobilised 400,000 demonstrators, which inFrench terms was only a modest success. Thenext one a month later had a million, then 1.5million on March 18, three million on March28 and even more on April 4. Particularly onthe last two days the number of those onstrike was significant but not really massive -not as big as the biggest strikes in 2003.

The bitter experience of the movementagainst pension reform three years agodemonstrated that a series of one-day strikeswas not enough to make the government backdown. This time it was the combination of themassive nature of the protests and the factthat the higher education system wasprogressively paralysed that brought victory.As the movement grew, usually conservativeuniversity presidents were calling for theCPE to be withdrawn and splits developed inthe governing UMP party, with PrimeMinister Dominique de Villepin, who hadintroduced the CPE, becoming more andmore isolated.

Underlying the whole movement is anongoing refusal of French public opinion toaccept the inevitability of neo-liberalcapitalism. In an editorial in its March 31edition, the London-based Economistinformed its readers, in a tone ofexasperation, that only 36 per cent of Frenchpeople thought the “free market” was the bestpossible economic system, as against aroundtwo-thirds of people in Britain, Germany andthe US. This is a reflection of a deep-rootedattachment to the ideas of equality andsolidarity among wide layers in Frenchsociety.

The degree of resistance to the neo-liberalagenda was demonstrated at the polls whenthe projected European Constitution wasdefeated in the referendum on May 29 lastyear after a dynamic campaign for a ‘No’from the left. It has just been demonstrated inthe streets, and the activists who built the

France

The mass movement has defeated thegovernment - what now?Murray Smith

After two months of a mass campaign against the CPE (First Employment Contract),on the morning of April 10 the French government finally caved in and withdrew themeasure. The CPE would have enabled employers to sack young workers under theage of 26 in the first two years of their employment, without having to give a reason.Its defeat was the first time a mass movement had blocked one of the government’sneo-liberal measures since the Right came back to power in 2002. The governmentforced through a reform of pensions in 2003 in spite of months of demonstrations andstrikes. The following year it imposed a reform of health insurance. Why did it fail thistime?


21

mass mobilisations were often the same whocampaigned against the EuropeanConstitution. In fact, there is now inpractically every town a network of militants,who come from different unions and politicalorganisations, from the global justicemovement ATTAC, who are used to workingwith each other.

Some politicians and commentators in Franceand abroad have argued that it is“undemocratic” for mass protests to be ableto over-rule the decisions of electedrepresentatives. This reveals a touching faithin France’s democratic institutions

It is worth recalling that the UMP, whichthanks to the peculiarities of the Frenchelectoral system has an absolute and indeedsubstantial majority in Parliament, won just33 per cent of the vote in the 2002 elections -a figure that goes down to 22 per cent ofregistered voters when you take into accountthe 35 per cent of electors who abstained.Representatives elected under thoseconditions and subject to no kind of controlor recall by their electors are ill placed to givelessons in democracy. In 2003, then PrimeMinister Jean-Pierre Raffarin famouslydeclared: “It is not the street that governs”.On that occasion he won.

Three years later, if the street did not exactlygovern, it showed that it could block ameasure that the government was trying toimpose against overwhelming publicopinion. The victory over the CPE has left anarrogant right-wing government in disarray ayear before next year’s presidential andlegislative elections. Calls for De Villepin’sresignation are mounting. He is nowbecoming mired in the Clearstream scandal,where it appears that there was an elaborateconspiracy to smear leading politicians,including the main right-wing contender (andDe Villepin’s rival) for next year’spresidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, withaccusations of corruption.

This victory is worth celebrating, but there isno room for triumphalism. In spite of oftenwidespread opposition to their policies,successive governments of right and left overthe past fifteen years have been steadilypushing forward the neo-liberal agenda -privatisations, labour flexibility, jobinsecurity, counter-reforms in health,

pensions, education. Periodically massmobilisations slow the process or blockparticular measures, though sometimes evenmassive mobilisations are defeated, as in2003.

But they do not stop the process. Of coursethe union leaderships bear considerableresponsibility for defeats. Particularly in2003, it was their refusal to call an all-outgeneral strike that gave victory to thegovernment. The experience of 2003 hasmade many workers sceptical about theutility of repeated days of action. And ifopposition to the CPE had been limited tothat, it is unlikely that victory would havebeen won. What made the difference was thepermanent mass mobilisation of the students.

Where do we go from here? Symbolic as itwas, the CPE was only one component of theironically named “Law on EqualOpportunities” which has been adopted byParliament, and which provides among otherthings for 14-year-olds to start work asapprentices, whereas up to now there wascompulsory schooling till the age of 16. Andthe CNE is still in force. But to follow up thevictory over the CPE by defeating thesemeasures too would require continued unityand leadership from the unions and the leftparties, and it would provoke a political crisiswhich most of them do not want.

There is also the problem of the lack of acredible political alternative. A defeat of theRight in the 2007 presidential and legislativeelections is possible, though not certain. Butas has been repeatedly shown over the last 25years, a return to power by the Socialist Partywould not mean the end of neo-liberalpolicies. Since 1981, there has been a changeof government from right to left and left toright at every legislative election.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to speakof centre-right and centre-left. Because overand above differences on details, there is abroad consensus in defence of neo-liberalpolicies. The Socialist Party, under pressurefrom the student movement and publicopinion, was prepared to oppose the CPE. Onthe much more fundamental issue of theEuropean Constitution, the party fell into lineand supported it (though a minoritycampaigned against it). And nothingindicates that a Socialist victory in next

year’s presidential and parliamentaryelections would in any way challenge theneo-liberal consensus.

That presents the anti-capitalist Left with achallenge. It has to move from campaignsand even victories on single issues toproviding a political alternative. Followingon the victories over the EuropeanConstitution and the CPE, the next step couldbe united candidacies of the forces to the leftof the Socialist Party in next year’s elections.Both the Communist Party and the LCR havecome out in principle in favour of suchcandidacies.

The basis could be a programme that brokewith the left-right neo-liberal consensus and arefusal to participate in an SP-ledgovernment. On this latter point theCommunist Party still has to completelyclarify its position - though it is clearly waryof repeating the experience of 1997-2002,when it participated in the SP-dominatedgovernment of Lionel Jospin, serving merelyas a left cover for neo-liberal policies andpaying the price in the 2002 elections. Therewould also have to be agreement on theprogramme of any alliance. But if theobstacles can be overcome and agreementreached, a united campaign could begin togive directly political expression to thewidespread rejection of neo-liberalism andmobilise many activists from the socialmovements.

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v Murray Smith, formerly international organiser forthe Scottish Socialist Party, is an active member ofthe LCR.

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But while the trade union hasbacked the Scottish SocialistParty in Scotland and themaverick Forward Wales in thatcountry, in England the unionhas not supported Respect.

Nevertheless, the unionorganised an importantconference in January this yearto discuss the question ofworking class representation.While it was not a delegateconference, and mainly attendedby far left activists, never theless it was a significant event.Greg Tucker reports:

They were turning peopleaway at the RMT’sconference on the crisis ofworking class representation.Yes, the RMT had booked thesmall hall at Friends’Meeting House but it wasstill impressive. Threehundred people packed intothe hall whilst anotherhundred were left outside.

Those who did get in were ableto take part in a useful, if limited,discussion on the future of theleft in Britain. The failure torenationalise the railways, thepart-privatisation of LondonUnderground and Labour’scontinuation of the Tories’ anti-trade union legislation have longcaused RMT members toquestion their relationship withthe Labour Party.

Labour resolved the question byexpelling the RMT because of itssupport for the Scottish SocialistParty. So at the last two RMTannual conferences delegates

have agreed resolutions callingfor a wider debate about theproblem of politicalrepresentation. This conferencewas the result. Somewhat half-hearted in its implementation,but nevertheless a historic stepforward. Committed to taking nodecisions, the meeting wasalways going to be limited.

A long list of platform speakersthreatened to crowd out a realdebate from the floor, but in theend an impressive number ofpeople got to speak, and a realdebate did take place. Almostunanimously the debate rejectedLabourism in any form.

RMT General Secretary BobCrow opened the meeting byrefusing to commit the RMT tolaunching a new political partybut did argue for a new nationalshop stewards’ movement torebuild a fighting trade unionmovement.

By his logic the emergence ofsuch a shop stewards’’movement would be a necessaryprerequisite for the building of aserious new party to the left ofLabour. In contrast, SSPconvenor Colin Fox, speakingnext, outlining the developmentof the Scottish Socialist Party,

They were able to presentRespect as the serious party ofthe left, going places after itsbreakthrough general electionresults. Whilst Respect NationalSecretary John Rees wassomewhat triumphalist and fellflat, other Respect speakersaddressed the need to engagewith Bob Crow’s call to rebuild arank and file movement in thetrade unions, whilst also actuallybuilding a new party of the leftby building Respect.

The conference finished with apledge from the RMT leadershipthat they would take seriouslywhat had been said inconsidering whether to proceedwith any other actions.Attendance on the day hadmainly been drawn from the farleft. RMT members were in asmall minority and otherindependent trade unionists notpresent in large numbers. Thismeant among other things thatthe audience was largely white,ageing, and male.

Nevertheless, the fact of theevent being called by a serioustrade union had a discipliningeffect on all speakers and thediscussion, apart from a handfulof veiled references to BigBrother, was conducted in acomradely fashion seriouslyengaging each other’sarguments. There is clearly apotential for further meetings toaddress the problem of how toproceed to fill the vacuum left byLabour. RMT activists will becalling on the union’s Executiveto set in train such a process.

But if we are to go forward theRMT leadership needs to bemore serious, gettingcommitments from other unionforces, preparing itself beforehand, involving all forcesincluding Respect. If it were todo so then it would be possibleto progress to a higher level thanhas been possible up to now.

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v Greg Tucker is an long-standingactivist in the RMT, a former memberof its National Executive. He is aleading member of the InternationalSocialist Group, British Section of theFourth International and a member ofthe IV editorial board.

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Britain

The crisis in working classrepresentationBritish trade union opens a historic debate

Greg Tucker

showed that in practice it waspossible to combine bothstrategic tasks - building a unitedleft in struggle whilst building anew left party. The key was opencomradely discussion.

Whilst John Marek fromForward Wales, Jean Lambertfrom the Greens and Liz Greenefrom the Socialist Labour Party(the organisation set up byminers’ leader Arthur Scargill)had little if anything to say, DaveNellist from the Socialist Party(SP, British section of theCommittee for a Workers’International) argued for supportfor the SP’s campaign for a newworkers party. Arguing for sucha party to have a clear anti-war,anti-privatisation programmeand plugging their conference inMarch. his call seemed to havemoved beyond mere self-servingpropaganda to be something theSP see as practically necessary.However suspicious one mightbe based on their past record, itis clearly necessary to engagewith their arguments.

The other platform speaker, leftLabour MP John McDonnell(secretary of the SocialistCampaign Group of MPs) mighthave been expected to defendwork through the Labour Party.He did not. Instead he talked ofthe need to build united fronts toconfront capitalism. Rubbishingdebate about organisationalforms, he urged that weconcentrate on working togetherin practical campaigns. Newforms might emerge from thestruggle, he argued, but you gotthe impression that as long as hewas allowed his space inParliament he would not be in ahurry to create them himself.

There was a big vacuum on theplatform. Respect had not beeninvited to speak. Whatever thereasons for this sectarian errorthe absence of a key Respectspeaker was at least amelioratedby the choice of speakers fromthe floor. Alongside a number ofSocialist Party members whospoke of the need for the RMT totake the step in joining withthem in calling a new party intobeing, a series of Respectmembers were called.RMT workers demonstrate in London

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), whichorganizes transport workers, has long played a pivotal role inBritish politics. It was one of the trade unions involved inlaunching the Labour Party in Britain at the beginning of thetwentieth century. Since the rise of New Labour, it has been anincreasingly strident critic at the political as well as theindustrial level.


23

The decline in Labour support has beenapparent for at least five years. Electoralsupport in local government dropped from 38per cent in 2000 to 26 per cent in 2006. Withlower turnout this time, no amount of ’spin’can put a gloss on this pummelling.

Last year’s (2005) general election victoryfor New Labour did not amount to a reversalin the downward trend in support.. With apoor result on a low turn out, Labour’s returnto government owed everything to thepeculiarities of the British ’first past the post’polling system, and the disarray of theopposition Conservative Party.

Media commentary has focused almostexclusively on the question of the leadershipof the party, and the seemingly endless sagaof when and if British economics minister(’Chancellor’) Gordon Brown will take overfrom Tony Blair. It’s true that Blair has longbeen seen inside and outside New Labour as’on the way out’. And with this election hisauthority has further drained to nearinvisibility.

But while a Brown takeover might boostLabour fortunes, the revival would be smallscale and brief. If "renewal" - GordonBrown’s insistent slogan - had any chance ofsuccess it was needed in 2001 or 2002. Andto really “renew” Labour, even modestly, hewould have had to break with Blair’s Iraqpolicy and his welfare state "modernisation"(read: privatisation) policies that have causedsuch disenchantment on the street.

Instead Brown has oriented to the right -wrapping himself in the Union Jack,emphasising "security" and spearheading theprivate sector take-over of public services.What has changed this year has been thesystemic character of Labour’s failure -

across a range of issues and envelopingnearly all its leading players.

The theme tune to Labour’s 1997 victory,"Things can only get better", turned into afallacy - with inequality growing, educationstandards stubbornly low, unemploymentrising, pensions cut and social alienationgrowing rapidly.

In practice this means the demise of what hasbeen described as the New Labour "project".A recovery would be difficult withoutfundamental change. But this is absolutelyexcluded in today’s New Labour party. Nosignificant section of the party is organisingfor it or even presenting any real alternative.

New Labour’s project of hegemonisingBritish politics for a generation or more -claiming the mantle of "natural party ofgovernment" - is now looking like history.Once this aura of power crumbles it cannotbe easily rebuilt.

Labour’s response at these elections was toplay on the supposed efficiency of localLabour councils(municipalities) - somethingfew outside the party seemed aware of -spiced up with a heavy dose of "law andorder" authoritarian populism. This strategyblew apart under it’s own internalcontradictions.

The revolt against Blair’s Iraq crusadeformed the backcloth of the electoral fiasco -a simmering catalyst for radical discontent,driving away thousands of New Labourmembers and hundreds of thousands ofvoters. Blair has spent three years vainlytrying to stem this drift by a phony sales-pitch focusing on his personal "integrity" andLabour’s purported delivery on "bread andbutter" policies. But in the months prior to

May 4 a string of scandals on precisely theseissues provided the crunch point:

v The “cash for peerages” scandal in whichit became clear that Labour was raisingmoney from business people in exchange formaking them Lords or Sirs.

v The health crisis: thousands of nursingjobs have been destroyed in hospitals, whileprivate contractors made hundreds ofmillions of pounds from the so-called’Private Finance Initiative’ in which privatecompanies take over the provision of publicinfrastructure.

v The education revolt: massive oppositionto a proposed law that would see the endingof ’comprehensive schools’ which includechildren from all abilities and different socialbackgrounds, and the return of selection atthe age of 11, which would inevitably see adeepening of privilege for middle class andupper class children.

v “Sleaze”: salacious sex and corruptionstories that ensnared a string of top Labourministers - former interior minister DavidBlunkett, Culture Minister Tessa Jowell anddeputy prime minister John Prescott.

Party managers responded to this crisis, withthe elections approaching fast, by crankingup the authoritarianism. Critics of Labourwho defended civil liberties were labeled"poisoners". But the exposure of HomeOffice incompetence in the management ofreleased prisoners exploded this in a second -like a pinprick to an over-inflated balloon - ashypocritical cant.

Not only did these scandals wreck Labour’sself-description as the party of competenceand integrity, but in erupting so spectacularlyduring an election campaign highlightedLabour’s loss of political control. This was adevastating blow to supporters for whom atleast some semblance of authority was thebottom line, having long said “goodbye” toprinciple.

How things have changed. In 1997 Blair rodeto power pledging to end the corruption,sleaze, maladministration and individualismof the Tory years.

Britain

No renewal for New LabourPiers Mostyn

Blair and Brown

The local government election results in England on May 6 saw Labour’s worst localgovernment vote on record. Twenty six per cent support on a 36 per cent turnout meantless than one in ten electors could be bothered to vote for them. The three majorpolitical parties are converging in the so-called ’centre’, which is in fact on theneoliberal right. The major response to Labour unpopularity was a very low turnout atthe election, but also a rise in support for the far-right British National Party, for theGreens and or the left wing alliance Respect, which won 12 councillors in the Londonmunicipality Tower Hamlets, 3 in Newham and one councillor in two othermunicipalities.


24

In the preceding two decades there were fewmajor conurbations that weren’t solidly pro-Labour. A prime example was London. TheGreater London Council and nearly all theinner city municipalities were ruled by aLabour Party at its most left wing. Now theyrun barely a handful.

How ironic, given the 2006 results, that theshift to the right from the mid-80s was sold asnecessary to win back support. To achievethis, Labour collaborated with Conservativeattacks on local government - savage cuts,"parental choice" in education, council housesales and so-on. A decade later with Labourin government it was full steam ahead - assetswere sold , services privatised, educationtaken out of effective democratic localauthority control and local accountability anddemocracy dismantled through theintroduction of mayoral and cabinetgovernment for councils.

For the past decade Britain’s third party theLiberal Democrats - with a ruthless andopportunistic local party machine - hasreaped the benefit. The Conservative revivalappears now to have put a stop to that. Thequestion is how far this will go?

A full swing of the pendulum back to popularendorsement for the Conservatives seemsunlikely. The ’deferential vote’ (workingclass people voting for the Conservatives) isa fading memory and New Labour is wearingThatcherite clothes.

Nonetheless, the peculiarities of the votingsystem can allow a party with barely onethird of the popular vote to form agovernment, making new conservative leaderDavid Cameron a possible future primeminister in what would be little more than alottery on a three-way split, with theabstention rate probably being the decisivefactor.

As the three main parties converge into thesame political territory - barelydistinguishable on a left-right continuum - acontinuing cycle of public disillusion seemsalmost inevitable. Whereas most voters haveexpressed this by not voting, a growingminority are clearly turning to the smallparties. Most worryingly this includes theBNP - which is carving out a dangerous spacewith a doubling of its councillors. Labour’scomplete abandonment of depressed workingclass communities is the primary dynamicbehind this fascist resurgence.

The Greens did well, showing an emergentnew strength in some inner city areas. But thefact that Green councillors have been in thelocal administration in the major northerncity of Leeds in coalition with Conservativesand Liberal Democrats for the past four yearsshows that there are problems. While manyvoted Green to punish Blair from the left, the

party is nationally incoherent and in someareas locally opportunist.

Respect, confounding critics on left and right,performed impressively - well into doublenumbers of councillors. There has been agenuine breakthrough in two East Londonboroughs and most of the 150 candidatesperformed strongly - with many comingsecond or third.

But new problems are now posed. Respectcannot continue as an ad hoc coalition. Itneeds the democratic machinery of a politicalparty to ensure its representatives areaccountable, policies are developed and itsprofile and campaigning is developed. Tobuild a serious base it must draw thousandsof the new voters into active participation -not just rallies and leafleting.

Secondly, in countless wards, Respectcouncillors were running neck and neck withthe Greens - the combined vote of the twosufficient to allow one to win or come veryclose second. This has to be addressed.Respect need to push the environmentalagenda to the fore and try to make localagreements with the Greens where possible.

Last but not least, fighting for a proportionalrepresentation voting system has to become acentral concern.

More broadly, the loosening of Labour’slinks to the unions will continue. Statefunding for political parties is a realpossibility. After all, Blair and Cameron’sonly alternative is continuing corruptionscandals or rebuilding mass individualmemberships. This calls for a decisive neworientation by Respect.

With Labour poised to go through a period ofinstability, signified by Blair’s panickedreorganisation of his government in whichseveral senior ministers a were sacked, thedream of a ’smooth transition’ from Blair toBrown and then endless Labour governmenthas all but disappeared.

Respect - having established itself as the onlyserious left alternative - must seize theseopportunities.

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v Piers Mostyn is a supporter of SocialistResistance, a socialist newspaper produced byBritish supporters of the Fourth International inconjuction with other marxists.

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The approach of Respect to the elections wasto target the two East London Boroughs(London local council electoral districts) ofNewham and Tower Hamlets where it didbest in the general election last year.

These are large Boroughs, each covering twoparliamentary constituencies. Newham has240,000 inhabitants and Tower Hamlets196,000. They are both deprived workingclass inner city areas. Tower Hamlets has alarge Bangladeshi population (though not amajority) and quite big Afro Caribbean andSomali communities. Newham has a muchbigger white population (a substantialmajority) with a diverse mix of migrantcommunities.

Tower Hamlets contains the Parliamentaryconstituency of Bethnal Green and Bow -which was won by George Galloway forRespect in the general election. Respectstood candidates in all 51 seats in TowerHamlets and all 62 seats in Newham.

Respect also stood in a small number (14)other seats in London and a small number ofseats (25) in the rest of the country. Thismade 153 candidates in all.

It was a strategy both designed to tackle thehugely undemocratic first-past-the-postelectoral system in these elections - whichdiscriminates heavily against small partiessince you have to get somewhere between30% and 40% of the vote to get elected(depending on the number of candidates) -and also to build on the general electionresults. This proved to be an effectivestrategy.

The results in Newham and Tower Hamletswere remarkable by any standards for a leftparty. Respect won three seats in Newhamand 12 in Tower Hamlets. To get these seatsit polled a massive 86,000 votes across thetwo Boroughs - 23% of the vote.

Britain

Respect breakthroughin English localelectionsAlan Thornett The election results achieved by Respectin the English local elections on May 4th- with the election of 16 local councillors- were qualitatively better than anythingachieved for many years by any party ofthe left. Previously Respect only hadthree councillors (two in Preston innorth-west England and one in TowerHamlets in London) it now has a total of18 (two of the existing councillors wasnot up for re-election this year).


25

The highest percentage vote for a Respectcandidate in Tower Hamlets was 46%.

The only seat Respect won outside of Londonwas in Birmingham Sparkbrook - a deprivedinner city working class area with bigPakistani and Kashmiri communities - whereSalma Yaqoob (a remarkable young Pakistaniwoman who is a leader of the anti-warmovement as well as Respect) won with amassive 55% of the vote. The full results forher ward was: Respect 4,339, Labour 2,700,Liberal Democrats 990, Conservatives 343,Greens 309, BNP (fascist) 109.

Respect also came close to winning in anumber of other seats as well - Bristol andSheffield for example. In Preston it missedwinning another seat by only seven votes.

The only other left party to make any gains atall (or win any seats) was the Socialist Party(ex-Militant/CWI) - which increased itsnumber of councillors by 1 from 4 to 5.

There has been some scurrilous commentfrom some on the left about the fact that allthe new Respect Councillors are from anAsian and Muslim background - referring toRespect as a Muslim party. Respect rightlyrejects such comments, which verge onracism. Respect is extremely proud of itsAsian candidates and its Asian councillors. Ifthey had all been from a Christianbackground there would be no suchcomments.

In fact a number of the non-Asian candidatesgot very good votes but none were actuallyelected. John Rees, the National Secretary ofRespect, got 974 votes in Tower Hamlets,which was only just below the vote for theRespect Asian candidates and which beat allother parties except Labour. The Tories topvote was 264, the Liberal Democrats 876,and the Greens 253. The candidate who camesecond in Sheffield with 1208 votes was anon-Asian woman and the Bristol candidatewho came second was a non-Asian man.

There was, therefore, an element of chancethat it came out as it did, though whereconstituencies were chosen with big Asianpopulations there was, to one degree oranother, an advantage for an Asian candidatebuilt into the situation.

It should not be assumed, however, that thevotes for Asian candidates were all fromAsian voters - or even predominantly so insome cases. It was more diverse than that.This was clear when the new councillorsattended a meeting the Respect NationalCouncil soon after the election. One of them,for example, who is a nurse, was able todemonstrate how she had made the defencethe Health Service the centrepiece of hercampaign and how she has drawn support forall sections of the community as a result.

In fact the platform on which Respect stoodin these elections was a socialist/anti-neoliberal platform not significantly differentto that of other left organisations that stood -including that of the Socialist Party. It wasagainst the war and the occupation, againstprivatisation and liberalisation, againstracism and in defence of asylum seekers, forthe renationalisation of the railways and thepublic utilities etc.

It should also be remembered that most of theAsians who vote for Respect were previouslyLabour voters. And people from a Muslimbackground are a natural constituency forRespect because Respect came out of theanti-war movement and is seen and the mostconsistent and effective anti-war party.

Winning such a big Asian vote, however,does pose a challenge for Respect. Not in thatit has too many Asian voters - Respect wantsto win every Asian vote it can get - butbecause it needs to increase its appeal tosections of the community where it has notbeen so successful. This includes the Afro-Caribbean and African community, the tradeunions and sections of the white workingclass. Steps are being taken to address thisproblem.

At the same time Respect needs to improveits geographical spread. And there will soonbe an opportunity to do this as well. In Britaina proportion of local Councils are up forelection every year on a rolling basis. In nextyears local elections London will not beinvolved - and Respect will attempt tostrengthen its position in other parts of thecountry.

Having a much larger group of councillors -and being the "official opposition" on Towerhamlets Council, which is what it is (Labourhas 26 seats, Respect 12, Tories 7 and Liberaldemocrats 6) - also means that Respect willhave to tighten its structures and itsaccountability procedures if it is to developits local Council work successfully - andthere are already signs that this is being doneas well.

These election results are a big step forwardfor Respect. They have opened up a newstage in the development for Respect with thenew councillors creating a new politicalfocus - making it harder for the media topresent it as George Galloway’s party. Thefuture of Respect will depend on howsuccessfully it builds on them.

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v Alan Thornett is a leading member of the ISG,British Section of the Fourth International, and sits onthe Executive Committee of Respect.

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Britain

Latin America: acontinent in revoltSocialist Resistance Dayschool

Saturday 24 June, Celia Hart, MichaelLöwy and Zbigniew Kowalewski will bethe main speakers in London at aSocialist Resistance Dayschoolanalysing events in Latin America today.

Details from www.socialistresistance.net.

Celia Hart is the daughter of two historicleaders of the Cuban Revolution, ArmandoHart and the late Haydée Santamaria. Aphysicist, writer and member of the CubanCommunist Party, she describes herself as a“freelance Trotskyist”. She has publishedmany articles on Trotsky and on thePermanent Revolution.

Michael Löwy was born in Brazil and isResearch Director in Sociology at the CNRS(National Centre for Scientific Research) inParis. His many books include: The Marxismof Che Guevara; Marxism and LiberationTheology; Fatherland or Mother Earth? andThe War of Gods: Religion and Politics inLatin America.

Zbigniew Kowalewski is a Polish Marxistwho has lived in Cuba and has writtenextensively on Latin American politics. Hewas a leader of Solidarnosc in the Lodzregion (1980-1) and is a member of theFourth International.

The Dayschool will look at Latin Americatoday and the new challenges set by the newstruggles; learning from history it willexamine the Cuban and Nicaraguanrevolutions and the Chilean experience; andlooking forward it will consider strategicquestions of permanent revolution,democracy and the state, and the role ofparties and social movements. More details,and how to register for this importantdiscussion at Socialist Resistance.

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v Socialist Resistance is a socialist newspaperproduced by British supporters of the FourthInternational in conjuction with other marxists.

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26

Cuba

Fidel and TrotskyCelia Hart The following interview with Rouge, weekly paper of the LCR(French section of the Fourth International) was conductedwhen Celia Hart recently visited France for a colloquium onPierre Broué, the French Marxist historian who died last year. For fifteen years now thedefinitive collapse of Cubansociety has been announced atregular intervals. Fidel Castrohimself has stressed thedevelopment of inequality inCuba. Can we preserve anddevelop these conquests or arethey condemned to disappear?

I identify totally with the Cubanrevolution but I don’t representit. What I say is my personalopinion. The social conquests ofthe socialist revolution in Cubaare obvious: great socialequality, a system of educationwhich is accessible to everyoneand on a level comparable to theUnited States or Europe - inother words to much richercountries - a health systemsuperior to any other country inLatin America and which,contrary to what is happening inEurope, is not being privatisedor dismantled.

But if the Cuban revolution hasbeen able to overcome thedifficulties of the “specialperiod” [1]- power cuts,breakdowns of public transport,minimal rations of food, etc. -the result of Cuban tradeagreements with the countries ofthe so-called “socialist camp”and of the continuing imperialistblockade - it is because theCuban population as a wholedefended the revolution and notsocial advantages.

The difficulties that we are nowexperiencing are not related tomaterial needs. Theliberalisation of trade and ofpossession of foreign currency -capitalist mechanisms that wereintroduced, and that some peoplejustify by comparing them to theRussian NEP of the 1920s - ledto social differentiation and theappearance of “the new rich”. Ina speech on November 17 lastyear the commander [FidelCastro] formulated it in thefollowing way “this revolution

can destroy itself all alone, andthe only ones who can’t manageto destroy it are them” [the US,imperialism]. “But we candestroy it and it would be ourfault”. And he said that whilestressing that: “several tens ofthousands of parasites producenothing and earn everything...”

Similarly, the Minister ofForeign Affairs, Felipe PerezRoque, insisted at the UnitedNations that the danger for Cubawas the creation of a bourgeoisclass. The interpenetration of thebureaucracy and the marketeconomy, that’s where thedanger lies. We have to demolishthe foundations of thebureaucracy, because it is onthese foundations that thebourgeois class can develop - wesaw in the USSR, in Poland, andelsewhere how the bureaucrats,who were managers, men ofpower, became owners, becamecapitalists.

In Cuba, unlike in the GDR ofthe 1980s, “Lenin is alive”: thebureaucratic counterrevolutionhas not been carried through. Wemust take advantage of that todemolish the remainingfoundations of the bureaucracy.Because it is from there that thedanger of capitalist restorationcan come.

The Venezuelan revolutionaryprocess is making it possible toloosen the imperialiststranglehold around Cuba. Andeven if this process is onlybeginning and the parallelsbetween the two revolutions aredeceptive, can we speak today ofreciprocal influences?

Cuban doctors, paramedics, andteachers, are working inVenezuela. But they don’t takeany part in the political life ofthe country, a choice with whichI disagree, even though you canunderstand that there is a self-

limitation to avoid Cuba beingaccused of interfering.

But the freshness of theVenezuelan process, the voyagesthere, the possibility ofexperiencing other realities andintervening there are anenriching experience and it isimportant that Cubans, inparticular young people - and notthe Cuban government or stateof course - can take part in theVenezuelan revolution, not onlyas doctors or teachers, but in thefactories, the neighbourhoodmeetings etc.

In any case it has to be stressedthat the links that have beenestablished between Cuba andVenezuela are different fromthose that existed with theUSSR. Because it is a questionof links between tworevolutionary processes, onewhich is already consolidatedand another which is beginning.Both of them are authenticrevolutions. With the USSR, onthe contrary, it was a question ofrelations between states, and ofunequal relations.

The dynamic of the Venezuela-Cuba tandem, the possibleintegration of Bolivia into theprocess that is under way,actualises the permanentrevolution and enables us to laythe foundations of a relationshipthat is going in the direction ofbuilding a real united front.

Why does Trotsky’s theoreticalcontribution seems so importantto you?

In Cuba we have been livingthrough a process of permanentrevolution since the Moncada[2].

The continuity of the revolution,the question of its deepening,were at the centre of the thinkingof Cuban revolutionaries, andespecially of the July 26Movement. First of all Mella,then Guevara, were accused ofbeing “Trotskyists”. Theyweren’t, but the accusations had

Celia Hart

a rational kernel, because theywere oriented towards thepermanent revolution evenwithout having read Trotsky.The permanence of the Cubanrevolution is in the ideas of theLeft Opposition.

In Cuba anti-Stalinist feeling hasalways existed, because peoplethought that communism wasthe Stalinism of the CommunistParty. And the Communist Partywas one of the last to join therevolution...But when Fidelannounced in 1961 the socialistcharacter of the Cubanrevolution, people said: “If Fidelis a communist, you can sign meup too”.

I always felt that there wassomething missing in mythinking about the revolution.That’s what I’ve found throughreading Trotsky: I discoveredthat social justice and individualfreedom were not contradictoryand that we weren’t condemnedto choose between them, thatsocialism could only be built bywalking on both feet.

Celia Hart is speaking at the SocialistResistance Day School on Latin America,24 June,

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v Celia Hart, who is a physicist, awriter, and a member of the CubanCommunist Party, has describedherself as a “freelance Trotskyist”since discovering Trotsky’s writingswhen she was studying physics inEast Germany in the 1980s. At thattime she could see at first hand towhat extent this so-called “reallyexisting socialism” was a society indecadence and without a future.Daughter of two historic leaders of theCuban revolution, Haydée Santamariaand Armando Hart, Celia Hart waslucky enough on returning from theGDR to be able to find the writings ofIsaac Deutscher in her father’s library

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NOTES

[1] The “special period” is the term usedto describe the difficult situation that Cubafound itself in after the collapse of theSoviet Union, from which it is only nowemerging

[2] On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro wasarrested after the failure of the attackagainst the Moncada barracks. Defendinghimself in court, he made a speech whichhas gone down in history under the nameof “History will absolve me”, in which heoutlined the perspective of a revolutionarystruggle against the Batista dictatorship

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27

The red alert follows the clashes in onWednesday May 3, when more than 200people were arrested and one killed, as policebrutally prevented flower sellers from Atencosetting up stalls on the building site which isto become a new Walmart shopping mall.According to local people, the police willonly acknowledge 109 people arrested, ninepeople have completely disappeared andwomen have been raped by police, inaddition to the 14-year old boy murdered.

An eyewitness report at Upsidedown Worldreports the events as follows:

"At 7am this past Wednesday, May 3, statepolice blocked 60 flower vendors fromsetting up their stands at the Texcoco localmarket.The police beat and arrested thosewho resisted.

"The flower vendors called to the residents ofneighbouring San Salvador Atenco for helpand the Atenco residents blocked thehighway that borders their town and leads toTexcoco.

"The police response was overwhelming:hundreds of state and federal police, mostclad in riot gear, arrived to lift the blockade.Atenco resisted, with machetes, clubs,Molotov cocktails and bottle rockets. Thepolice tried to lift the blockade five timesthroughout the day, and five times they wererepelled.

"The violence was extreme. Photographspublished in local papers show Atencoprotestors beating a fallen policemen, policebeating tens of fallen protestors. Severebeatings. Protesters kicking one fallen policeofficer in the face, groups of policepulverizing tens of protestors with rocks andbatons.

"Police also attacked photographers fromboth the national and the international press.Photographers and television cameramenfrom Associated Press, Reuters, Milenio,Jornada and Televisa all reported beatingsand attempts to confiscate cameras.Photographs and film coverage of the

beatings were published on the internet andshown on national television. Local andinternational news articles however, have notmentioned the systematic police violenceagainst reporters."

Why is this heavy-handed repression takingplace? It is about much more than stoppinglocal peasants from selling their flowerswhere Walmart wants to be. This district is anarea with a long history of militancy, wherelocal people in 2002 stopped the building ofan airport on peasant land around Atenco.This campaign reached near-uprisingproportions. Moreover Atenco hassymbolically declared itself an ‘autonomousmunicipality’, like the Zapatista communitiesin Chiapas.

Local popular leaders invitedSubcommandante Marcos, in nearby MexicoCity for ‘Other campaign’ meetings, to vistAtenco as part of his tour. It was in the wakeof his visit that the repression took place.During his visit, Marcos promised to alignthe Zapatista Army of National Liberationwith Atenco’s struggle. The Atenco Front,with machetes in hand, was in charge ofproviding security for Marcos during theMay first Labor Day march to Mexico City’smain plaza where the Front’s leader, IgnacioDel Valle, spoke before tens of thousandsgathered in the plaza.

Upsidedown World reports, "Two days laterriot police stormed the house where he(Ignacio del Valle) had been hiding since theattack in Texcoco. At that moment theTelevisa cameraman was outside the housefilming the police operation when some fivepolice officers approached and repeatedlybeat him with clubs. As a result there is nofilm coverage of the police raid.

"Several newspaper photographers, however,photographed Del Valle’s arrival to prisonseveral hours later that night. He was carriedin a headlock by a masked police officer,who, in the photographs, is pointing for thephotographers to leave the area. Another

Mexico

Zapatistas call Red Alert over state attacks

The leadership of the EZLN (Zapatistas) have suspended their ‘Other Campaign’ andcalled a new ‘red alert’ in response to massive state repression against thecommunities of San Salvador Atenco and Texcoco (both in the Valley of Mexico,about 28 kms outside Mexico City - just beyond the city’s huge rubbish dump). Thered alert calls for the closure of the Zapatista community centres in Chiapas and a raftof other security measures, including putting the EZLN fighters on maximum alert.

masked officer walked slightly behind,grabbing Del Valle’s back.

"The two masked officers walk Del Vallethrough a gauntlet of a hundred riot policewith helmets and shields. Del Valle’s head iscovered with a towel in the pictures, but hisface, swollen and bloody is partially visible.Also visible is a blood stain the size of a fiston the groin of his jeans, evidence of repeatedstrikes to his testicles."

Subcommandante Marcos reappeared inAtenco at a rally on Friday 5 May, holding upempty cartridge case which he said policehad used live ammunition when 14-year oldJavier Cortés was killed on 3 May. Marcoscalled on the commercial media to stop their‘smear campaign’ against the people, whohave been accused by TV and newspapers ofsupporting the EPRI [1] Marcos alsoannounced at a protest rally in Plaza de laTres Culturas [2] that the Other Campaignwas being suspended and that in the light ofthe situation in the Texcoco valley he wouldremain in Mexico City ‘indefinitely’.

As a response to Marcos’ campaign, thegovernment and media are ominouslyarguing that Marcos has violated the nine-year old amnesty law that officially broughtarmed conflict to a temporary end.

On Saturday 6 May a judge committedpeasant leaders Ignacio del Valle and FelipeAlvarez to jail for the crimed of ‘armedkidnap’. Fourty-four prisoners alsoannounced the same day a hunger strike fortheir release.

At Friday’s Atenco rally Marcos said: “To themedia and its workers; I have seen you inChiapas, risking your lives, suffering hunger,and I have seen how your bosses changeeverything. I’ve seen how your photos, yourvideos, are disappeared into the desk drawersof your editors.”

Mass resistance in the streets


28

“There is a lynch mob campaign against theFPDT (Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land,the Atenco organisation that stopped themulti-billion dollar international airportproject in 2002) and its leaders.

“Your bosses are putting themselves at theservice of lies. They are paid by those whohave money, and we don’t have it. Well, theyare not in the streets. They are not in thefactories. They are not out planting the fields.The Mass Media... is dedicated todiscrediting the good and noble people whofight.

“I am going to remain for an indefinite periodof time in Mexico City to participate in themobilisations.” Marcos also announced thatZapatista supporters would launch anationwide campaign for the arrested andbrutalised on Atenco and Texcoco.

In a statement on 4 May, the PoliticalCommittee of the PRT [3], declared theevents at Atenco to be "a deliberateprovocation against the Other Campaign"saying that "without a shadow of doubt" thepolice attacks has been designed to coincidewith Marcos’ visit, and to impede theprogress of his campaign. After finishing theValley of Mexico part of his trip Marcos wasdue to travel to San Luis Potosí, were animportant rally for the release of politicalprisoners was due to take place.

Latest News: Brutal beatings inSantiaguito jail

According to the left-liberal paper La Jornada(7 May), the detainees held in Mexico State’sSantiaguito prison have been systematicallybrutalised and threatened with death sincetheir arrest.

Also according to La Jornada, two moregunshot victims in Atenco have beendiscovered. The paper also reports that thehouse of Ignacio del Valle has been brokeninto by state forces, clothes torn, furniturewrecked and electrical appliances trashed.

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NOTES

[1] Independent Revolutionary Army of the Poor. Sincethe arrest of their major leaders in 1999 it has not beenclear whether this organisation really exists.

[2] site of the 1968 student massacre

[3] Revolutionary Workers Party, Mexican supporters ofthe 4th International

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"Companeros and companeras,

A few moments ago we were watching andlistening to the media and the manipulationof what was happening, the informationalmanipulation about what was occurring [inAtenco]. We listened to the commentators onTelevision Azteca imploring that law berestored, that the military enter to restoreorder and end what was taking place there.We also listened to the indignation of theviewers who sent letters to the station statingthat the commentators pleading for greaterpublic force were idiots.

Years ago here, in the Plaza of Three Cultures[Tlatelolco] there was a massacre and inresponse to this the government claimed thatthe army had been attacked. And much timepassed until someone asked what the armyhad been doing at a student meeting in thefirst place. And now over those same meansof communication, including radio, it doesnot occur to reporters to ask what the publicforces were doing in San Salvador Atenco.

And what they were doing there wasenforcing this alliance that was madebetween the PRD and the PRI in order to ousta few flower vendors because the municipalpresident of Texcoco thinks they deface thecity; because he wants to put a shoppingcenter there, a Wal-Mart in Texcoco and thesmall merchants bother him and because thePRD aligned there with the PRI at the statelevel and with the PAN at the national level,and now they will have to be accountable forthis death.

As the 6th Commission of the ZapatistaArmy of National Liberation, signatory to theOther Campaign, we are asking, solicitingrespectfully the regional and sub-regionalcoordinators throughout the entire country toexecute actions and mobilizations in supportof the Frente de Los Pueblos en Defensa deLa Tierra [Salvador Atenco] beginning at0800, eight in the morning tomorrow, thefourth of May, 2006.

As the Sixth Commission we are declaring ared alert. The troops of the Zapatista Army ofNational Liberation have already beendeclared under red alert and from that pointonwards the Caracoles and AutonomousZapatista Rebel Municipalities will beclosed. Beginning at that moment, from thatmoment on, the new chain of command of theZapatista Army of National Liberation willbe in place. Whatever may happen to me,there is now someone else in place to makedecisions. We don’t know about everyoneelse, but today, we, the Zapatistas, areAtenco!

We are going to be attentive to their demands.We call for the holding of meetings by sector,

Marcos (centre front, back to camera) addressesprotest rally in Atenco, 5 May

Vienna protest at Euro-Latino government summit

by region, as you all see fit. As the SixthCommission we are canceling all of ourparticipation in programmed activities andwe are waiting for the cue from the Frente deLos Pueblos en Defensa de La Tierra. If itneeds our presence there, we will go there. Ifnot, we will participate directly in the actionsthat you all program tomorrow beginning at0800, eight in the morning.

Close the highways, close the streets, fly,paint, whatever occurs to you, in a civil andpeaceful manner. Atenco cannot be left all toitself. We will not cease these actions and thissituation until the companeros of the Frentede Los Pueblos en Defensa de La Tierraindicate so to us.

We are not going to pay attention to any pieceof information that doesn’t arrive directlyfrom them. For us, they, those who comprisethe Frente de Los Pueblos en Defensa de LaTierra are the Other campaign in those lands.We will respect their decisions. We will gowherever they tell us to go. They have beenclear in their demands: immediate liberationof those detained and total withdrawal of thegovernment forces that are invading theirlands.

This is our message companeros andcompaneras. Not only for the OtherCampaign in this Other Mexico, in this OtherMexico City that is rising up. It is ourmessage to the Other Campaign in the entirecountry. From Chiapas, Quintana Roo,Yucatan, Campeche, until the two BajaCalifornias, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas,Nuevo Leon. From the north to the south,from the east to the west so that the OtherCampaign echoes in Atenco and let there bejustice for those that have fallen!! Thank youcompaneros, thank you companeras."

MARCOS SPEECH AT RALLY IN PLAZA OF THE THREE CULTURES


29

real general secretary was Elías MoralesHernández. The government’s action wasbased on part of Mexican labor law known as“taking note” (toma de nota), under which thegovernment recognizes the legally electedofficers of labor unions.

Six years earlier Morales Hernández hadappealed to the Secretary of Labor, arguingthat he had actually been elected and shouldbe the new head of the union. Thegovernment had rejected the appeal byMorales Hernández, and in 2002 thenSecretary of Labor Carlos Abascal Carranzarecognized Gómez Urrutia as the generalsecretary. Why had the Mexican governmentsuddenly opted to overturn its own earlierdecision, recognize the dissident, and bringhim out of retirement to assume leadership ofthe Miners Union? The answer has partly todo with the Miners Union and the recentaccident, but just as much to do with theCongress of Labor (CT), the umbrellaorganization that brings together most of thelargest Mexican labor federations andindustrial unions.

Official Labor Movement in Crisis

In mid-February 2006, Miners Union leaderGómez Urrutia joined together with IsaíasGonzález, head of the RevolutionaryConfederation of Workers and Peasants(CROC), to challenge the election of VictorFlores Morales, head of the MexicanRailroad Workers Union (STFRM), forcontrol of the Congress of Labor (CT).

Gómez Urrutia was trying to position himselfto become the top leader of the numericallymost important Mexican labor organization.His ambitions troubled many. The CT, whichbrings together most of the “official” unionsof Mexico, historically formed part of theInstitutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), theruling party of Mexico. The CT hadhistorically backed the PRI’s candidates,supported the PRI’s policies, and served inthe Mexican Congress as PRI senators andcongressmen.

More recently the CT had worked out amodus viviendi with Mexican president

The strike resulted from an attempt by thegovernment to remove the Mexican MinersUnion’s top officer, General SecretaryNapleón Gómez Urrutia, and replace himwith Elías Morales Hernández, a uniondissident who is reportedly backed by theGrupo Mexico mining company.

The coup in their union led miners to strikeinsisting that the government recognizeGómez Urrutia. In many mining towns andcities the miners also marched and rallieddemanding not only the restitution of theirleader but also safer conditions.

The strike by members of the National Unionof Mining and Metallurgical Workers ofMexico (SNTMMRM) resulted from bothlabor union and political causes. Theexplosion and cave in at the Pasta deConchos mine in San Juan de Las Sabinas,Coahuila in northern Mexico on Febuary 19killed 65 miners. The Miners Union leaderGómez Urrutia blamed the employer, GrupoMexico, calling the deaths “industrialhomicide.” The Pasta de Conchos cave-in setoff a storm. Throughout Mexico politicians,academics, intellectuals, and ordinary peoplecriticized the mining company.

Grupo Mexico stock fell. Copper and othercommodity prices rose. The MexicanCatholic Bishops Conference criticized theemployer’s negligence and called for aninternational investigation, expressing theirlack of confidence in the government.

The Ousting of Gómez Urrutia

While miners throughout the countrymourned the death of their brothers andcomplained of health and safety conditions intheir own mines, there was no official orwildcat strike in the immediate aftermath ofthe accident.

Then, on February 28 the Mexican Secretaryof Labor announced that Gómez Urrutia wasnot actually the head of the union, but that the

Union members and townspeople retook theplant while representatives from unions andhuman rights organizations converged on thescene. Meanwhile, Villacero Corporation,which owns the plant, accused the strikers ofbeing “terrorists.” This is the latest incidentin a months-long struggle.

At the beginning of April, after a briefnational widcat, miners and steel workerslaunched a series of strikes for unionautonomy. If successful, these wouldtransform both Mexico’s labor movementand its political system.

At first the mining and steel companies, theemployers association, and the Mexicangovernment stood together against thestrikers, whose backers include theindependent National Union of Workers(UNT), a Catholic Bishop, and other miningand metal workers unions around the world.

Then, on April 10, Altos Hornos de MexicoSA, the nation’s largest steelmaker, brokeranks with Groupo Mexico, stating in a fulll-page ad in a local daily, that Labor SecretaryFrancisco Salazar is causing “chaos.”

Mexican courts declared the strikes illegal,but the strikes continued with labor leaderscalling for a nationwide one-hour strike onApril 28. At stake in this contest is a systemof state and employer control of unions thathas lasted over 80 years. If Mexican workersshould ever achieve genuinely independentunions, not only would they have moreeconomic strength, but they could become asocial force and a political power.

Background to the Battle

The battle began with a big bang. More thana quarter of a million miners andsteelworkers walked off the job betweenMarch 1-3 in wildcat strikes at 70 companiesin at least eight states from central to northernMexico, virtually paralyzing the miningindustry.

Mexico

Mexican miners and steelworkers on strikeFighting for Union Autonomy

Dan La Botz

ON APRIL 20 EIGHT hundred state and federal police launched an assault on 500striking workers who had been occupying a steel mill in Lázaro Cárdenas. Two werekilled, five seriously injured and 40 wounded. A video released to the press showsMichoacán police taking aim at the strikers.


30

Vicente Fox, collaborating with his NationalAction Party (PAN). Napoleón GómezUrrutia’s attempt to take over the CT not onlychallenged Railroad Workers Union leaderVictor Flores, it also worried the PRI andPAN.

Rival Leaders

Victor Flores had been the ideal labor unionleader under both PRI and PAN governments.He had worked closely with the governmentto carry out the privatization of the Mexicanrailroads, leading to their sale to the UnionPacific and the Kansas City railroads.

When rank-and-file railroad workersprotested, Victor Flores cooperated with thegovernment to have them fired - easy enoughwith some 100,000 railroad workers losingtheir jobs in the privatization - and if that didnot work he had sent his thugs to beat themand threaten them with murder.

While somewhat volatile - as a PRICongressman Victor Flores had once tried tostrangle another representative - he was loyalto the government’s program ofneoliberalism.

Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, on the other hand,seemed, from the government’s point ofview, to be becoming a loose cannon.

Gómez Urrutia had inherited the leadershipof the mine from his father Napoleón GómezSada. Both had been typical charros, that is,union bureaucrats absolutely loyal to the PRI.They had turned out the vote for the party,collaborated with the employers, andexpelled union activists or leaders whoopposed them or supported other politicalparties. Doing all of those things, theyenjoyed the wealth, power and privilege towhich their loyalty entitled them. Lately,however Gómez Urrutia had begun tochallenge both the employers and theCongress of Labor/ PRI leadership.

The Miners’ Union in Struggle

In June 2005, Mexican miners joined theircompañeros in Peru and the United States asmore than 10,000 miners carried out asimultaneous protest against Grupo Mexicoto demand that the company stop violatingworkers’ rights. The three unions accusedGrupo Mexico of having a policy ofrepression, exploitation and unwantedinvolvement in union affairs.

The protest was organized by the UnitedSteel Workers of America (USW) in theUnited States, the Federation of MetalWorkers of Peru (FETIMAP), and theNational union of Miners and Metal Workers(SNTMM) of Mexico. The internationalsolidarity against the Mexican miningcompany was backed by the InternationalMetalworkers Federation (IMF).

Then in September 2005, Mexican Minersand Metal Workers Union won a 46-daystrike against two steel companies in LázaroCárdenas, Michoacan, in one of the mostimportant strikes in Mexico in a decade. Thelocal union and its 2,400 members succeededin winning an 8% wage gain, 34% in newbenefits, and a 7,250 peso one-time onlybonus.

The union had broken the government-employer-imposed wage ceiling. TheMexican Miners Union also had an impact ondomestic politics, playing a critical role in theunion bloc that opposed the Foxadministration’s labor law reform package.

All these actions, economic and political,threatened to upset the Mexican system oflabor control by which the governmentallabor authorities, the employers, and the“official” unions of the CT collude to channeland suppress workers.

Then in February, Gómez Urrutia made hisbid to take over the CT, raising the prospectthat he would lead labor struggles at anational level. Clearly at that point the Foxgovernment must have already been lookingfor a way to get rid of him. Then his remarkson Grupo Mexico’s “industrial homicide”made him persona non grata with the PRI andwith the employers.

Government Repression

President Vicente Fox’s administration tookswift action to defend itself and supportGrupo Mexico. First, as already mentionedthe government brought Elías MoralesHernández out of retirement and declaredhim to be the legitimate head of the union.Second, the government indicted GómezUrrutia for allegedly embezzling $55 milliongiven to the union during the privatization ofthe Cananea copper mine under thepresidency of Carlos Salinas de Gortari.Third, labor boards and courts declared thestrikes illegal for various reasons, but oftenbecause they were inter-union conflicts.

While these might seem like particularlyoriginal and creative moves on the part of thegovernment, they are in fact all ratherstandard measures.

Gómez Urrutia refused to accept MoralesHernández’s usurpation of the unionleadership, and local unions throughout thecountry - infuriated by the attempt to appointa man backed by Grupo Mexico - voted toback Gómez Urrutia. He also categoricallydenied the charges of embezzlement, sayingthe money had been paid out to unionmembers. His supporters filed a charge ofindustrial homicide against Secretary ofLabor Francisco Salazar and two mineinspectors.

Meanwhile miners keep walking out on strikeat mines throughout the country. The workstoppage is costing Group Mexico about $2.5million a day in lost production at LaCaridad, the country’s second-largest coopermine.

The Larger Context

The struggle over the Congress of Labor andnow over the Miners Union takes place at acrucial time: Mexico is in the midst of anational election campaign, in which theconservative National Action Party’scandidate Felipe Calderón and theInstitutional Revolutionary Party’s candidateRoberto Madrazo are being challenged byAndrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution.

López Obrador is running on a populistplatform calling for putting “the poor first.”He is leading in the polls, and whileinternational bankers and Mexicanindustrialists have said they can live withhim, some fear the poor make take his sloganseriously.

At the same time, Subcomandante Marcos,leader of the Zapatista Army of NationalLiberation (EZLN), has left the LacandonForest in Chiapas to organize the “othercampaign.” This is not an attempt to winelection, but rather an effort to organize theanti-capitalist forces of Mexico into a socialmovement with the power to overturn thegovernment, call a constituent assembly, andwrite a new constitution for an egalitarian(and, though he hardly ever uses the word,socialist) Mexico.

Marcos has recently gone out of his way tospeak to Mexican workers and union


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Protests are against the "welfarereform", launched by thegovernment in early April andcurrently negotiated inParliament. The ruling Liberaland Conservative Parties needsupport either from the far rightDanish Peoples Party or SocialDemocracy to get the lawspassed.

The plan includes attacks onseveral welfare issues, includinglater retirement age (pensionage up from 65 to 67),obligatory employment trainingprograms for elderlyunemployed workers (nowbenefiting from an exemption),cuts in unemplyment benefitsfor young workers and reducedpublic study grant.

Overall, the goal is to get morepeople to work more (bymaking their present conditionsworse), in order to ensure"welfare in the future".

The Red-Green Alliance isrefusing the general premises,

arguing that there is moneyenough for more and betterwelfare - now as well as in thefuture. The Alliance is takingactive part in the currentmobilizations.

In Parliament, the Alliancetogether with the SocialistPeoples Party are against the"reforms", while SocialDemocracy is divided on theissue. Although the partypresident joined the rally inCopenhagen, she is working fora deal with the government.

The Red-Green Alliance putsforward as a key demand, thatSocial Democracy abstains froman agreement with thebourgeois government.

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v Aage Skovrind is press secretary ofthe Red-Green Alliance.

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Denmark

Huge demonstration againstgovernment welfare cutsAage Skovrind

More than 100,000 - organizers say up to 140,000 - joineddemonstrations in Copenhagen and four other cities on May17. The demonstrations were the largest for more than 20years and reflect a growing alliance between trade unions andstudent organizations.

members, blue-collar laborers in privateindustry and white-collar workers ingovernment agencies, suggesting that theyhave to turn against their union leaders, thebosses, and the politicians. Most of thepeople Marcos speaks to - the poor, Indiancommunities, the unemployed - don’t havemuch economic leverage. Now the miners’strike has shown what real economic powerand potential political power could be.

The Miners Union’s nationwide wildcatstrike showed Mexican industrial workers’taking center stage for the first time indecades. Twice in the past there have beensuch strikes against the Mexican government:first in 1959 when the Mexican RailroadWorkers union called a nationwide strike, andagain in 1976 when Electrical Workers andtheir allies in the Democratic Tendencycarried out a national strike.

Both those strikes were crushed by theMexican government - the PRI’s one-party-state - using the army, police and massivefirings. The Mexican government of that era,the era of the PRI, had the political and socialpower to carry out such military and policeactions to put down a national labor walkout.

The Fox government, as demonstrated by sixyears of political failure, economic doldrumsand social disintegration, does not have theforce to face down the labor movement. Anumber of movements with different politicalleaderships and goals - López Obrador andthe Party of the Democratic Revolution,Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas,and Gómez Urrutia and the Miners Union -appear to be aligning in ways that could turnMexico upside down.

Whether that happens depends on threethings: 1) whether the government continuesto make mistakes that inadvertentlyadvantage and encourage its enemies; 2)whether the leaders of these movementsprove willing to and capable of settingbroader forces in motion; 3) whetherworkers, feeling and seeing their strength,move to build their own independent force.

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v Dan La Botz is the author of several books onMexican labor unions, social movements andpolitics. He also edits Mexican Labor News andAnalysis, an on-line publication of the UnitedElectrical Workers Union (UE) and the AuthenticLabor Front (FAT), at: www.ueinternational.org/.

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Delegates at last year’s camp

Fourth International Summer Camp July 2006

A new generation to build a new Europe!

The 23rd youth camp of the Fourth International will take place near Perugia in Italy from 29th July to 5th August.

Over 500 young people from all over Europe are expected to come together for a week of political discussion, exchange of experience, self-organisation and having a good time. They will discuss the neoliberal offensive in all its forms - from the war in Iraq to the war on the right tofree education- plan the fightback and map out the strategy necessary to gain another Europe, another world while at the same time finding outat first hand what’s the same and what’s differnt in the politics and partying of each country.

For more information visit the website or write to International Viewpoint PO Box 112, Manchester M12 5DW, Britain.

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