[The following greetings to the Seventh Congress of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International, were delivered by Livio Maitan in the name of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
[The LCR congress took place Oct. 31- Nov. 3, 1985. The text of the greetings was published in the December 1985 issue of Critique Communiste, a monthly publication of the LCR. The translation from French is by Intercontinental Press.]
The discussions at your congress have many points in common with the discussions that have taken place in other European sections. In a number of respects they reflect and mirror the concerns running through the workers' movement in the majority of European capitalist countries.
In several weeks, during one of the periodic meetings of the political bureaus of our European organizations, a whole series of problems will be discussed. I will mention several of them very sketchily.
At present we are building our sections in a context that is considerably different from the one that existed when most of these sections were built or reestablished, that is, at the beginning of the 1970s. After that time, a major development, the 1974-75 economic crisis, began to shake up things that had been previously taken for granted in the situation in capitalist Europe.
A new context
If we want to determine the scope of the change that has taken place, suffice it to recall, for example, that since 1970 unemployment has gone from 3 percent to 13 percent in Britain, from 0.8 percent to 8.6 percent in the "flourishing" Federal Republic of Germany, from 2.4 percent to 20.1 percent in Spain, and that in France and Italy the rate of unemployment among young people fluctuates between 30 and 35 percent, while in Spain it has just reached 46.5 percent!
These figures are enough to provide an idea of the deep-seated impact of the events taking place in society. What is more, the principal capitalist countries have registered an increasingly perceptible decline in the industrial working class, and especially in its fundamental sectors, particularly since the end of the 1970s.
[The LCR weekly newspaper] Rouge recounts this week the dramatic fate of the French steel industry. In Spain, between 1977 and 1984, the number of industrial workers has 54
declined 22 percent; in Italy, the number of workers in big companies has dropped about 25 percent during the past four years. In that country all the bastions of the big struggles of the past 20 years have been very hard hit.
When we add to these elements the fact that the introduction of new technologies has devalued the traditional skills of the workers as well as the relationship of these workers to the labor process they are involved in, in short, their role as producers, the conclusion is selfevident: very deep-going transformations, a real tearing of the economic and social fabric, is taking place.
Finally, we should highlight two points in the analysis of these processes. First, thus far the changes linked to restructuring and reorganizing work have had a greater impact than technological innovations per se. Second, and as a consequence of the first point, the big wave of innovations — especially in services - still lies before us.
For that reason, among others, no one would predict that in the short or medium term there will be a reversal of these tendencies mentioned above.
This gives us an idea of the problems posed for our organizations. It will be necessary to reflect on them in order to be able to grasp what is taking place. Unless we do so, we will be incapable of intervening effectively in the class struggle.
Briefly, a few comments on the situation and perspectives of struggle. In 1984 or 1985, three countries in Europe — France, Italy, and Britain — registered the lowest number of worker-hours on strike in 20 years if not longer.
Nevertheless, developments like the mobilization of the "autoconvocati" in Italy in March 1984 [against revision of wage indexing], the epic strike of the British miners, the June 1985 strike in Spain, and the struggle for the 35-hour week in Germany show that strikes and mobilizations are possible.
There is nothing to indicate that this will not be the case in the years to come.
However, we knock up against a vicious circle resulting from the combination of the following two factors:
1. Partial struggles in themselves cannot pay off, given the problems that are raised, while general struggles suffer setbacks or end up without tangible results.
2. The problem of an alternative is posed as a solution to the crisis, but this alternative cannot be concretized or begin to be concretized without significant struggles and mobilizations.
The whole problem is to figure out how this vicious circle can be broken, what must be done to relaunch the struggles with perspectives for success. More concretely, it must be determined what type of struggles are necessary today in the factories hit by or threatened by restructuring, and what the objectives of these struggles must be.
We must at the same time define a political alternative that has, in and of itself, an inspiring effect.
The answer to this problem is a difficult one. But we must do everything we can to find such an answer and concretize it. This is a task that we cannot evade.
Success of our Mexican comrades
I don't have time to give you a report on the work done by a recent meeting of the political bureaus of our Latin American organizations, which represent an important sector of our movement. One central point of the discussions was our participation in the continentwide struggles against paying the foreign debt.
I will limit myself to a few words about Mexico. As you know, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) scored a success during the last general elections. Six candidates on its slate were elected to parliament. This is a very significant and unprecedented victory in this arena for our whole movement.
It is true that on various occasions we have had parliamentary deputies in other Latin American countries. But this time the success is the result of much more deep-going and systematic work carried out by a much larger and more structured organization than the Bolivian organization or the Peruvian organization were in the periods when they had members of parliament. In addition, it is an organization that, since its formation, has been much more integrated into the framework of the International than they were.
Comrade Sergio Rodríquez, a leader of the PRT, stressed this during a meeting of the International leadership. Without the Fourth International, he said, there would not have been a PRT, nor, therefore, this victory.
But he immediately added that the new situation brought with it, for the PRT as well as for the International, problems and tasks that are no less difficult than the ones we have confronted up to now.
To give you an idea of these problems, we should note that the PRT continues to focus on the problem of uniting the left, obviously now with greater responsibilities.
At the present stage, should it prioritize approaches toward the PSUM (Mexican United Socialist Party - formerly the Communist Party, with the idea that the problem of ties with the organizations of the revolutionary left will come up later in a more concrete fashion? These organizations, although not represented in parliament, are not a negligible force taken as a whole.
Or instead should it first of all address itself to these revolutionary left organizations, in such a way as to pull along the PSUM in the unity process?
Secondly, our comrades are posing the problem of the relationship between the party and its parliamentary expression, a problem that the workers' movement has had to grapple with throughout its long history. It would be quite incorrect to think that this question does not confront a revolutionary Marxist organization. In Peru our comrades went through a painful experience in this regard. They hope that their experience might at least help the Mexican comrades to resolve their problems.
Finally, the electoral success was the product of a mass influence that the PRT had already won earlier. Among other things, this mass influence allowed the PRT to mobilize thousands and thousands of sympathizers during the campaign. Now the PRT's influence has grown even more, and thousands of people want to join the party, even though they are not revolutionary Marxists.
Obviously it is impossible to blur the difference between members on the one hand and sympathizers on the other. But it is just as impossible to close the party's doors. Therein lies the problem. An enormous task of training new cadres and new leaders is, therefore, posed for the PRT. Accomplishing it successfully is the precondition for assimilating the new forces that are flowing in its direction. Defend our Marxist, revolutionary socialist identity
In your congress we have also heard what is today a recurring theme in the workers" movement in numerous countries, including in our own movement: the question of our identity.
In this arena we must confront challenges.
The first arises from our own ranks. In late August, the leadership of the Australian Socialist Workers Party (SWP) decided to quit the Fourth International. The United Secretariat is in the process of preparing a response, and an article will appear in the next issue of the magazine Quatrième Internationale.
Two central criticisms were directed against us by the Australian comrades. One is that we do not understand the anti-imperialist axis of the world revolution." This is not a simple quarrel over terminology. In fact, the SWP leadership is breaking with our concept of the three sectors of the world revolution by challenging the irreplaceable, necessary role of the proletariat in the industrialized capitalist countries.
The other criticism concerns the contradiction at work in the bureaucratized workers' states. According to the Australian comrades, in this sector of the world revolution the contradiction is "between socialist countries and imperialism." In other words, they totally blur the central contradiction - the one that exists between the bureaucratic castes and the working masses. A small trifle!
In the face of these revisions, reaffirming our fundamental programmatic bases is a political necessity. Does anyone think that the necessity of the revolution in the capitalist countries and the necessity of the antibureaucratic revolutions constitute baggage that just weighs us down and would be better jettisoned? Without complete clarity on these essential questions, you cannot build anything today or tomorrow or the day after. At most you can end up with the most insipid tailendism, you squeak by in the shadow of others, and even that not for very long!
The second challenge - especially in the countries of capitalist Europe — stems from left intellectuals and, unfortunately, fairly large sectors of the organized workers' movement.
Italy is a clear example of this. It is in the Italian Communist Party itself, a mass workers* party for 40 years, that the fundamental Marxist concepts are being challenged, including the materialist interpretation of history, and even more so the historic ends of the workers movement. In such a context, does reaffirming and redefining our identity represent a waste of time, an abstract exercise, a doctrinaire hobby?
We are told that we must be useful organizations. There is no question about that. You cannot win credit by promising a bright tomorrow if you are not capable of participating in the struggles of a bitter present. That is ABC.
But at the same time we must also appear as an organization that is useful in terms of its programmatic values and its potentialities for struggle for the future. If we want to cut across the wave of retreat that is breaking on the workers" movement, if we want to avoid being sucked into the ideological stampede ourselves, we must assert our Marxist, socialist, revolutionary identity.
We repeat: this is a political necessity, a necessity for building ourselves. If we do not understand that, we run the risk of falling into pragmatism with all its illusions, and, under the best of circumstances, we will be building on sand.
The real problem therefore is not to know whether we should conserve or retrace our identity, but rather to know how to defend and redefine this identity in terms of the necessities of the struggle of the workers' movement at a time when the context is unfavorable in numerous countries.
It must be said: even in a country like France, being not even a Trotskyist, but simply a Marxist, means swimming against the current today.
We must keep clearly in mind, comrades, the consciousness that we are not defending a sect or a clique, nor even a specific organization. Rather we are waging a battle in the interest of the workers" movement as a whole.
It is a battle that will be long and difficult. But it must be waged. We have no other choice.