The following article is reprinted from the February 28 issue of Rood, the Flemish newspaper of the Revolutionaire Arbeiders Liga (RAL — Revolutionary Workers League), Belgian section of the Fourth International. The translation for Intercontinental Press is by Russell Block.]
March 10 [the date of parliamentary elections] is approaching. The working class is in the process of choosing among the parties.
The Revolutionaire Arbeiders Liga maintains that elections cannot bring about any fundamental change for the working class. The capitalist class, which monopolizes economic power, also holds political power, whatever regime is "in power."
Whenever a regime comes to power that does not break with capitalism but is nevertheless unable to keep the working class under control (e.g., the Blum Popular Front regime in France in 1936, or the Allende regime in Chile) the bourgeoisie consciously organizes economic chaos to set the petty bourgeoisie and the less conscious layers of the working class against the regime and, above all, against the workers in struggle. The bourgeoisie has at its disposal a state apparatus that in the final analysis is (in Engels's words) a band of armed men who uphold capitalist interests. No matter what government is formed, as long as the army, the national guard, and the legal justice system are not dismantled, the bourgeoisie is far from defeated!
For this reason, the workers' position can only be improved in a fundamental way when they use direct action to bring a government to power that completely breaks with the capitalist system, smashes the capitalist state apparatus, and expropriates the large capitalists.
We are aware that the RAL is a minority organization within theworkers movement and that most workers still believe in parliamentary democracy. For this reason a revolu- 312
tionary organization must utilize elections and parliaments that are at the center of attention to make its revolutionary views known. Thus the RAL will run in elections in all major cities whenever we have the forces to do so. In our judgment, this was not possible in the present elections without disrupting our other campaigns (against the professional army, in defense of trade-union rights).
But the workers will be going to the polls on March 10, and a revolutionary organization has a responsibility to issue a clear call to its supporters on how to vote.
The RAL calls for a vote for any one of the workers parties- BSP [Socialist party, KP [Communist party], or Amada [a Maoist group), where running-for the following reasons:
1. We wish to make it completely clear that in the fight between the bourgeois parties on the one hand and the BSP and KP on the other, we stand on the side of the latter. Whenever the capitalists attack the BSP, they have as their goal to strike a blow against the working class and the gains it has made in struggle. When the PVV [Partij voor Vrijeid en Voortgang- Peace and Progress, Party] issued its call for a "center bloc" (against the BSP), one of the measures proposed was a privatization of health insurance!
This position will also refute all the malicious gossip spread by the BSP and trade-union leadership to the effect that we are "the enemies of the organized workers movement." With this we can lay the basis for longrange activity.
2. When we say that we defend the BSP and the KP (naturally Amada as well) against the capitalist parties, we are also saying to the workers in these parties that they must burn all their bridges to the capitalist parties. If not, they will suffer defeat.
If the BSP had not participated in the government, the embarrassing scandal over the RTT, which the VU [Volksunie-People's
Unity] eagerly seizes upon, would not have taken place! The workers parties cannot defend themselves against the VDB. Declerq, Tindemans, and Company by sitting in the same cabinet with them! The sole hope lies in the politics of class against class. And in this context we oppose the politics of the BSP, which has brought the working class to the edge of the abyss with a systematic policy of class collaboration, and of the KP, which does not carry out any systematic opposition to classcollaboration politics —especially in the ABVV. Thus we defend these parties against the bourgeoisie despite their politics and class-collaborationist programs, and only because the bourgeoisie in attacking them wishes to strike a blow against the working class.
3. In the context of our conception of class-struggle politics, we have concrete proposals for the activists of the workers movement. The first is that all workers organizations unite to work around concrete issues: against the professional army, for the preservation of trade-union rights, for solidarity with the Chilean resistance.
Moreover, in addition to working together around the concrete issues mentioned above, all organizations, groupings within organizations, and individual activists declaring their support for an anticapitalist program of struggle must also discuss what is the proper program and road to socialism. And they must harness their forces in order to win the whole workers movement and especially the trade unions to an anticapitalist fighting line, in order to implement this program in struggle!